Anthony Weiner: “the author of the base bill, the gentleman from Missouri, is a friend of mine, but apparently there is a second…”

“the author of the base bill, the gentleman from Missouri, is a friend of mine, but apparently there is a second Congressman Akin around here somewhere. Perhaps he was the one who wrote the bill. The original version of the bill says, with respect to the jurisdiction of Federal courts inferior to the Supreme Court, and says that the Supreme Court shall be able to hear these cases. That was what the author of the bill said. Now, the reason the author originally included that language, although he is now opposed to having it reinserted, the reason he put it in is because we do need someone to be the final arbiter of the interpretation of free speech, freedom of religion cases, of all cases, among the different States. Imagine if we had a United States of America envisioned by the gentleman from Indiana, where every State court was free to kind of come up with their own interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. What incentive would there be on the parts of folks in Missouri, for example, or the folks in New York to have consistent constitutional values in this country? Now, I have heard again and again, let us refer to the Constitution of the United States. I will freely confess one thing. Nowhere is judicial review in the Constitution. It was the creation of a great man that all of us went on record paying tribute to just last month. When John Marshall came up with this concept, it has been sacrosanct throughout jurisprudence since then.”