Bob Barr: “Members of the House, today our Constitution stands in harm's way. The rule of law in America is under fire, the rule of…”

“Members of the House, today our Constitution stands in harm's way. The rule of law in America is under fire, the rule of law about which our chairman, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), spoke so eloquently just a few short moments ago, the rule of law which finds its highest and best embodiment in the absolute, the unshakeable right each one of us has to walk in a courtroom and demand the righting of a wrong. As President John F. Kennedy so eloquently put it, "Americans are free to disagree with the law but not to disobey it. For a government of laws and not of men, no man however prominent and powerful, no mob however unruly or boisterous is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men, by force or threat of force, could long defy the commands of our courts and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from its neighbors." This, Mr. Speaker, is the fundamental American right which President William Jefferson Clinton tried to deny a fellow citizen.”