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There is this fashionable progressive notion that everything is so completely political that the idea we could have some sort of neutral legal process is practically utopian - because we all know that the more money you have, the more rights you can exercise in this society. But I don't think that you deal with income inequality by limiting the First Amendment rights of affluent people. I'd rather see people screw around with the tax code to redistribute wealth a little bit than screw around with the First Amendment.
Wendy KaminerI disagreed with the way the court applied the Second Amendment in Heller's case, because what the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them. And the court didn't accept that reasonable regulation, but they've accepted many others. So I see no conflict between saving people's lives and defending the Second Amendment.
Hillary ClintonThe time has come in our society when I see great wisdom and purpose in a United States Constitutional amendment declaring that marriage is between a man and a woman. There is nothing in that proposed amendment that requires a criminal prosecution or that directs the attorneys general to go out and round people up, but it declares a principle and it also creates a defensive barrier against those who would alter that traditional definition of marriage.
Dallin H. OaksThe Scalia seat is defense. We're not going to get any better than Justice Scalia. The best we can do is preserve constitutional victories like upholding the Second Amendment, like protecting religious liberty. But we're not going to get any better.
Ted CruzThere are systemic, painful problems of globalization and de-industrialization that cannot be solved with a phone call or a tweet or an angry speech or trying to isolate the press and the first amendment. Sooner or later, the Donald Trump show, which is a projection of strength and authority, will have to deliver to his voters. And if he doesn't, in very real terms, if he can't supersede a situation where a president cut the unemployment rate in half, if he can't do better, if he can't open factories and all the rest that he's promised, then I think he's in trouble.
David RemnickThe 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 have come to the conclusion that the 22nd Amendment [limiting the presidency to two terms] was a mistake. Shouldn't the people have the right to vote for someone as many times as they want to vote for him?
Ronald ReaganYou do not have to incriminate yourself. But once you assert your innocence, and once you say you didn't do anything wrong, you can't then use the Fifth Amendment to say, 'I'm not answering questions.'
Rush LimbaughI believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office - and by personal conviction - I am sworn to uphold that tradition.
Lyndon B. JohnsonUnder the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.
Lewis F. Powell, Jr.A 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 KingIt's all right to agree or disagree on the balanced budget amendment. It's all right to talk about how we're going to appropriate.
Sheila Jackson LeeWhile 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 BoehnerThe purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.
Robert BorkWhen I think about what we need to do, we have 33,000 people a year who die from guns. I think we need comprehensive background checks, need to close the online loophole, close the gun show loophole. There's other matters that I think are sensible that are the kind of reforms that would make a difference that are not in any way conflicting with the Second Amendment.
Hillary ClintonThe 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 CruzSo the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech.
Neil GaimanOur 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 SelleccaThe framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.
Walter E. WilliamsThe Google guys haven't even found a way to put abortion in the Constitution yet. Give 'em time. Give the Google guys time and abortion will show up in a keyword search of the Constitution. It's not there yet. Second Amendment is.
Rush LimbaughWhen you break an agreement in a relationship, you must offer an amendment first, or it is meaningless.
Marshall SylverThe 16th Amendment corroded the American concept of natural rights; ultimately reduced the American citizen to a status of subject, so much so that he is not aware of it; enhanced Executive power to the point of reducing Congress to innocuity; and enabled the central government to bribe the states, once independent units, into subservience. No kingship in the history of the world ever exercised more power than our Presidency, or had more of the people's wealth at its disposal.
Frank ChodorovThere are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.
Warren E. BurgerIf newsmen do not tell the truth as they see it because it might make waves, or if their bosses decide something should or should not be broadcast because of Washington or Main Street consequences, we have dishonored ourselves and we have lost the First Amendment by default.
Richard S. SalantTo the ACLU, the First Amendment speaks more directly to freedom from religion than it does to freedom of religion.
William Anthony DonohueThe English Language Amendment says above all, 'Let's see to it that our children, our young people, learn English. Let us not deny them the opportunity to participate in American life, so that they can go as far as their dreams and talents can take them.
S. I. HayakawaThe Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that might be summoned into action against the federal government itself, if it became tyrannical.
Joseph SobranThe First Amendment does not extend to corporations. It's a U.S. government thing. Companies can shut speech down all they want. But the thing is this is destructive. This is discriminatory. And what they're telling themselves is they're making a much more peaceful environment. "We are creating a much more conducive and productive and peaceful environment," when they're not. They're suppressing opinion. They are inflicting their own world view and demanding that it be agreed with and acceded to. And if it's not, you get fired.
Rush LimbaughUnder the Obama regime, the president and his allies are intentional in pursuing these conflicts from the perspective that you must sacrifice your most sacred beliefs to government the instant you start a business. You have the protection of the First Amendment as an individual, you see โ but the instant you start a business, you lose those protections.
Bobby JindalLately the First Amendment has been interpreted to deny equal protection of the law to those who believe in God. The Constitution established freedom for religion, not freedom from religion!
Jack KempI'll do anything to pass the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], even if it means wearing babydoll nightgowns and padded bras, if that will make people less afraid.
Joan HackettThat useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen . . . . It moreover equally enables the general and state governments to originate the amendment of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.
James MadisonGet rid of the guns. We had the Second Amendment that said you have the right to bear arms. I haven't seen the British really coming by my house looking for it. And besides, the right to bear arms is not an absolute right anyway, as New York's Sullivan Law proves. We talk about ourselves as a violent society, and some of that is right and some of it is claptrap. But I think if you took away the guns, and I mean really take away the guns, not what Congress is doing now, you would see that violent society diminish considerably.
Roger RosenblattI think we have a Tea Party mandate, and that Tea Party mandate is for good-government type of things, things like term limits, things like a balanced budget amendment, things like read the bills for goodness sakes, things like that maybe Congress should only pass legislation that they apply to themselves as well.
Rand PaulBecause of the free speech clause in the First Amendment, which is very clear, "The government shall make no law abridging freedom of speech," and it literally is about political speech. You can say anything you want about politics, a candidate, and the government cannot stop you. And the Democrats hate that.
Rush LimbaughI would vote to increase the debt limit if there was a corresponding level of cuts. And if there was some serious talk about a balanced budget amendment, which we as governors always had to deal with.
Jon Huntsman, Jr.As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate.
Arlen SpecterSince the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.
Tim LaHayeGovernment...may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another... The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality.
Abe FortasIn 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 HalbrookReligion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others.
Jeffrey TaylerAny 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 NewtonThe questions about Donald Trump temperament were raised - he suggested that the only way to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing judges that they disagreed with is that maybe the Second Amendment folks could handle it.
Gwen IfillThe meeting [in San Antonio of the National Women's Political Caucus] featured a cattle show at which a herd of Democratic candidates- Glenn, Cranston, Mondale, Hart, and Hollings- pantingly pantomined their fidelity to feminism, stopping just short of a pledge to use nuclear weapons against any states that omit to ratify the Equal Right Amendment.
Daniel Seligman