Political Quotes

“Attention all citizens. To assure the fairness of elections by preventing disproportionate expression of the views of any single powerful group, your Government has decided that the following associations of persons shall be prohibited from speaking or writing in support of any candidate. . . . This is a statement that I have taken directly from a dissenting opinion issued by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in a case called Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce--a 1989 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States. The concern expressed in that dissenting opinion, the opening line of which I have just read, comes to mind when we review the legislation in front of this body right now, S.J. Res. 19--an attempt, a wholesale effort to repeal the First Amendment of the United States, to undo its most fundamental protections, protections that protect the right of every American to speak out on issues of public concern, to try to influence the outcome of elections, to try to dictate the course of our entire country. Now, fortunately, this precedent that Justice Scalia was expressing concerns with was overruled. It was overruled in a case called Citizens United, which has itself become the target of S.J. Res. 19.…”