Political Quotes

“let me just make one last comment. I also wish to express my appreciation to Senator Merkley, who has been an extraordinarily outspoken advocate of our civil liberties and our privacy in striking a good balance between fighting terror and protecting the rights of our people, and I have so appreciated his leadership on this issue. Let me sum up. First, I am very grateful to our chairwoman and pleased with this agreement. The chairwoman has indicated she believes those of us who want to reform secret law have raised a serious and important issue. Those are her words. We are grateful for that because we obviously believe very strongly about it. The chairwoman has said we will hold hearings promptly to examine the secret law issue, give serious consideration to looking at reforms in the fiscal year 2012 intelligence authorization bill, and then, per our conversations with the majority leader, if Senator Udall and I believed it had not been corrected on the intelligence authorization bill, we would have the right to offer--and certainly the chairwoman could oppose it--an amendment on the floor of the Senate on an unrelated bill. Senator Reid, to his great credit, in an effort to try to resolve this and move it along, said to the three of us that he would be working to do that.…”