A Quote by Kirsten Powers

Protesters can't violate First Amendment rights. Only the government can do that.

Kirsten Powers

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Amendment First First Amendment First Amendment Rights Government Only Rights

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Kirsten Powers
American - Author
Born: December 14, 1967

Now I realize it's fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we're told we'll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.

Ronald Reagan

Donald Trump seems to think it is within his rights to trample the First Amendment, to disdain the press, to punish protesters or flag-burners, to ban ethnic categories of immigrants, and so on.

David Remnick

The First Amendment applies to rogues and scoundrels. You don't lose your First Amendment rights because of a sleazy personality, or even for having committed a crime. Felons in jail are protected by the First Amendment.

Naomi Wolf

However, they ignore the fact that the First Amendment is intended to protect only against government sanctions for exercising free speech rights, not private actions.

Ed Koch

First of all, [St. Stephen's] is a radical church. It was one of the first DC churches to have gay ceremonies. A woman said mass there, which almost got a priest excommunicated there; Black Panthers spoke at the church; it was a sanctuary for civil rights protesters and anti-war protesters.

Ian MacKaye

For the first 200 years of our nation's history, corporations were never defined by the courts as persons with free speech rights under the First Amendment. Only in recent years have we witnessed this corporate takeover of our First Amendment, culminating in the Citizens United ruling.

John Bonifaz

...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.

Harry Browne

Americans don't know the Constitution. More than half of those surveyed can't name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment. Only a quarter can name all three branches of government.

Elizabeth Flock

The government argues that First Amendment rights are outweighed by the need to prosecute those who transmit classified information and documents.

Noam Chomsky

Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech".

Alejandro Castro Espin

The framers of our Constitution understood the dangers of unbridled government surveillance. They knew that democracy could flourish only in spaces free from government snooping and interference, and they put restraints on government overreaching in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. . . . These protections require, at a minimum, a neutral arbiter - a magistrate - standing between the government's endless desire for information and the citizens' desires for privacy.

Elizabeth Holtzman

If a corporation can express opinions and be protected in doing so by the First Amendment, then there's no reason logically one wouldn't think they could undertake to enjoy the other rights protected under the First Amendment.

Ken Cuccinelli

There is a recognition that Second Amendment rights, like First Amendment and other rights, come with responsibilities and limitations. There is no reason both sides of the gun debate can't support policies that both protect the right to legally own guns for sport and safety, and reduce the likelihood of mass fatalities.

Randi Weingarten

First there is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed, and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation.

Theodore Parker

There is no question that under the Equal Rights Amendment there will be debates at times, indecision at times, litigation at times. Has anyone proposed that we rescind the First Amendment on free speech because there is too much litigation over it? Has anyone suggested the same for the Fourteenth Amendment I don't suppose there has ever been a constitutional amendment with so much litigation?

Frances Farenthold

It just seems to be a human trait to want to protect the speech of people with whom we agree. For the First Amendment, that is not good enough. So it is really important that we protect First Amendment rights of people no matter what side of the line they are on.

Floyd Abrams

A Quote by Kirsten Powers

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