Bob Barr Quotes (34 Quotes)

We are witnessing nothing less than symptoms of a cancer on the American presidency. If we fail to remove it, it will expand to destroy the principles that matter most to all of us.

We've accomplished, as a team, more than many other members -- probably most other members of the Congress and Senate -- accomplish in an entire lifetime, and I appreciate that very much,

I commend you for standing up to the nonsense ... that you have had to put up with today.

What prompted me was we finally have two governors (Napolitano and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson ) finally doing what the federal government should have been doing all along. That is, that we truly have an emergency on our southern border. She actually did something.

There was no consistent message with regard to impeachment.

that the allegations contained in Starr's report simply lack merit.

They told me to impeach the man, ... This is not only a disgrace to our country but they fear for our national security -- leaving in office a man that is laboring under such a burden. This president is very distracted, they believe, and they want this mess to end.

I believe he should resign rather than bring further discredit on the House of Representatives,

I think we are really beyond that, ... Many members were upset by his evasive and crafty answers to the 81 questions. If he had just come out and answered them 'yes' or 'no,' even those that simply relate to the constitutional duty of the president to uphold the law, that he would have helped himself. I think things have moved well beyond that now. He is facing an imminent vote for impeachment, only the second president in history to be facing that. I think they are desperate right now.

will be used by our staff, our lawyers and our investigators to buttress the case that the president in fact did perjure himself on many occasions.

If in fact the U.N. through this effort ... moves in that direction, then I think it will make it more difficult perhaps for the U.N. to achieve the level of support that it would like to in Congress to further its legitimate goals,

to hundreds of people. These were not Republican activists, these were average citizens.

For all his self-serving lie-detector tests, now and whatever else his lawyer spins in his favor, it will not erase the fact he misled and misled badly the lawful conduct of a police investigation.

The work in which that committee engages is clearly the most sensitive of any committee of the Congress, and for a member to be embroiled in these sorts of problems even as he gets access to our nation's most sensitive secrets, I think, raises a very immediate concern that ought to be addressed,

Mortgage interest rates aren't dropping because of the interest rate cuts, but because of the anticipated economic slowdown and the lack of inflation,

There are a handful of provisions in the USA Patriot Act that are very constitutionally problematic, particularly the way some of them have been used. What I and a number of others from the right, the left and the center of the ideological spectrum -- this is an issue that brings together the ACLU, the American Conservative Union and the Eagle Forum -- are urging is not a wholesale discarding of the USA Patriot Act. We are urging that we re-establish the important link between the power of the government to gather personal, private information and a reasonable suspicion that the person on whom they are seeking the information has actually done something wrong.

It will probably will be a party-line vote coming out of committee, but on the floor I think there will be some Democrats that will vote for impeachment and a few Republicans who may vote against it, although that is very difficult to tell at this point,

As Rome burned, Nero fiddled, ... ... The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundations of our society, the family unit.

that's not a decision that has been conveyed to us with any finality by the chairman ... I'm confident there will be additional very important witnesses.

obstructed a law enforcement investigation and otherwise engaged in behavior in violation of the Rules of the House.

Sir, you seem to be objecting to the level of my memory.

That could be considered an obstruction of justice,

It is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that laws written in the 1970s are adequate for today's intelligence challenges.

It's not a gun control problem; it's a cultural control problem.

When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 911, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information. However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA (the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism.

Now, members of Congress will vote on a final conference report knowing that the FBI has in fact been using these provisions to get library information, and Congress won't be making a decision based on erroneous information put out there earlier.

I would not say that my mind is open, ... I believe the president has ... committed perjury, has committed obstruction of justice, and I think this matter ought to go to the Senate for trial.

The coalition is seeking modest changes to only a few extreme sections of the law, ... These changes will secure the important powers of the law while placing reasonable limits on their use.

It gives the government far too much power and also could subject legitimate gun sales to a rather heavy tax.

(96 K5 sec. AIFF or WAV sound) I'm interested in the evidence, not in what the president wants us to believe, ... We have a president who says, 'I am a liar. I am a perjurer.' That puts him in a very weak position internationally.

We are in fact moving rapidly toward having a national ID, something which bothers me greatly. We've always been a nation in which the mechanism for providing identification, primarily through driver's licenses, has been a function of the state governments.

We have a president who's told the world, 'I am a liar, I am a perjurer.' I think that places this president in a very weak position and our nation at risk abroad. I await the Starr report because I'm more interested in what the evidence of obstruction is and not simply what the president wants us to believe.

That is true, I do object to the level of your memory, it's apparently pretty low,

There clearly back in 2001 was an effort to use to the PATRIOT Act for political power. Anyone who questioned any of the provisions was not supporting the war on terror. People have heard that now for four years, and my sense is most of them are seeing through that sort of rhetoric now.