The House Judiciary Committee is a great place to promote our core principles of constitutionally limited government, individual freedom and the rule of law.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.
Any committee is only as good as the most knowledgeable, determined and vigorous person on it. There must be somebody who provides the flame.
Now judicial review, beloved by conservatives, can, of course, fulfill the excellent function of declaring government interventions and tyrannies unconstitutional. But it can also validate and legitimize the government in the eyes of the people by declaring these actions valid and constitutional.
Historically, the judicial branch has often been the sole protector of the rights of minority groups against the will of the popular majority.
I consider the United States Senate the greatest deliberative body in the world, and I respect the important role the Constitution affords it in the confirmation of our judges.
I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights.
While I have the greatest respect for the Supreme Court's members, I cannot claim familiarity with any particular judicial philosophies the justices might possess.
I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences... essential to that institution's ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.
You have a good judicial system in the U.S., as you have learned from the Nixon-Watergate period.
The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination - a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.