Democracy
Page 7
- ¦This is not a tool to bring down regimes. We never though of ourselves like this. We were just, you know, cracking jokes about the status quo. And it’s a way to deal with our differences…I think it’s a very healthy, cathartic way of freedom of expression. As a matter of fact, having a show like this reflects well on the government – that it allows something like this.
- The fact is, we’re not collecting everybody’s email, we’re not collecting everybody’s phone things, we’re not listening to that…NSA can only target the communications of a US person with a probable cause finding under specific court order. Today, we have less than 60 authorizations on specific persons to do that.
- Today, unfortunately, the right to vote seems to have become a partisan issue. Democrats seek to guarantee and expand voting rights. Republicans try to undermine and suppress voting rights.
- Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability – terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons – or should we focus on global climate instability – droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.
- I don't think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. I think that's why he fled, [because] that is what he faced.
- I view the United States, today, much like East Berlin. And I'm off the grid. I've tried for 20 years to warn the country about the Democrats and Republicans, and nobody's listening.
- At the moment, the U.S. is talking loudly and carrying a small stick. Economic sanctions and visa denials won’t impact Russia in serious ways, nor will they make Ukraine an economically viable and democratic country. Furthermore, Americans have no desire and no reason to go to war with Russia over Crimea.
- You can’t build a base for a candidacy in a year, or two years, or even four years. The only way to get candidates worth having is to build the social force that will create candidates worth having.
- We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington’s elites — politicians and intellectuals — miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today’s world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler, but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe.
- In battle, combatants engaged in war against America get no due process and may lawfully be killed. But citizens not in a battlefield - however despicable - are guaranteed a trial by our Constitution. No one argues that Americans who commit treason shouldn’t be punished. The maximum penalty for treason is death. But the Constitution specifies the process necessary to convict.
- Look how thick this bill is. I could end you with this bill, man.
- Our country was born out of a desire to be free. And every day since, it’s been protected by our men and women in uniform – people who believed so deeply in America, they were willing to give their lives for it.