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The men who wrote the First Amendment religion clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment... the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week the members of the first Congress voted to appoint and pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the First Amendment... (that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared acceptable.
Warren E. BurgerIn my view, if the Court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that Amendment was very important when the nation was new, it gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms but it was for one purpose only, and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.
Ruth Bader GinsburgWhatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago... The government should deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrasing Amendment.
George WillThe First Amendment is really at the very core of political speech, and political speech is at the core of the First Amendment. So, we want to be very careful to make sure that candidates for office are free to express their views so that people will make an informed choice. We don't want them holding back, and sort of concealing their views and then disclosing them afterwards.
Alex KozinskiYou 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 LimbaughIt'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 LeeWe have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.
Jill SteinA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. - Second Amendment to the Constitution An armed society is a polite society.
Robert A. HeinleinLaws protecting the United States flag do not cut away at the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment... Congress made this position clear upon passage of the Flag Protection Act of 1989, which prohibited desecration of the flag.
Larry CraigThree conditions are necessary for Penance: contrition, which is sorrow for sin, together with a purpose of amendment; confession of sins without any omission; and satisfaction by means of good works.
Thomas AquinasI am committed to the First Amendment principles of religious freedom, tolerance, and diversity. Whether Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, or Muslim, Americans should be able to participate in their constitutional free exercise of religion. I do not think witchcraft is a religion, and I do not think it is in any way appropriate for the U.S. military to promote it.
George W. BushThe First Amendment gives all of us - it gives it to me, it gives it to you, it gives all Americans - the right to speak our minds freely. It gives you the right and me the right to criticize fake news, and criticize it strongly.
Donald TrumpI 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 BrowneViolating the 4th Amendment guarantees against illegal searches and seizures is not the way to solve crime problems.
Tim WiseToday, the religion clauses of the First Amendment do not need to be fixed; they need to be followed.
Walter F. MondaleThe 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's, under Obama, an epidemic has developed of abusing national security laws to crack down on legitimate use of the First Amendment.
Julian AssangeThe First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.
Michael ChabonThe Washington Times wrote a story questioning the authenticity of some of the suggestions made about me in Silent Coup. But as a believer in the First Amendment, I believe they have more than a right to air their views.
Bob WoodwardIt is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.
Sandra Day O'ConnorThe First Amendment was not intended to withdraw the Christian religion as a whole from the protection of Congress.
Joseph StoryOur state has a balanced budget. We have to live within our means in the state of Wyoming. I was in the state senate. This country needs a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
John BarrassoI'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 HackettThe First Amendment to the Constitution says government can't establish a religion, but neither can it limit the exercise of religion. And that's the issue here. What does it mean to be free to exercise your religion? It's not about what you can believe. It's whether you can act on those beliefs.
Tom GjeltenWikileaks has - we specialize in bringing the First Amendment to the world, and we were always very surprised one of our biggest battles would be trying to bring it to the United States under an Obama administration.
Julian AssangeThe traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.
Jon MeachamWe shall some day be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.
Susan B. AnthonyIs 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 ScaliaIf the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.
Ilana MercerIt would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns.
Jonathan Safran FoerThe [tenth] amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.
Harlan F. StoneAt the time, liberals didn't understand that they had First Amendment rights. So, I was doing cartoons in this narrative cartoon form about subject surrounding that and as I was turned down by editor after editor at each publishing house, I began to notice on their desks this new newspaper called The Village Voice, which I then went and picked up and thought, well my god, these editors that were turning me down all, whom tell me how much they like my stuff, but they don't know how to market it because nobody knows who I am. If I got into this paper, they would know who I am.
Jules FeifferReligion 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 TaylerWhat bothers me most about today is that we're getting used 2 it. ENOUGH. 2nd amendment must go. Violence has 2 stop. Culture MUST change.
Jay MohrThe 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 First Amendment is now being used by the secularists of our day as a cattle prod to herd conservative religious people out of the public life of the nation and into, as others have put it, a religious ghetto.
Pat SwindallThe 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 SeligmanIt's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that's not where we're going. But, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.
Sharron AngleThe First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity.
Bryan FischerFree speech is what we all have and is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Academic freedom refers to what happens in the university, particularly in the classroom, and to the importance of the teacher having the right to teach and share what he or she has learned, has proven her competence to teach, having gone through a series of tests and certifications including research and writing to demonstrate her abilities and knowledge.
Joan Wallach ScottOur First Amendment expresses a far different calculus for regulating speech than for regulating nonexpressive conduct and that is as it should be. The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose, but your right to express your ideas should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears.
Alan DershowitzOf the five rights listed in the First Amendment. - religion, speech, press, assembly, petition - the very first right protected is freely exercising our religion.
Steve DainesPresident Bush has a record of cutting taxes, has provided a prescription drug benefit for seniors, has upheld the Second Amendment and remains committed to stopping liberal activists judges who are redefining marriage.
Bill ShusterThe Constitution is very clear: Congress has sole discretion over defining who is and who isn't a citizen and how you become one. It's not the 14th Amendment.
Rush LimbaughBetween being praised and persecuted condoned and condemned I might understandably have become bewildered particularly at the brand of ethics sometimes displayed by the staunch defenders of Christianity. But of one thing I am sure: I am sure that I fought not only for what I earnestly believed to be right but for the truest kind of religious freedom intended by the First Amendment the complete separation of church and state.
Vashti McCollum