Political Quotes

“If I may give my views on that question and then ask for the Senator's response to my views on whether the executive may determine its own limitations, I would suggest the genesis of our constitution is found in the notion that the President is not a king, that we are not ruled by a monarchy, and that no man or woman is above the law. Accordingly, no man or woman may determine the applicability of the law to himself or herself. For that reason, the Framers of our Constitution won not one but two revolutions. The first revolution they won was a bloody battle for our independence from King George, and a great many of them gave the ultimate sacrifice so that we might enjoy the freedom we do today. But the far more important war they won was the war of ideas, where for millennia men and women had been told that rights come from kings and queens and are given by grace, to be taken away at the whim of the monarch. What our Framers concluded, instead, is that our rights don't come from any king or queen or president; they come from God Almighty, and sovereignty does not originate from the monarch or the president, it originates from we the people. Accordingly, the Constitution served, as Thomas Jefferson put it, as chains to bind the mischief of government. And I would suggest that anytime power is arrogated in one place--in the Executive--that liberty is threatened.…”