Blumenauer Amendment Quotes

Many people are shocked by the idea that any organization - even a pro-racism advocacy group - has a First Amendment right to indulge in race discrimination when necessary to further its message. Yet, as in many other contexts, protecting the First Amendment rights of unpopular, outrageous, and contemptible organizations will ultimately protect the rights of mainstream and forward-thinking organizations as well. ~ David E. Berstein

I really believe amendment " to make English our common and unifying language" is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish. ~ Ruben Aguilar

The Second Amendment is timeless for our Founders grasped that self-defense is three-fold: every free individual must protect themselves against the evil will of the man, the mob and the state. ~ Tiffany Madison

Whether children have first amendment rights is a vexed legal question, but what is not in question is that they someday will. Constraining them from expressing their views is no preparation for exercising those rights. ~ Crispin Sartwell

The 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 Cruz

We, as artists, we have the right to express ourselves. That is our first amendment, freedom of speech. But I also believe that we have an obligation to the youth to be somewhat responsible in what we say on records. But I think that comes with age. I think that comes with artists growing up and becoming assured of who they are as people. ~ Ja Rule

The first step towards amendment is the recognition of error. ~ Seneca The Younger

The 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 Swindall

Election of Public Officers. The right to vote is not a natural one but is derived from constitutions and statutes; it is not a privilege protected by the Fourteenth Amendment; ~ John Bouvier

December, 1865, of the celebrated 13th article or amendment of the Constitution, which declared that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude - except as a punishment for crime - shall exist within the United States. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

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. ~ Jim Bridenstine

Our country as a whole, no less than the Hastings College of Law, values tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the amicable resolution of conflicts. But we seek to achieve those goals through "[a] confident pluralism that conduces to civil peace and advances democratic consensus-building," not by abridging First Amendment rights. ~ Samuel Alito

Though often used interchangeably, the concept of freedom of speech and the First Amendment are not the same thing. While the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press as they relate to duties of the state and state power, freedom of speech is a far broader idea that includes additional cultural values. These values incorporate healthy intellectual habits, such as giving the other side a fair hearing, reserving judgment, tolerating opinions that offend or anger us, believing that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, and recognizing that even people whose points of view we find repugnant might be (at least partially) right. ~ Greg Lukianoff

Despite the apparent absoluteness of the First Amendment, there are any number of ways of getting around it, ways that are known to any student of law. In general, the strategy is to manipulate the distinction between speech and action which is at bottom a distinction between inconsequential and consequential behavior. ~ Stanley Fish

Today, the religion clauses of the First Amendment do not need to be fixed; they need to be followed. ~ Walter F. Mondale

We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations. ~ Hank Johnson

I'm not interested in censorship. I like the First Amendment very much. ~ Henry Rollins

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. ~ Alice Paul

Commanding goodness and forbiding to do evil (are) for the amendment and correction of society and the common folks. ~ Fatima Bint Muhammad

The way that same-sex marriage should reach the federal level is that it absolutely should be decided by the Supreme Court as quickly as possible. It's a 14th Amendment issue. There's no argument about it. ~ Tony Kushner

When the 14th Amendment, equal protection clause was enacted, the galleries in the Senate were segregated. Now we have integration. ~ Arlen Specter

When a country with less than five percent of the world's population has nearly half of the world's privately owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world's mass shootings, it's time to stop saying guns make us safer. ~ DaShanne Stokes

The Second Amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not to bear artillery. ~ Robin Williams

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State. ~ James Madison

Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us. ~ Walter Savage Landor

You're suppressing my first amendment rights," she said, voice muffled. "You don't live in America; you live in the United States of Teague. ~ Lauren Gilley

Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following: If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns
or the one we live in now? If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it's not about life and liberty. It's all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

Nobody will ever pry the guns out of the hands of these Second Amendment American idiots. And if they do, God bless them. Only criminals will have weapons. ~ Mark M. Bello

The ages of individual Supreme Court Justices were of significant concern to Zack, as were the nominations President John would make if these elderly Supreme Court Justices retired or passed away. Zack smiled to himself and wished the justices good health and long life. ~ Mark M. Bello

In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment. Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular. ~ John Paul Stevens

Be yourself,its the best thing you can be. ~ Selena Gomez

Everyone knows that due process means judicial process, and when John Brennan brings him a list of people to be killed this particular week, that's not due process. That's certainly not judicial process. So there's the fifth amendment. Not even George Bush claimed the right to kill American citizens without due process. ~ Ray McGovern

They're Democrats always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment. ~ Ann Coulter

Between 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

When nearly 3,000 people died on 9/11, it was enough to create massive change in our society. Over ten times as many people die from guns each year. Where is the social change? ~ DaShanne Stokes

Three 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 Aquinas

There is nothing as dangerous as an unembodied principle: no matter what blood flows, the principle comes first. The First Amendment absolutists operate precisely on unembodied principle ... ~ Andrea Dworkin

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment ... But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. ~ Thomas Jefferson