Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there are parts of this letter which I find incredible. We received it late last night. As I mentioned before, Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars of undisclosed gifts to this Supreme Court Justice over a period of 20 years, now refuses to tell us anything about what those gifts involved, how much was spent, who was there, what this was all about. He says he can't tell us that because we don't have any authority in Congress over that branch of government--the Supreme Court. Well, he is wrong about that. It turns out, the ethics laws that we passed in Congress in years gone by have been upheld by other courts and followed by them, but it is only one court in the land that has decided it won't follow those standards. The highest Court in the land has decided it will have the lowest ethical standards. It is hard to understand. Here is Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire, spending all this money on one Supreme Court Justice, saying that we cannot, in Congress, ask hard questions about the ethical standards of the highest Court in the land because it would put undue influence on the Court. Bottom line: Undue influence is what this is all about. No one should be able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Senator, a Congressman, or certainly a Supreme Court Justice without full disclosure and compliance with the law.…”