Political Quotes

“Madam President, last night we all witnessed a rather extraordinary event. Certainly for the first time in my time in the Senate, we saw rule XIX of the Standing Senate Rules invoked. That rule says: ``No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.'' I certainly agree with the ruling of the Chair and the decision of the Senate as a body that that line was crossed last night. A Senator can't evade that rule by somehow claiming: These weren't my words; I was reading what somebody else said. Specifically, in the case of our former colleague, now deceased, Senator Ted Kennedy claimed that the nominee for Attorney General was somehow a disgrace to the Justice Department and ought to resign. That certainly crossed that line. Our colleagues want to point to a letter written by Coretta Scott King. That was part but not the whole of the speech given by the Senator from Massachusetts. I hope that maybe we have all been chastened a little bit, and maybe we have all learned a little bit of a lesson here. I yearn for the day when the Senate and, frankly, the country as a whole would pull back from the abyss of recrimination, personal attacks, and we would get back to doing what this institution was designed to do--which is to be a great body for deliberation and debate--and we would treat each other with the civility with which we would all want to be treated.…”