Founding Fathers

We need to revitalize the American spirit. People are always asking 'What would the Founding Fathers do?,' but I have yet to witness a single séance.

Our founders didn’t want some parliamentary system where if you won the majority you got to do whatever you wanted. They wanted this long, slow process. And so change comes slowly. And obviously too slowly for some.

We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

If they don't teach us civil disobedience, we will teach ourselves.

The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.

In the months ahead, I will leave the Department of Justice, but I will never -- I will never -- leave the work. I will continue to serve and try to find ways to make our nation even more true to its founding ideals.

The National Rifle Association often claims it is ‘America's longest standing civil rights organization,’ but apparently these minor issues were more important than the murder of an unarmed teen by a policeman, and the subsequent attacks by a militarized force on unarmed Americans in a U.S. city. [That] is the exact nightmare the NRA has been predicting. And yet, the NRA professes no kinship for those being crushed beneath the jackboots. It seems the NRA is only worried about the civil rights of white people.

Every morning at school - they had schools in those barracks - we started the day with The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag….and there was the American flag flying over the camp. But I could also see the barbed wire fence - and the sentry towers with the machine guns pointed at us - from my schoolhouse window, as I recited the words, “with liberty and justice for all.

I don’t agree with quite a bit of stuff I read in magazine interviews or see on TV. In fact, come to think of it, I find a good bit of it offensive. But I also acknowledge that this is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views…I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment. It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh and Phil Robertson gets suspended.

The First Amendment, like the constitution generally, only applies to the government. So if the government stops someone from talking, or punishes them, that’s a First Amendment issue. If a private person says 'I won’t hire you or let you be on TV anymore,' that’s not. The idea is we don’t let the government decide what’s a good opinion, but we do let individuals decide what they think is offensive and what should be rewarded and what should be discouraged. That’s the way the marketplace of ideas is supposed to work.

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.

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.