Quotes About Congress

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand.

it cannot be the intention of Congress or the Executive Department (defendant) to provide the aged Private Ryans a discriminatory hemlock drink from the cup of life after reaching age sixty-five. If in fact that is the intention, then this government of William Jefferson Clinton is not worth fighting for.

Few things upset Congress more than the idea that someone is trying to take over its lily pad, and Vandegrift had its undivided attention when he moved on to specific Marine Corps interests.

So sure, a leftward flurry of legislation got LBJed through Congress in 2143, but there was no guarantee of permanence to anything they did, and the pushback was ferocious as always, because people are crazy and history never ends, and good is accomplished against the immense black-hole gravity of greed and fear.

If you're in Congress, don't you have to be there sometimes?

Oh they will. He was a Republican, after all." "Abraham Lincoln was no Republican." "Hello?" "The Republicans in Congress hated him like poison. The goddammed Copperheads did everything they could to sabotage him. They cheered when he was killed, because then they could claim him as a martyr and rip off the South in his name.

Their moral influence will then do infinitely more to advance the true interests of religion, than any measures which they may call on Congress to enact.

May the arm of the first member of Congress, who proposes a national religion, drop powerless from his shoulder; his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth and all the people say amen.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of ... constitutional principles.

Appellant constituted a legitimate class of one, and this provides a basis for Congress's decision to proceed with dispatch with respect to his materials.

I want judges on the Supreme Court who will respect the words and the meaning of the Constitution, the laws enacted by Congress and the laws enacted by state legislatures.

Today the people from my State of Tennessee would listen to this debate, or even talk about a reference to God on our money or in the Halls of Congress or in our Pledge and say, please, let common sense and logic win the day and prevail versus legal mumbo jumbo.

It was at this point that Truman once again sought Marshall's help. With his enthusiastic support, in July 1947 the president had succeeded in inducing Congress to pass the National Security Act, creating a new Department of Defense to replace the separate War and Navy Departments that had coexisted—and squabbled—since the early days of the republic.

Congress decided to finish the already drawn-out process of investigating

The very next year the Statue of Liberty lowered her torch: in 1921 Congress imposed quotas, and in 1924—the year after my mother arrived—quotas were set so low that the doors effectively slammed shut.

A dictator decrees," she later wrote, "a president asks Congress for permission to organize.

The truth is the Republican leadership has created a credit card Congress that is recklessly selling out the future of America, our children and our grandchildren, and President Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible President in the history of America.

The longer we go without strong leadership from the Administration and until we see significant progress in the day-to-day lives of the Iraqi people, the more difficult it will become to sustain the support of the American people and Congress for the current course.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

The levy of so large an army could only mean war; but the power to declare war did not reside in the President—it was delegated to the Congress only.

It has been sometimes contended that, because the Congress of the Confederation, by the Ordinance of 1787, prohibited involuntary servitude in all the Northwestern Territory, the framers of the Constitution must have recognized such power to exist in the Congress of the United States. Hence the deduction that the prohibitory clause of what is known as the Missouri Compromise was justified by the precedent of the Ordinance of 1787.

The power granted in the Constitution is thus expressed: "The Congress shall have power to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions." 169 It was to the Congress, not the Executive, to whom the power was delegated, and thus early was commenced a long series of usurpations of powers inconsistent with the purposes for which the Union was formed, and destructive of the fraternity it was designed to perpetuate.

The very first enactment, made on the 9th of February, 1861—the day after the adoption of the Provisional Constitution—was this: "That all the laws of the United States of America in force and in use in the Confederate States of America on the first day of November last, and not inconsistent with the Constitution of the Confederate States, be and the same are hereby continued in force until altered or repealed by the Congress

The "border States" in general promptly acceded to this proposition of Virginia, and others followed, so that in the "Peace Congress," or conference, which assembled, according to appointment, on the 4th, and adjourned on the 27th of February, twenty-one States were eventually represented, of which fourteen were Northern, or "non-slaveholding," and seven slaveholding States.