Political Quotes

“Well, I so appreciate the question from my colleague from Minnesota, and the commentary I was giving is more my distillment, my impression of the information in this book rather than a straight-out quote from it. But essentially, in the past, the death of democracy came at the hands of men with guns. Now it is coming through people who get elected, and after they get elected, they work to erase the separation of powers. They try to get a legislature that will be more of a rubberstamp and say: We will do what you say. Well, suddenly the whole vision of Congress laying out the programs, an amount to be spent, and the policies is supplanted by Congress just saying: Well, what do you want us to do? OK, we will do that. Then the Supreme Court hands over more power, and we have seen that happen here in the United States as well--certainly with the Trump v. United States, where the Supreme Court found invisible ink in our Constitution. I am pretty sure neither of us can go through here and find anywhere in article I and certainly not in article II, which addresses the Executive, that there is any sign that they want the President to be considered above the law, and yet that is what the Court said. So to the broader question of how--once you are in this authoritarian takeover, what are your odds of stopping? And, in general, the authoritarian works to entrench the authoritarian rule.”