Political Quotes

“Thank you, very much. I will try to be brief and to the point. Chief Justice Rehnquist was a person I probably disagreed with in most political arguments. I read his opinions, and I realized that we just looked at the world in a different way. Yet I liked him. I liked him a lot. I had two direct contacts with him as U.S. Senator, the first as a new Member of Senate and as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I received an invitation to come across the street, which is unusual, from the Senate to the Supreme Court for lunch. It was with a Federal judicial council. I was flattered and accepted the invitation. I then started asking the staff: Who are these people? They said: They are Federal judges from all across the United States. They gather together infrequently across the street for lunch in the Supreme Court, in a large chamber with the Chief Justice. They have invited you to come and speak to them. Reflecting on my storied legal career as a small-town lawyer in Springfield, IL, and the fact that I didn't set the world on fire in law school, I wondered why they would ever invite me. Then it dawned on me. I was the ranking member on the court administrations subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee which had responsibility for determining the salaries of Federal judges. So they were going to entertain me for lunch and pay close attention to all of my views in the hopes that I would listen carefully when they recommended increases in judicial salaries.…”