Let me be clear: There is no stronger advocate for civil liberties in the Senate than myself.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn't.
It's very hard to uphold individual liberty when the person you're representing is often a crook.
I urge calm and sensitivity to the fundamental civil liberties of our country.
You do the best you can, looking at precedent, in trying to anticipate where the Supreme Court is going to draw the balance between the protection of civil liberties and protecting the national security, and in some cases, we guessed wrong.
I firmly believe that the Constitution is the most powerful challenge to illiberal tendencies. If the Constitution is followed in letter and spirit and if the laws are made in the spirit in which Constitution was made, liberties can indeed be protected.
Liberals are stalwart defenders of civil liberties - provided we're only talking about criminals.
Every senator needs to stand up and represent their constituents - not big business, not the ACLU, not activist groups, not political interests, but the American interests, the workers' interests.
Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act's provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts.
For two decades the state has been taking liberties, and these liberties were once ours.
There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.