political_talk

Mike Huckabee on the Constitution and the "living God"

During a campaign (during the primary presidential campaign) stop in Warren, Michigan, in 2008, Mike Huckabee made it clear that he believes that we need two new amendments to the Constitution. One a human life amendment, and the other an amendment which would define marriage as between a man and a woman only.

I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

John Adams on the Jewish Religion

In a letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp, a Dutch minister, in 1809, Adams wrote of his admiration for the tenets of the Jewish religion. His opinion of Christianity is here.

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

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Source: WikiQuote

There is no flag large enough......

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.

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Dr. Howard Zinn

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Commencement Address at Howard University on Affirmative Action, 1965

President Lyndon B. Johnson's Commencement Address at Howard University on June 4, 1965

Dr. Nabrit¹, my fellow Americans:

I am delighted at the chance to speak at this important and this historic institution. Howard has long been an outstanding center for the education of Negro Americans. Its students are of every race and color and they come from many countries of the world. It is truly a working example of democratic excellence.

Our earth is the home of revolution. In every corner of every continent men charged with hope contend with ancient ways in the pursuit of justice. They reach for the newest of weapons to realize the oldest of dreams, that each may walk in freedom and pride, stretching his talents, enjoying the fruits of the earth.

Michelle Bachmann on the Stalking Census Takers

In memory of Bill Sparkman,

the teacher, loving single father, and part-time census worker who was bound, gagged, and hung naked with the word "FED" scrawled across his chest on September 12, 2009, in Clay County, Kentucky.

On June 25, 2009, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) made the following inflammatory statements about census workers.

I think there is a point when you say enough is enough to  government intrusion. Source

If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the census bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations, at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.  I’m not saying that’s what the Administration is planning to do. But I am saying that private, personal information that was given to the census bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up.Source

You will receive approximately six contacts from them [Census workers], either through phone calls or they will knock on your door. If you still do not give them the information, they said they’ll contact your neighbor to the left of you, to the right of you to get information Source

Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Republican, Minnesota, 1956-

Boehner Admits That President Obama is NOT a Socialist

BOEHNER: You add to that, this whole question of health care and the government option and government involvement, and Americans today are getting more news about what’s happening in our government than they’ve ever gotten before. And Americans are genuinely scared to death. Scared to death –

GREGORY: But Leader, don’t they get even more scared when you’ve got the head of the Republican Party sending out an e-mail to challenge the President and Democratic leaders for a socialist power-grab? I mean, is that appropriate conversation? Do you really think the President is a socialist?

BOEHNER: Listen, when you begin to look at how much they want to grow government, you can call it whatever you want, but the fact is —

GREGORY: What do you call it though?

BOEHNER: This is unsustainable. We’re broke.

GREGORY: That’s fine. Do you think the President is a socialist?

BOEHNER: No!

GREGORY: Okay. Because the head of the Republican Party is calling him that.

BOEHNER: Listen, I didn’t call him that, and I’m not going to call him that.

Boehner did call Obama's actions "socialist" in a fear mongering speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2009.

House Minority Leader, John A. Boehner, Republican, 1949-

Source: Video of Boehner's  appearance on Meet the Press, September 20, 2009

I am proud to be a liberal.

If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."¹

President John F. Kennedy, Democrat, 35th President, 1917-1963

¹ This quotation is frequently misattributed to Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy.

Source: taken from JFK's acceptance of the New York Liberal Party nomination in Sept. 1960.

Ted Kennedy Quotation: My brother need not be idealized....

Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy | Democrat 1932-2009

Taken from his eulogy to his brother Bobby, it can now be said of him.

My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will someday come to pass for all the world.

Quotation: American Rhetoric - Eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy, June 1968
Tags: Ted Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, eulogy, brother

When and if fascism comes to America.....

Professor Halford E. Luccock¹ | Democrat

When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism'.

Quote Source: WikiQuote
Quotation: ¹Professor Halford E. Luccock of the Divinity School of Yale University made this comment in a sermon at the Riverside Church, Riverside Drive and 122d Street, during the 1930's.

Thomas Jefferson Quotation on a Free Press

Thomas Jefferson | Democratic-Republican Party¹

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

¹The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons,
Quotation: Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:57

Thomas Jefferson Quotation on Freedom of the Press

Thomas Jefferson | Democratic-Republican Party¹

 Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

¹The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.

Quotation: Letter to Dr. James Currie (28 January 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh 18:ii

Thomas Jefferson Quotation on Judicial Review

Thomas Jefferson | Democrat-Republican Party¹

Jefferson strongly opposed judicial review, and in a letter to William Jarvis in 1820, he had this to say:

 To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.

¹The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Jefferson on Mount Rushmore
Quotation: Letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820

Thomas Jefferson Quotation on Rightful Liberty

Thomas Jefferson | Democratic-Republican Party¹

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

¹The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Painting by Rembrandt Peale
Quotation: Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany, April 4, 1819 in Appleby and Ball (1999) p 224.

John Boehner calls President Obama's Actions Socialist

Well, the stimulus, the omnibus, the budget — it’s all one big

down payment on a new American socialist experiment. … All of these bills seek to replace our economic freedom with the whims and mandates of politicians and bureaucrats.

House Minority Leader, John A. Boehner, Republican, 1949-

Source: Video of Boehner's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2009: