Quotes About Amendment

...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.

Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers.

The 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.

The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people from religion; that amendment was written to protect religion from government tyranny. . . But now we're told our children have no right to pray in school. Nonsense. The pendulum has swung too far toward intolerance against genuine religious freedom. It is time to redress the balance.

When three liberals get together they form a new party; that is their idea of individualism. They never join a bowling club without introducing as part of the 'agenda' an 'amendment of the statutes.

We don't need a constitutional amendment for kids to pray.

It'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.

While 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.

The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.

Is Donald Trump a serious candidate? The reason I ask this is, if you're going to close the Internet, realize, America, what that entails. That entails getting rid of the First amendment, ok? It's no small feat.

It'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.

In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of "overpermiticisation" - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.

Where's Barack Obama when Christmas references are being erased from civic calendars? Is he crying out in defense of religious liberty and our First Amendment? Nope. He's as silent as a church mouse. And animosity toward religion continues to grow.

The 22nd Amendment should probably be modified to say two consecutive terms instead of two terms for a lifetime.

And it never, ever was interpreted that the Second Amendment meant individual's right to bear arms

If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.

I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom.

For the Second Amendment to do its job, the other side must become much better informed. I watched an action-adventure program last night that asserted that the famous AK-47 - the original peoples' rifle (and Authority's greatest mistake) - is rare in this country, and that the only ones here were originally smuggled in from the Middle East, or possibly from South America. The idiots who wrote this mess seemed unaware that after legal imports - mostly from China - were illegally cut off by executive order, they began to be manufactured here.

Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts." This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.

I 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.

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bears arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason,then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

When I think of civil liberties I think of the founding principles of the country. The freedoms that are in the First Amendment. But also the fundamental right to privacy.

If you see the rhetoric from coming out of the Democrats is that they're pro-civil liberties, and an important part of civil liberties is respect for the First Amendment and the rule of law, and that has broken down under the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton was part of that process.

When a person is on a watch list or a no-fly list, and I have the endorsement of the NRA, which I'm very proud of. These are very, very good people, and they're protecting the Second Amendment.

It 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.

Lately 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!

I'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.

That 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.

Voting rights expert and legal scholar Pam Karlan reports that as of 2004, there were more black men disenfranchised than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

It appears that some school officials, teachers, and parents have assumed that religious expression of any type is either inappropriate or forbidden altogether in public schools; however, nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones.

If 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.

Reading their letters and the First Amendment of the US Constitution, I infer that this nation's founders noted that religions have been at the center of great deal of trouble, so they precluded the US government from getting involved in religion, i.e. "... shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Over the centuries, various religions have laid claim to various morals; consider the difficulties outsiders are having today in the Middle East, for example.

Is any blogger out there saying anything—do they deserve First Amendment protection? These are the issues of our times.

When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?

It would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns.

The 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.

If you insist on asking me why I feel the way I do, I plan to take the Fifth Amendment.

I think it's best if there's an amendment that goes on the ballot where the people can weigh in. Every time this issue has gone on the ballot, the people have voted to retain the traditional definition of marriage as recently as California in 2008.

If the Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal government's present activities would not exist. That's why no one in Washington ever mentions it.

Alcoholism, the opium habit and tobaccoism are a trio of poison habits which have been weighty handicaps to human progress during the last three centuries. In the United States, the subtle spell of opium has been broken by restrictive legislation; the grip of the rum demon has been loosened by the Prohibition Amendment to the Constitution, but the tobacco habit still maintains its strangle-hold and more than one hundred million victims of tobaccoism daily burn incense to the smoke god.

The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it. We are always told that things are going on well; Why change them? 'Chi sta bene, no si mueve,' said the Italian, 'let him who stands well, stand still.' This is true; and I verily believe they would go on well with us under an absolute monarch, while our present character remains, of order, industry and love of peace, and restrained as he would be, by the proper spirit of the people.

It's really easy for someone to say no one should have guns when they're guarded by people with MP-5s. It's a little bit different. I'm always mentioned in that article as well because I'm a staunch believer in the Second Amendment. I shoot virtually every weekend. I'm a big outdoorsman. I believe in all those traditions. And I believe it's important for people to be able to defend themselves.

With that in mind and in celebration of National Prayer Day, today I have proposed in the House of Representatives a Constitutional Amendment that would restore voluntary prayer in our Nation's schools.

It's either the Amendment or this Confederate peace. You cannot have both.

My view is that we have the Second Amendment rights to bear arms, and in this country my view is that we should not add new legistlation. I do not believe in new laws restricting gun ownership and gun use.

If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establishing shot, the 13th the crowd pleaser and the 14th the ultimate hero scene.

When you suveil a person abroad, you don't have to have a warrant to do so. That has never been so they don't have the fourth amendment protection. On occasion, that person might call somebody in the United States, and if they're a terrorist, you really want to know who they are talking to. Maybe they're plotting an attack on the United States.

Rather than passing a thousand pages of tax reform legislation and restarting the tax code manipulation process, we should change the paradigm. It is time to eliminate the IRS and repeal the 16th Amendment.