#constitutional

I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution. ↗

— Tom DeLay

#constitution #constitutional #employee #federal #government

At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections. ↗

— William O. Douglas

#constitutional #decision #emotional #level #our

And what my constitutional values are are wholly irrelevant to the job, and so neither you nor anyone else will know what they are. ↗

— Elena Kagan

#constitutional #else #irrelevant #job #know

It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that laws should not be public only when it is convenient for government officials to make them public. They should be public all the time, open to review by adversarial courts, and subject to change by an accountable legislature guided by an informed public. If Americans are not able to learn how their government is interpreting and executing the law then we have effectively eliminated the most important bulwark of our democracy. That’s why, even at the height of the Cold War, when the argument for absolute secrecy was at its zenith, Congress chose to make US surveillance laws public. Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can’t make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It’s Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America. ↗

— Ron Wyden

#law #national-security #secrets #surveillance #change

You hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!' You never hear a real American talk like that. ↗

— Frank Hague

#american #communist #constitutional #constitutional rights #every

I didn't say 'former president,' I said 'president,' and I have the constitutional rights according to the constitution, including immunity from prosecution. ↗

— Saddam Hussein

#constitution #constitutional #constitutional rights #former #i

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it. ↗

— Steve King

#constitutional #constitutional republic #crafted #democracy #failures

Has President Bush exceeded his constitutional authority or acted illegally in authorizing wiretaps without a warrant? Benjamin Franklin would not have thought so. ↗

— Pete du Pont

#authority #authorizing #benjamin #benjamin franklin #bush

The right wing always mobilizes around constitutional amendments: the right to bear arms, school prayer. ↗

— Al Sharpton

#arms #around #bear #constitutional #prayer

The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution. ↗

— Byron White

#constitution #constitutional #court #deals #design