Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last night, we received the news, the sad news, that Justice John Paul Stevens passed away at the age of 99. He was a son of the ``greatest generation,'' a code breaker in the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor, a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, and a Shakespearean scholar. What a combination. John Paul Stevens was the third longest serving Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in the Nation's history. The length of his tenure meant the jurisprudence of Justice Stevens left a mark on nearly every area of the law. Just as remarkable as the length of his tenure was its quality. Justice John Paul Stevens was a champion for civil rights, equality, and accountability, who devoted his life to the ideal of equal justice under the law. He worked to constrain the use of the death penalty, defend abortion rights, articulate the bounds of Presidential power-- very needed today--and believed that unravelling the limits on corporate campaign spending ``threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation.'' He was so right. The fact that Leader McConnell and all our Republican friends lead the charge in allowing so much corporate money--money of the very wealthy--to cascade into our system--well, Justice Stevens is in Heaven reminding them of what they are doing to faith in our democratic institutions. Stevens was at times an iconoclast. He was willing to buck conventional approaches and have his own views evolve. One constant, however, was his courtesy.…”