political_talk

John Adams on His Election to the House of Representatives

In a letter to Benjamin Rush,  Adams wrote of having been chosen to become a member of the House of Representatives.

When I went home to my family in May, 1770, from the town meeting in Boston, which was the first I had ever attended, and where I had been chosen in my absence, without any solicitation, one of their representatives, I said to my wife, "I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning, that you may prepare your mind for your fate." She burst into tears, but instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, "Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined." These were times, my friend, in Boston, which tried women's souls as well as men's.

---

Source

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.

---

Source: WikiQuote

John Adams on Christianity

In an 1814 letter to his friend, John Taylor, Adams denigrated Christianity as incapable of real "inquiry".

And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes

---

Source:  Letter to John Taylor

Thomas Jefferson on the Role of the Judiciary

From a letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823, by Thomas Jefferson:

At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.

---

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons - Painting of Thomas Jefferson in 1805 by Rembrandt Peale

George Will on Media Fascination With Sarah Palin

A surprisingly astute quote by George Will from his article dissecting the media's fascination with Sarah Palin, "Sarah Palin and the mutual loathing society". I especially liked the last two lines.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. But today's saturation journalism, mesmerized by presidential politics and ravenous for material, requires a steady stream of political novelties. In that role, Palin is united with the media in a relationship of mutual loathing. This is not her fault. But neither is it her validation.

---

Source:  The Washington Post, George Will

Palin Lies on Leno

On The Tonight Show, Palin spewed her usual gibberish in reference to her Family Guy remarks, and her lack of opportunity (oh, please...) to follow up after the media responded.

I commented and then that gets out there in the blogosphere, it gets out there in the different forms of the mediums that we have today. And then it’s left there, not an opportunity for me to follow up and kind of elaborate on what I really meant and what I really thought of the thing.

---

Source:  Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, The Atlantic, 'Lying on Leno'

Howard Zinn on War in Our Time

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

---

Source:  Dr. Howard Zinn, The Progressive Magazine, November 2001
Image of painting [of Dr. Zinn] by Brett Cook

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.

---

Dr. Howard Zinn

HOWARD ZINN: How Change Occurs

I would encourage people to look around them in their community and find an organization that is doing something that they believe in, even if that organization has only five people, or ten people, or twenty people, or a hundred people. And to look at history and understand that when change takes place it takes place as a result of large, large numbers of people doing little things unbeknownst to one another. And that history is very important for people to not get discouraged. Because if you look at history you see the way the labor movement was able to achieve things when it stuck to its guns, when it organized, when it resisted. Black people were able to change their condition when they fought back and when they organized. Same thing with the movement against the war in Vietnam, and the women's movement. History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.

---

Source: Wikiquote
Dr. Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn: Defining Patriotism

If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles

---

Source: Wikiquote
Dr. Howard Zinn

President Obama: With all due deference to the separation of powers.......

On January 27, 2010, in his first State of the Union address to Congress and the American people, President Barack Obama leveled a strong recrimination at the Supreme Court for the controversial ruling made in the Citizens United case, decided on January 21, 2010.View the video excerpt below. The full transcript, along with the full video of the SOTU is here.

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that corrects some of these problems

GOP Senate Candidate Compares Embryonic Stem Cell Research to Nazi Death Camps

"In March 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that removed President Bush’s limitations on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, ending the tragic politicization of the issue that existed under the former president." [...]

GOP Senate candidate, Gary Coleman [R-AR] attacked President Obama regarding this decision:

Embryonic stem cell research is taking the concept of taking a life and using it to conduct experiments so we can temporarily extend somebody else’s life. Let me tell you what I just described. I just described what the Nazis did to the Jews in the death camps of WWII.

---

Source: Think Progress 
Science Magazine

Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Affirmative Action

In a Supreme Court packed with conservatives, this was no surprise. Chief Justice John G. Roberts:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

---

Source: Seattle School District case (2007-06-28)

Sen. Dick Durbin to Samuel Alito: Your record raises troubling questions about whether you appreciate the checks and balances in our Constitution...

Sen. Durbin's [D-ILL] prophetic comment to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito during Alito's 2006 confirmation hearings.

Your record raises troubling questions about whether you appreciate the checks and balances in our Constitution -- the careful efforts of our Founding Fathers to protect us from a government or a president determined to seize too much power over our lives,

---

Source: Associated Press

Samuel A. Alito: A judge can't have any agenda......

Faced with the well-founded skepticism of the Democrats during his confirmation hearings in 2006, Samuel A. Alito attempted to present himself to the Senate Judiciary Committee as an "open-minded judge with no agenda other than the rule of law".

A judge can't have any agenda, a judge can't have a preferred outcome in any particular case, and a judge certainly can't have a client.

A judge's only obligation -- and it is a solemn obligation -- is to the rule of law. And what that means is that in every single case, the judge has to do what the law requires.

---

Source: NPR - Day One: Alito Stresses Rule of Law

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Our President is a worldwide joke.......

Rush Limbaugh, de facto leader of the Republican Party, indulges himself in his

usual insane repartee on the same day that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I think that everybody is laughing. Our president is a worldwide joke. Folks, do you realize something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn't deserve the award. Now that's hilarious, that I'm on the same side of something with the Taliban, and that we all are on the same side as the Taliban.

MICHELLE BACHMANN: A Covenant to Slit Our Wrists....

Speaking to the conservative group, Independence Institute, at a fundraiser in Colorado, Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) had this to say in reference to health care reform:

This cannot pass.What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.

Slasher movie, anyone?

Right now, we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom. And we may never be able to restore it if we don’t man up and take this one on.

---

Source: Colorado Independent, August 31, 2009

TED KENNEDY on Guns

Remark by Sen. Ted Kennedy during a Senate debate with Mitt Romney in 1994:

I won’t yield to anyone about guns in our society. I know enough about it.

Senator Edward M. "Ted"  Kennedy, Democrat, 1932-2009

---

Source: From 'Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography' by Adam Clymer

Chris Dodd: I'm not sure America has ever had a greater Senator....

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) speaking of his friend, Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (D-Mass.) after Kennedy's death in 2009:

I'm not sure America has ever had a greater Senator, but I know for certain that no one has had a greater friend than I and so many others did in Ted Kennedy.
I will always remember Teddy as the ultimate example for all of us who seek to serve, a hero for those Americans in the shadow of life who so desperately needed one.
He worked tirelessly to lift Americans out of poverty, advance the cause of civil rights, and provide opportunity to all. He fought to the very end for the cause of his life - ensuring that all Americans have the health care they need.
The commitment to build a stronger and fairer America, a more perfect union, was deeply ingrained in the fiber of who he was, and what he believed in, and why he served.
That's why he stands among the most respected Senators in history. But it was his sympathetic ear, his razor wit, and his booming, raucous laugh that made him among the most beloved.
Whatever tragedy befell Teddy's family, he would always be there for them. Whatever tragedy befell the family of one of his friends, he would always be there for us. And in this moment of profound grief, our hearts are with his wonderful wife Vicki, his fantastic kids Ted Jr., Patrick, Kara, Curran, and Caroline, his grandchildren, and the wide and wonderful extended family for whom he was always a safe harbor.

I will miss him every day I serve, and every day I live.

Sen. Christopher John Dodd, Democrat, 1944-

---

Source: The Huffington Post
Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Nancy Reagan on the Death of Senator Ted Kennedy

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan's remarks upon the death of Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy in 2009:

I was terribly saddened to hear of the death of Ted Kennedy tonight. Given our political differences, people are sometimes surprised by how close Ronnie and I have been to the Kennedy family. But Ronnie and Ted could always find common ground, and they had great respect for one another. In recent years, Ted and I found our common ground in stem cell research, and I considered him an ally and a dear friend. I will miss him.

Nancy Davis Reagan, Republican, 1921-

---

Source: The Huffington Post