Political Quotes

“It's my honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and this great deliberative body that we have, and especially immediately in the aftermath of this historic vote that has just gone up on the Patriot Act. As we have debated this and worked with an amendment process and negotiations that took place in the Senate, we got down to the last minutes here. And I presume final passage of the Patriot Act is now on its way to the President's desk to be signed tonight so that there's not a window of vulnerability with regard to the intelligence that we can gather against our enemies that are evermore coming into the United States and plotting against us globally. This is an issue that emerged when we saw our vulnerabilities in the immediate aftermath of September 11. And as that was dealt with here in this Congress--and I will say that of pieces of legislation that have been passed in a relative emergency situation, the Patriot Act among them stands out as something that came together with--it was clearly a bipartisan effort to put the Patriot Act language together; it was done so with the information that we had at the time. Some of that information was gathered in a hasty fashion--the smoke was certainly rolling up out of Ground Zero in New York while the Patriot Act was passed here in the House of Representatives.…”