Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, it has been quite a week. We've heard friends across the aisle get up and talk about how we've ``expanded civil rights in the military.'' And I appreciate the fact that friends believe they did a wonderfully noble thing for the military, just as they would probably think they did a wonderfully noble thing to expand civil rights in courts martial that occur in the military. But the fact is, under our United States Constitution, that so many people want to keep referring to when it's convenient, it anticipates that there will be different rights afforded in different areas, one of which is in our United States military. The purpose of the military is not to be some socially engineered experiment. It is to do one thing, and that is to protect our homeland, protect our way of life. For that reason, the Constitution anticipated that Congress, under its authority to create courts, could set up military commissions, could set up and pass the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which gave the military an entirely different type of structure when it comes to processing their rights and adjudicating different aspects of military life. Because to do otherwise, to give everyone in the military, as I was for 4 years, the same rights that are afforded in a civilian court means that you can destroy the function of the military because so often the military doesn't have time to do all of the same things a civilian court does.…”