Jim Baird: “My friends, surrounding us here are profiles of the great law givers. There are two Americans up there, Jefferson and…”

“My friends, surrounding us here are profiles of the great law givers. There are two Americans up there, Jefferson and Mason. Mason did not sign the Constitution at the Convention. He did not, because it did not have a Bill of Rights in it. Jefferson, on his epitaph, looked at as one of his proudest accomplishments, was the establishment of the clause providing for religious freedom in the State of Virginia. We have 900 dead Americans in Iraq, thousands more wounded, we have a $600 billion deficit, we have 3 million Americans without jobs, 37 million kids are born in poverty in this country, and we are here today proposing to try to take away one of the three pillars of a three-legged stool that has made our country so strong for so many years. Do not do this. A three-legged stool cannot stand. A society that does not have a judiciary to protect the rights of the minority will ultimately degenerate, and we must not let that happen.”