Bruce Fein Quotes (29 Quotes)

The attorney general's repeated refrain was, 'Trust us' - we have all the necessary checks and balances within NSA and the Justice Department.

The tipping point in Washington is when you go from being a subject of caricature to the subject of laughter. She's in danger of becoming the subject of laughter.

They should be embracing those memos. They are squandering the opportunity to move public perception.

She's an inkblot -- the last person who is going to look at Roe v. Wade and say, 'the reasoning is flawed,' and tell us why, ... She'll just follow the path of every justice in the last 25 years who comes to the bench without a developed philosophy and ends up in the liberal camp. People whose intellect is as thin and dubious as hers will be too intellectually timid to challenge orthodoxy.

Bush may be aiming now for the political choice - a choice that's calculated less to mold the Supreme Court jurisprudence, and more to mold his political fortunes and those of his party.

Here, insofar as there is discrepancy, it is not like the others that are politically neutral, ... Here, it is patently likely to favor one candidate or another.

What you find is that the U. S. Supreme Court very seldom if ever marches very far from the conventional thinking of contemporary society. They pay attention and are infected by mainstream thinking of what's moral and what's right and what's just.

You wouldn't need a warrant to do the initial interception, but afterwards, once you're targeting the American citizen, then you need that warrant.

Katherine Harris is going to live and die on (President Bush's) coattails. She is not someone who has political legs. She is more tied to the president than the ordinary member of the House.

Would Democrats really turn down Larry Thompson, a second black member of the high court, when Republicans are going out of their way to recruit blacks into their ranks ... Perhaps a Thompson nomination could blunt the notion that the rescue missions in New Orleans are racially motivated.

Our forefathers understood that 'trust me' was not good enough for protecting civil liberties.

The most important thing to me, in terms of thinking about the issue of impeachment, is to recognize that the Constitution does place a value on continuity. We don't want to have a situation where you make a single error, and you're exposed to an impeachment proceeding.

Not only John, but the entire Reagan administration Justice Department, was inclined toward a broad recognition of executive power and executive privilege,

You can't have two ballots that are identical ... and have (them) counted in one way in one county and another way in another county,

The burden of persuasion is on the president to establish the program's legality.

Some good may come of the controversy. It's beneficial for everyone to cope with these issues, ... Active citizen involvement is critical for a healthy democracy.

The problem and the danger of the Bush administration is that they know no limits. It's a total lack of understanding of separation of power and checks and balances.

I've talked with him for hours. His philosophy is pretty solid. I would be stunned if John ended up resembling a Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in his approach to constitutional interpretation.

I think the administration is misreading the Senate and the public, because you end up losing more if your credibility is strained and people think you're playing them for dupes.

If you're schooled in just the executive branch, you're inclined to think Congress is pretty stupid -- they get things wrong a lot and all smartness lies in the executive branch, ... starting point would be to give very strong deference to the president in the field of foreign affairs.

The Department of Justice statement is fatuous. If you can't tell by looking at his opinions what kind of philosophy he would carry to the Supreme Court, how would you know to nominate him A judge has a personal view of what the Constitution means.

Justice Thomas, in public speeches, has said one thing that has awed him is that he has never heard ever a syllable out ... of any justice even insinuating that politics was influencing their vote, ... I'm not saying they are taking vacations together or anything like that ... but the civility of the discourse remains the same.

He's living in a time warp. The great irony is Bush inherited the strongest presidency of anyone since Franklin Roosevelt, and Cheney acts as if he's still under the constraints of 1973 or 1974.

There's nothing to suggest that in 60 years, she's ever thought or written a word about the U.S. Constitution. This is an opportunity squandered.

Nothing in Al Gonzales public statements, legislative proposals or anything else suggests that this is an individual who operates outside of the political gyroscope of President Bush.

The government has the obligation to come forth and make its own case.

He is a man who is not tortured by doubt over the correctness of his judicial philosophy.

It creates an aura for an ordinary person where maybe they will think twice about the privacy of their Internet searches.

He will not be blunderbuss and say the president has carte blanche, ... On the other hand, he is not going to ignore national security. He will pay deference, but not blind deference.