When the government is handed over to the Iraqi Council on 30 June, many have declared, oh, the Americans must never leave because civil unrest may erupt. Well, I agree, we cannot abruptly depart, but Iraq needs to step up to the plate on 30 June.
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.
The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.
People are absolutely free to criticize the government and protest, but their protests should be in such a way as to improve the situation in the country and their life.
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.
All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.
As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.
The apology, that is constantly put forth for the injustice of government, viz., that a man must consent to give up some of his rights, in order to have his other rights protected - involves a palpable absurdity, both legally and politically.
The U.K. courts were very clear that Abu Qatada posed a threat to our national security - that's why we were pleased as a government to be able to remove him from the United Kingdom.
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
The government is so out of control. It is so bloated and infested with fraud and deceit and corruption and abuse of power.
By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.
The Obama administration came into Utah and said, 'We're not going to listen to what the U.S. Supreme Court said. 'We, the federal government, are going to recognize marriages in the state of Utah and Utah state law explicitly does not recognize as marriage,' and that was really, in my view, an abuse of power.
These are issues we've been grappling with since the Constitution was written: how you hold your government to account for its words and deeds. It's all about power and the abuse of power.
Dictators can fix up their entire families in good jobs, in or around government, and often do. In democracies, such a practice is frowned upon. Privileged access to the corridors of power through family connections and a kind of old boys' network, is also deemed an abuse of power, and so it is.
Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.
As a civil servant in charge of the government's Strategy Unit, I brought in many people from outside government, including academia and science, to work in the unit, dissecting and solving complex problems from GM crops to alcohol, nuclear proliferation to schools reform.
