Political Quotes

“never would I have thought that defending the Constitution would be so lonely a job on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. Do not get me wrong, I believe in decency and Mary Poppins and all things nice; but what is at stake here is freedom of speech and the assault thereon. I become more and more concerned about the concentration of the media in the hands of so few players, that kind of media power concentrated in the hands of so few and influenced specifically by the far right wing and religious right in this country. We talk about the President and the Presidency, and we say that the President has a bully pulpit, and he does. That does not concern me. What concerns me is the bullyism and the bullying that is going on. When networks and stations and people-owned medias are afraid to be critical of the administration, to impose a fine on speech that you do not like of a half a million dollars a shot, multiplied by 30 or 300 stations, does not have a chilling effect. It has a freezing-out effect where people will be afraid to speak out. It is not for us to put limits on free speech. The public decides what they want to listen to and wants to hear. They can change the channel, they can change the station, they can turn it off. To talk about motherhood and breast feeding as something that is good is fine, but people are offended by a breast? Is that obscene? Maybe it was in poor taste at the time, but is it obscene?”