Political Quotes

“It's my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor. And before I go into my presentation, I want to go into the subject matter the gentleman from Texas has led this previous Special Order on, just as a means of discussing a way to look at victims' rights. For me, I was caused to reexamine the situation as a victim. I had had some heavy equipment that was destroyed by vandals back in the year 1987, a year that shall live in infamy. It was in the middle of the farm crisis years. A lot of that damage was uninsured, but we did catch the perpetrators. A long, long story; it was hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. I followed through on everything, seeing myself as a victim who had an obligation to assist the prosecution as a citizen and a victim would and should. And I remember sitting in the courtroom in Sac City, Iowa, when they brought up the trial of one of the perpetrators. The bailiff announced to the court: This is the case of the State v. Jason Martin Powell. And I sat there thinking, how is it the State versus the perpetrator? I'm not in this equation. I'm not even the versus; I'm just here as a spectator. And so I began to examine what that really means. What it means is that the State and the law enforcement component, in this case the State, is the intervenor.…”