In Black & White

On Instituting a Voucher Program for Students in the DC Schools:

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC):

"If Congress allows school choice in the nation’s capital it will blow the doors off public schools nationwide." 

  

Terence Jeffrey, Editor of Human Events:

"Public schools need competition, and the District of Columbia is the perfect place to start. The public schools in the nation's capital are the nation's worst. They excel at failure: No state can match them in overcharging taxpayers or under-serving students."

On the Alabama Governor’s Proposed $1.2 Billion Tax Increase:

Governor Bob Riley (R-AL):

"According to our Christian ethics, we’re supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor."

  

Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute:

"God is the ultimate trump, so politicians love to play him. But despite Riley’s claims to the contrary, there is no reason to believe that God backs his plan to raise the taxes of Alabamans."

On the University of Michigan Affirmative Action Case Before the Supreme Court Case:

Representative
John Dingell,
(D — MI):

"Opposing these programs would be divisive and send the wrong message to America about discrimination and equality."

  

George W. Bush,
President of the
United States:

"[R]acial prejudice is a reality in America...[Racism] hurts many of our citizens. As a nation, as a government, as individuals we must be vigilant in responding to prejudice wherever we find it. Yet, as we work to address the wrong of racial prejudice, we must not use means that create another wrong, and thus perpetuate our divisions."

On the 2002 Midterm Elections:

Terry McAuliffe,
Democratic NationalCommittee Chair,
Sunday, November 3, 2002:

"George Bush has never had coattails…� He should be doing a lot better in these elections.� He should be winning a lot of Senate seats.� He should be winning a lot more House seats…"

  

Terry McAuliffe,
Democratic National
Committee Chair,
Wednesday, November 6, 2002:

"The determinant was you had a president who is popular…� What you saw was unprecedented political activity by our president, who is very popular in the polls."


Rulings on Secret Deportation Hearings:

Edward R. Becker,
Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit,
In the Ruling Upholding Secret Deportation Hearings:

"We are keenly aware of the dangers presented by deference to the executive branch when constitutional liberties are at stake, especially in times of national crisis. On balance, however, we are unable to conclude that openness plays a positive role in special-interest deportation hearings at a time when our nation is faced with threats of such profound and unknown dimension."

  

Judge Damon J. Keith,
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit,
In the Ruling Against
Secret Deportation Hearings:

"…[W]e reflect our commitment to those democratic values by ensuring that our government is held accountable to the people and that First Amendment rights are not impermissibly compromised. Open proceedings, with a vigorous and scrutinizing press, serve to ensure the durability of our democracy."

 

On Senator Robert Torricelli’s Announcement to Withdraw from the New Jersey Senate Race:

Senator Robert Torricelli
(D-NJ):

"When did we become such an unforgiving people? How did we become a society when a person can build credibility your entire life to have it questioned by someone whose word is of no value at all?...."

  

C. Boyden Gray, Former White House Counsel:

"Give me a (bleeping) break!"

 

Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States On Iraq — Then and Now:

1991:

"President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein’s survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop."

  

2002:

"I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds in the north and the Shi’ites in the south, groups that we had, after all, encouraged to rise up against Saddam. After we abandoned Afghanistan that first time, Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait. And our decision following a brilliant military campaign to abandon the effort prematurely to destroy Saddam’s military allowed him to remain in power."

The 2002 Florida Democratic Primary:

Al Gore,
Former Vice President
Of the United States:

"The governor pledged to fix [the election problems] and make it the envy of the world. Nobody expected he would fail as badly as he did."

  

Editorial,
St. Petersburg Times:

"To try to blame the governor for the mess these Democratic officials made is as ridiculous as it is dishonest."

The Debate On a War in Iraq:

George W. Bush,
President of the
United States:

"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance…. The United States has no quarrel with the Iraq people. They’ve suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause and a great strategic goal. People of Iraq deserve it."

  

Naji Sabri,
Iraqi Foreign Minister:

"The ones who decide the war are the warmongers in Washington. The warmongers whose business is war, whose business is exporting killing and death to other parts of the world. These are the ones who decide the war agenda, not Iraq… Iraq is the victims of these threats. We have done nothing to provoke the United States; we have done… no harm whatsoever to American interests."


On the Obesity and Health Problem Lawsuit Against Four Fast-Food Corporations:

Samuel Hirsch,
Plaintiff Suing
Wendy’s, McDonald’s,
Burger King and
Kentucky Fried Chicken:

"I trace [my health problems] all back to the high fat grease and salt, all back to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King — there was no fast food I didn’t eat, and I ate it more often than not because I was single, it was quick and I’m not a very good cook."

 

Katharine Kim,
Spokeswoman,
National Restaurant Association:

"It’s senseless, baseless and ridiculous. There are choices in restaurants and people can make these choices, and there’s a little personal responsibility as well."


On the Proposed Operation TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System):

Bill Berkowitz,
Columnist:

"If Americans begin equating dissent with disloyalty, Operation TIPS could turn out to be more like a glorified patriotic junta patrol than a workable response to the threat of terrorism."

  

Governor Tom Ridge,
Homeland Security Chief:

"There’s a big difference being vigilant and being a vigilante. We just want people to use their common sense. It is not a government intrusion. The president just wants people to be alert and aware…. We’re not asking for people to spy on people."

On a Buena Vista County Judge Ordering Disclosure of Patients’ Records at Planned Parenthood in the Murder Investigation of a Newborn:

Jill June,
Director, Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa:

"[Patients] come here believing, and we tell them in writing, that we will protect their privacy…. This would set a very dangerous precedent for patients around the state. If they can invade the privacy of these women in Storm Lake, Iowa, they can do it to any patient in Iowa, and that cannot be right."

  

SPhil Havens,
Buena Vista County Attorney:

"These pregnancy tests can be administered by lay people. Unless they show us medical people were involved, we don’t think they’re medical records…. We issued a valid subpoena, and they just refused to honor it, and they’re going to have to tell us why. They had no burden of proof, and they gave no law, and they gave no facts."

The U.S. Supreme Court's Ruling That Random Drug Testing in Public High Schools Outweighs Individual Right to Privacy, Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls:

Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas,
For the Majority:

" We find that testing students who participate in extracurricular activities is a reasonably effective means of addressing the school district's legitimate concerns in preventing, deterring and detecting drug use. "

  

Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
Dissenting:

" The particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is capricious, even perverse. "


The U.S. Supreme Court’s Ruling Passengers on a Bus Need Not Be Told of Rights When Police Are Conducting Random Searches for Drugs or Weapons, United States v. Drayton:

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy,
For the Majority:

"There was no application of force, no intimidating movement, no overwhelming show of force, no brandishing of weapons, no blocking of exits, no threat, no command, not even an authoritative tone of voice. It is beyond question that had this encounter occurred on the street, it would be constitutional. The fact that an encounter takes place on a bus does not on its own transform standard police questioning of citizens into an illegal seizure."

  

Justice David H. Souter,
Dissenting:

"It is very hard to imagine that either Brown or Drayton would have believed that he stood to lose nothing if he refused to cooperate with the police, or that he had any free choice to ignore the police altogether…. When the attention of several officers is brought to bear on one civilian, the imbalance of immediate power is unmistakable."


On The Supreme Court’s Ruling That Employers Can Deny Applicants Work If It Would Threaten Their Health or Safety, Chevron USA, Inc v. Echazabal:

Stephen M. Shapiro,
Lawyer Representing
Chevron USA:
"If employers were told they could not consider the [worker’s] risk to self, they would have been in a terrible quandary.

They could be faced with hiring people they know would die on the job. And they would also be exposed to all sorts of litigation."

  

Samuel Bagenstos,
Attorney Representing
Mario Echazabal:

"There is a long history in this country of (employers) limiting the opportunities of people with disabilities out of a misplaced concern for the safety of those people."


On The Suspension and Potential Court Martial of Lieutenant Steve Butler for Bad Mouthing President Bush:

Lucian Truscott, IV,
Former Army Officer
And Novelist:

"…[T]he law is written way too broadly, and I think that if it was finally looked at by the Supreme Court, they’d probably overturn it… you don’t check your constitutional rights at the door when you agree to join the military…."

  

Lieutenant Colonel Bob Maginnis (Ret.),
Vice President, Policy
Family Research Council:

"You know, we -- the citizens of the United States -- give extraordinary power to our military officers, all the weapons of our military, and we expect them to demonstrate extraordinary self-discipline, and it comes to controlling their mouths. This particular law… it’s part of a larger scheme of discipline that we have in the military to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the fighting unit, and when we have officers who go out and basically bad-mouth the commander in chief, that undermines the entire unit chain of command…."


On The Government Easing Limits on Domestic Spying By F.B.I.:

A Senior Justice Department Official:

"We are turning the ship 180 degrees from prosecution of crimes as our main focus to the prevention of terrorist acts. We want to make sure that we do everything possible to stop the terrorists before they can kill innocent Americans, everything within the bounds of the Constitution and federal law."

  

Laura W. Murphy,
ACLU,
Director of National Office:

"The F.B.I. is now telling the American people, ‘You no longer have to do anything unlawful to get that knock on the door. You can be doing a perfectly legal activity like worshiping or talking in a chat room, they can spy on you anyway."


The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on University of Michigan’s Race-based Admissions Policy:

Boyce F. Martin,
Chief Circuit Judge,
In the Decision:

"We find that the law school has a compelling state interest in achieving a diverse student body. We are satisfied that the law school’s admissions policy sets appropriate limits on the competitive consideration of race and ethnicity…"

  

Judge Danny J. Boggs,
In the Dissent:

"Even a cursory glance at the law school’s admissions data reveals the staggering magnitude of the law school’s racial preference… Michigan’s plan does not seek diversity for education’s sake. It seeks racial numbers for the sake of the comfort that those abstract numbers may bring.


The Cloning Debate:

Gregory Stock,
Director of the Program of Medicine, Technology and Society, University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine:

"Biotechnologies stand to revolutionize health care and medicine, transform great swaths of our economy, alter the way we conceive children, change the way we manage our moods, and even extend our life spans."

  

Francis Fukuyama,
Professor of International Political Economy,
Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies,
Johns Hopkins University:

"We slow the progress of science today for all sorts of ethical reasons. Biomedicine could advance much faster if we abolished our rules on human experimentation in clinical trials, as Nazi researchers did… "

On Arming Airline Pilots With Guns in the Cockpits:

Excerpt From Petition
From Nation’s Pilots:

"Common sense and logic dictate that the men and women we trust each day with our lives when we board an airliner could and should be trusted with firearms in order to provide the critical last line of defense."

  

Nancy Hwa,
Spokeswoman,
Handgun Control, Inc:

"Pilots are human, like everyone else. Pilots can get into arguments. Pilots can get angry. They can get depressed."

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision in Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency:

Justice John Paul Stevens,
In the Majority Opinion:

"[Regulations] impact property values in some tangential way — often in completely unanticipated ways. Treating them all as takings would transform government regulation into a luxury few governments can afford."

 

Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
In the Dissenting Opinion:

"… as is the case with most governmental action that furthers the public interest, the Constitution requires that the costs and burdens be borne by the public at large, not by a few targeted citizens."

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition:

H. Louis Sirkin,
Attorney for the
Free Speech Coalition:

"[The ruling is a] reaffirmation of support for the First Amendment by the Supreme Court. The court is confining acts of Congress to actual criminal conduct and not the expression of ideas. People can still fantasize and still depict those fantasies visually and in writing."

 

Rep. Mark Foley,
(R — Florida):

"The high court sided with pedophiles over children. This decision has set back years of work on behalf of the most innocent Americans. Whether in movies or photographs, it doesn’t make a difference whether or not the person engaged in sex is actually a child. If it looks like a child and is said to be a child, pedophiles have found their fix — and their search for true child pornography will only be enhanced."

On The Ohio Appeals Court Overturning the State’s Ban on Concealed Handguns:

Presiding Judge
Mark P. Painter,
For the Court:

"[The first article of the state Constitution says that] the people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security. We believe they [state’s founding fathers] meant what they said… There is no doubt that the Ohio Constitution grants citizens the right to possess, and to bear, arms."

  

Dennis Henigan,
Director of the Brady Center’s Legal Action Project:

"This panel’s ruling runs counter to common sense and to the wishes of Ohio police and the Ohio legislature. This decision is bad law and bad policy."

The Michigan Court of Appeals Overturning the State’s 105 Year-Old Law Banning the Use of Profanity in Front of Women and Children:

Karen Moss,
Executive Director,
Michigan Chapter,
American Civil
Liberties Union:

"It’s damn good news. I think it is a statement that government should not regulate morality."

  

Richard Vollbach,
Assistant Prosecutor,
Arenac County, Michigan:

"It it [the court decision] was a rationale I could digest, I’d probably leave it alone. But this one’s a little too bothersome to me… I think most people felt this was a good, valid law."

Zero-Tolerance Policies in Schools on Inhalers:

Nancy Sander,
Executive Director,
Allergy and Asthma Network/ Mothers of Asthmatics:

"The decision to accommodate and facilitate a child’s needs with asthma is far easier than pretending their needs do not exist or that restricting student access to medications is for the safety of all students. To do so places your students with asthma at greater risk of death or missed school days… and your school board at risk of lawsuits."

  

Bruce Hunter,
Director of
Government Relations,
American Association of School Administrators:

"Our view is people need to have common sense. But that being said, I don’t think it’ll be too long before someone finds some illicit use for inhalers. I’ve watched kids trade Ritalin. Kids just amaze me."

On the Jewish Museum in New York City’s Controversial Exhibit, "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art":

Menachem Rosensaft,
Lawyer and Founder of the
International Network of Children of Holocaust Survivors:

"As far as I am concerned, with items that demean the suffering and trivialize instruments of death, there is no compromise short of canceling the show."

  

James Young, Expert on Holocaust Memorials,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst:

"It’s better to address [the] questions, even though they make us uncomfortable, than for them to lie hidden."

On the White House Releasing Information Regarding the "Shadow Government" to Congress:

Senator Tom Daschle
(D — South Dakota):

"We have not been informed at all about the role of the shadow government or its whereabouts or what particular responsibilities they have and when they would kick in."

 

Ari Fleischer,
White House Spokesman:

"Again, I do not speak for members of Congress, but the administration has consulted with the Congress, has informed the Congress about its programs that have been in place, as you know, since the Cold War, to have continuity of government and continuity of operations. The administration has informed the Congress about those plans, about those programs and was pleased to reiterate that to Senator Daschle today."

Obesity and a Proposed Food Tax:

Marion Nestle,
Author of
Food Politics:
How the Food Industry
Influences Nutrition and Health:

"I like the idea of a soft drink tax. It is so clearly a junk food… The tax [would be] so small that no one could accuse it of being regressive, so it would be less than a penny on a can of soda."

  

John Doyle,
Co-Founder of the
Center for Consumer Freedom:

"Any tax that tells people what to eat is outrageous. Any effort that calls for third party intervention like the federal government to tell you what to eat, [is] abdicating free will entirely. What’s next? The government is going to tell us when to go to bed?"

Dueling Analogies on the Role of Jeffrey Skilling, Former President and CEO of Enron, In the Company’s Collapse:

Senator Byron Dorgan
(D — N.D.):

"In the Titanic the captain went down with the ship. And Enron looks to me like the captain first gave himself and his friends a bonus, then lowered himself and the top folks down the lifeboat, and then hollered up and said, ‘By the way, everything is going to be just fine.’"

  

Jeffrey Skilling,
Former President
And CEO, Enron:

"I think it’s a pretty bad analogy, Senator, because I wasn’t on the Titanic. I got off in Ireland because I was on vacation in Ireland, and the Titanic went on to run into some troubles later on. I think that’s a better analogy."

Police Surveillance Cameras in the District of Columbia:

Terrance Gainer,
Executive Assistant
Police Chief,
Washington Metro
Police Department:

"Public space is very much that. There should be no expectation of privacy when you’re out on the street."

  

Johnny Barnes,
Executive Director,
National Capital Area
American Civil
Liberties Union:

"We become like China. We become like the former Soviet Union, monitoring the movements of citizens. In this country, we have Times Square, we don’t have Tiananmen Square."

California Court Ruling Tossing Out the "Son of Sam" Law Barring Criminals From Profiting From Their Illegal Exploits:

Richard Specter,
Attorney for
Frank Sinatra, Jr.,
Kidnapping Victim of
Barry Keenan:

"Now a felon can go out and sell the story, get the money and you can rest assured they’re not going to deposit it in the bank, so you can never enforce a judgment to get the money. The criminal always had the right to tell the story of the crime — now they can sell it."

  

Justice Janice Rogers Brown,
Concurring with the
Court’s Decision:

"The First Amendment protects schlock journalism as well as great literature. Thus, Mr. Keenan has every right to tell his story. That does not mean the First Amendment guarantees he can keep the money."

 

Eldred v. Ashcroft: The Legality of Copyright Extension Law:

Lawrence Lessig,
Attorney Representing the Plaintiffs Opposing Copyright Extension:

"Just as the time that the Internet is enabling a much broader range of individuals to draw upon and develop this creative work without restraint, extensions of copyright law are closing off this medium to a broad swath of common culture."

 

Chris McGurk,
Chief Operating Officer, MGM:

"Copyright is the only thing that protects us from people taking our properties, copying them, exploiting them, doing whatever they want for free."

Zelman v. Simmons-Harris: The Cleveland School Voucher Supreme Court Case:

Judith French,
Ohio Assistant Attorney General:

"It [school vouchers] is a limited program targeted to the most needy, the poorest of the poor, who would not otherwise have a choice."

  

Robert H. Chanin,
Lawyer Representing Cleveland Residents Challenging the School Voucher Program:

"Ohio has the right to make an unsound educational judgment, but not an unconstitutional one."