Political Quotes

“this past weekend, I learned of the untimely passing of Doug Kendall, founder of the Constitutional Accountability Center. Doug was a true visionary who helped transform how the American public views our Constitution. Despite a recent movement to interpret our founding charter in a cramped manner that too often leaves our most vulnerable populations unprotected, Doug was able to serve as a forceful counterweight and guardian of an inclusive, progressive, and faithful understanding of our National Charter, based on both the text and history of the document. Under his leadership, the Constitutional Accountability Center revitalized the debate over the original understanding of the Constitution. Doug refused to cede the intellectual ground of originalism and textualism to conservative advocates. Significantly, the organization he founded was defined as much by its scholarship as its effective advocacy. Doug made myriad contributions to the world of law and policy, but I will point out just two. First, I asked him to testify in March 2010 before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC because I knew that no one could better articulate the harm that the decision would cause to our democracy. As he eloquently testified before the Committee, ``Since the Founding, the idea that corporations have the same fundamental rights as `We the People' has been anathema to our Constitution. . . .…”