Political Quotes

“I come and join my colleague from Oregon on the floor this evening and thank him very much for his comments and hard-fought efforts to try to illuminate the issues that are before the American people in this nomination that we are going to be voting on. As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight . . . and it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. Those aren't my words; those are the words of the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Yes, that is right, I quoted William O. Douglas--not because he was from Yakima, WA, via Maine, originally, but because I wanted to bring up the rights of Americans that could be undermined by the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. That is because for generations the U.S. Supreme Court has been an institution that affirmed rights of Americans and moved our country forward, especially when we needed it most. In 1954, it made a landmark decision to end segregation of our schools and to rightly give access to equal education. In 1964, it recognized the right to privacy and the ability to access contraception. It is hard to imagine today, in this era, that we needed that fundamental right and that it had been previously blocked. Yet it was.…”