Political Quotes

“this will be a tough act to follow. The Senator from Alabama has done a wonderful job going through the nuances of where we find ourselves and explained the career of Miguel Estrada better than I could possibly do and has talked about the factors that bring us here at 1:10 in the morning. All I can add to it is that I am new to the body. I was hoping my first engagement with the Senate would be about Social Security and talking about saving that system. But I find myself in the middle of something very historic; that is the filibustering of a circuit court of appeals judge--apparently, the only time in the history of our Nation such tactics have been employed. And you ask yourself, Why? What has gotten us here? Why have they chosen to do this? One thing about being a Presiding Officer of the Senate is you get to learn a lot and hear a lot. One thing I have learned is that in the past the abuses of the judicial nomination process have sometimes been striking, and apparently both sides have engaged in some practices that just really do not seem right. There are all kinds of cases where judges were never given a chance to be voted on and left in committee for years. And people did not like one judge, and they decided to make sure they never got a vote. And they were in the majority. It goes on and on and on. I guess that is politics. I do not suggest that the Republican party, in the past, has not done some things that were probably unfair to people, too.”