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Is there any media here? A couple? Excellent. I want to ask you, I don't know what persuasion you are, but would you like to go outside to a 1st Amendment zone? No! So did it make sense to have a 1st Amendment zone in Nevada? No, of course not. That's ridiculous. If we're talking about one of the most egregious things that happened down there, it was the 1st Amendment zone in Nevada.
Matt SheaJefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.
Edwin GaustadThe 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to apply to former slaves to ensure that they are treated like all other citizens. It never did have anything to do with gay marriage. It was never intended to have anything to do with gay marriage or animal marriage or any other kind of social contract. It was specific to slavery, and after the Civli War.
Rush LimbaughI do not believe that it can be too often repeated that the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish. The first banning of an association because it advocates hated ideas - whether that association be called a political party or not - marks a fateful moment in the history of a free country.
Hugo BlackThere's nothing in the First Amendment that even remotely talks about spending money for political contests, and to say that an individual can spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wants constitutionally without any limitation, I think is just absurd.
Arlen SpecterThe framers of our Constitution understood the dangers of unbridled government surveillance. They knew that democracy could flourish only in spaces free from government snooping and interference, and they put restraints on government overreaching in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. . . . These protections require, at a minimum, a neutral arbiter - a magistrate - standing between the government's endless desire for information and the citizens' desires for privacy.
Elizabeth HoltzmanFor the church to say that abortion is not acceptable for a Catholic is fine. To say directly or indirectly that on something that is a church teaching that you must also vote according to that - that's not acceptable in a country based on the First Amendment.
Patrick LeahyA funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, theyโre treated as public nuisances and evicted.
Robert ReichA constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.
Coretta Scott KingWhile 45 of the 50 States have either a State constitutional amendment or a statute that preserves the current definition of marriage, left-wing activist judges and officials at the local levels have struck down State laws protecting marriage.
John BoehnerDo the people of this landโฆdesire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendmentโฆ If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanquished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch for a saving hand while yet there was time.
George SutherlandI understand that unless you have a government of laws, rather than a government of people, you cannot protect dissent. And I understand, as a woman who probably would have been burned in the marketplace for witchcraft only about 200 years ago, that I need the First Amendment more than anybody does. And that even if I am repelled by child pornography or Bob Guccione's productions, that I have to protect those things, because essentially it's in my self-interest to do so.
Erica JongPeople for the American Way says it has yet to find anyone who has made a stronger case against the proposed school prayer Constitutional amendment... What kind of prayer would we use?
Cal ThomasI support the Second Amendment. I lived in Arkansas for 18 wonderful years. I represented upstate New York. I understand and respect the tradition of gun ownership. It goes back to the founding of our country.
Hillary ClintonIt's perfectly within [Martin Peretz] rights [to fire a journalist]. It's a private - you know, th - it's not censorship. The First Amendment doesn't come into play because it's a private magazine.
Nat Hentoff[I watch] all that stuff - Game of Thrones and all the other series. How about House of Cards? As for Boardwalk Empire - that's another period of government overreach, but at least they use the amendment process! In real life, the executive branch, by violating the Constitution, is using statutes in place of constitutional amendments to diminish our liberty.
Edward SnowdenI remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment. It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended.
Bobby Jindal.......the truth is, while the FBI is hiding behind the 5th Amendment, the Unabomer is qualifying for Social Security as a terrorist. Beam me up, Mr. Speaker.
James TraficantThe First Amendment exists to protect our religious liberty--to ensure that all Americans are able to seek out worship God with all our hearts, free from government coercion; it does not mandate scouring the public square to forcibly remove all acknowledgement s of the Almighty
Ted CruzMy excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime usually do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed only for those exceptionally rare circumstances when all other rights have failed. A free people can only afford to make this mistake once.
Alex KozinskiThe 22nd Amendment should probably be modified to say two consecutive terms instead of two terms for a lifetime.
William J. ClintonOur 1 million members across the country will be watching closely to see if the video game industry hides behind a First Amendment veil in order to exploit children for the sake of corporate profit.
Connie SelleccaThere's as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.
Morris SheppardI am opposed to special rights for gays just as I am opposed to special rights for heterosexuals or smokers. I can attest to the fact that sexual orientation is not immutable and I urge the city council to vote no on this amendment.
Alan ChambersI say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions - or else it would have read that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise." And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong - because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience.
Harry BrowneRepublican Michigan Congressman Justin Amash said, no president is allowed to burn the first amendment.
Chuck ToddWhile that amendment failed, human cloning continues to advance and the breakthrough in this unethical and morally questionable science is around the corner.
Mike PenceThere are people who oppose a federal Constitutional amendment because they think that the law of family should be made by the states. I can see a legitimate argument there. I think it's mistaken, however, because the federal government, through the decisions of life-tenured federal judges, has already taken over that area.
Dallin H. OaksThere's, under Obama, an epidemic has developed of abusing national security laws to crack down on legitimate use of the First Amendment.
Julian AssangeWhen the 14th Amendment, equal protection clause was enacted, the galleries in the Senate were segregated. Now we have integration.
Arlen SpecterNeither the wording of the amendment itself nor common practice challenged the widely held belief that government guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
Linda ChavezThe main thing we should be focused on is the strategy to destroy ISIS. And I laid out a plan that the Reagan Library before the tragedy of Paris, and before San Bernardino to do just that. It requires leadership, it's not filing an amendment and call it a success.
Jeb BushThe prima facie evidence provision in this case ignores all of the contextual factors that are necessary to decide whether a particular cross burning is intended to intimidate. The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut.
Sandra Day O'ConnorI think all these reverend gentlemen who insist on the word 'obey' in the marriage service should be removed for a clear violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which says there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude within the United States.
Elizabeth Cady StantonIf there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
William J. BrennanThe courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.
Ernest IstookThe fundamental force behind the Second Amendment is to empower the people and give them the greatest measure of authority over the tyranny of runaway government.
Bob SchafferFree Speech in the College Community is a very timely book written by a dedicated scholar of the First Amendment. Challenging and readable it should be studied by all academicians, students, legislators and lawyers.
Nancy KassebaumIs any blogger out there saying anythingโdo they deserve First Amendment protection? These are the issues of our times.
Lindsey GrahamWhen did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?
Antonin ScaliaWe often seem to be swimming through such a miasma of sexual violence - in advertising, television programming, heavy metal, rap, films, and worst of all, in the home - that even First Amendment absolutists sometimes daydream about how nice it would be to have government-as-nanny just outlaw all this effluent.
Molly IvinsThe job description of mother is clearly in need of revision. As it stands, the shifts are 24 hours, for a period of approximately 1,825 consecutive days. The benefits are sorely in need of amendment: no vacations, no sick leave, no lunch hours, no breaks. Moreover, it is the only unpaid position I know of that can result in arrest if you fail to show up for work.
Mary BlakelyThe right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.
Roger EbertThe media has been very bad about informing us about what is going on. They focus on surface things. They do not focus enough on the fact that the Fourth Amendment is on life support and that we need a return to transparency in government.
Nat HentoffIn recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the "collective" right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms... If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the 18th century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.
Stephen HalbrookAny unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.
Huey Newton