Political Quotes

“I appreciate the kind words of my good friend and colleague, and we will miss him when he goes on to do greater things elsewhere. Madam Speaker, if we do not pass the motion to proceed to the previous question, we can put the proxy quorum voting rule on hold until after the courts have time to rule on its constitutionality. Most on this side of the aisle and a handful on the other side of the aisle strongly believe that this proxy voting rule is unconstitutional. Accordingly, yesterday, a suit was filed to have the rule declared unconstitutional. Under the suit, the court is asked to do many things, including asking for an injunction of our Clerk from counting the proxy votes on any measure and on counting proxies for purposes of determining a quorum. The courts must weigh in on this controversy before we take important votes using this new proxy quorum voting scheme. The suit lays out constitutional requirements. Many of these arguments were made previously. It goes through the definitions of words like ``to meet,'' ``assemble,'' et cetera. Madam Speaker, as you know, words are important and the meanings are important, and the filers of this suit couldn't have made me happier. When I was reading it, they used Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1773. And just to let you know exactly how oddball I can be, I pulled my copy of Samuel Johnson's of 1773 off the shelf in my office. I checked to see what they had written down, and they got it exactly right.…”