Political Quotes

“I want to say, first of all, that no one is talking about condoning violence in any kind of demonstration at any time. We are not talking violence here. We are talking justice. The question here before us today is in part whether or not we are going to apply the same laws to ourselves here in the U.S. Congress as we apply to other people. Let me give you just an example. If you are a Member of Congress who decides to go down and protest in front of the White House against the policy in Haiti and you get yourself arrested, you are going to be fined under D.C. law. You get a $50 fine and come back up the street and vote right away again in the U.S. Congress. That is the law we are going to apply to ourselves. But what about middle-class Americans who decide that what they want to do is to protest the abortions going on in clinics and want to peacefully demonstrate outside an abortion clinic? What are we going to do to them? We are not going to have the $50 fine there. What we are going to do is we are going to make a Federal law, we are going to make them spend a year and a half in prison for doing the same thing. You know, it is kind of interesting that we have one standard for Members of Congress who want to go and demonstrate in front of the White House and another standard for middle-class Americans who want to protest in front of an abortion clinic.”