Political Quotes

“it is an honor to speak following the statement by our revered, sometime President pro tempore, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a man who has brought to our Chamber a sensibility concerning the Constitution that, I would argue, is unequaled since those awful days that led to the Civil War, days in which his lucidity and courage could have produced a very different outcome. We have a matter before us of equal consequence. I would offer the personal judgment that in the history of the Constitution, there has never come before us an issue considering the relations between the executive and the legislative branches as important as this one. It is a course of a peculiar inexplicability that this Chamber is empty--the distinguished Presiding Officer from Utah, our President pro tempore sometime from West Virginia and myself--empty because of a particular politics that for a long time said this was a desirable measure and enacted it and now faces the court saying, "But it's unconstitutional." The courts, I dare to say, at the level of those asides that are well known in our judicial history, the court is also saying, "Don't you know your Constitution? Don't you understand what is at stake for you?" The courts are not themselves directly involved here, but they are trying to tell us, in brilliant decisions by Judge Jackson, now by Judge Hogan, singularly literate decisions.…”