Dick Thornburgh Quotes

We are a possession of the United States. Congress has full authorization power over Puerto Rico.

I'm not searching for ways to tell the District of Columbia what to do.

If U.S. national sovereignty continues, it is only as a state that Puerto Rico will have permanent 10th Amendment powers over its non-federal affairs, as well as voting power in Congress.

Many states have legalized medicinal marijuana. I believe the president and the Department of Justice ought to respect the will of these separate states... We are capable of self-government. We don't need some federal gendarme to come and tell us what to do. I believe comity toward the states...ought to govern the policy.

I think Puerto Rico becoming a state would fulfill the destiny of 3.5 million American citizens that live in Puerto Rico.

The government of Puerto Rico has every right to hold a plebiscite, to consult the people of Puerto Rico regarding their wishes. But the truth is that for a change in the status of Puerto Rico to happen, you need both Congress and Puerto Rico agreeing to it.

However, the sovereignty of the states is constitutionally defined and recognized, while the powers of the local government in Puerto Rico are defined by, and subject to alteration under, federal statutory law.

Apparently tired of waiting for clear direction from Congress, the people of Puerto Rico have used the tools provided by their own local constitution to schedule a vote for Dec. 13 on the status of the island.

I think he should let me run Ohio. He should let us, the legislature, the members there, we should be running Ohio. The states are the laboratories out here, and I think the president needs to mind to the problems that he has in Washington.

If Congress does its job in this regard, the residents of Puerto Rico will be empowered to act in their own self-interest and express their future political status aspirations accordingly.

Yet, Puerto Rico's economic convergence and political integration with the rest of the nation is in a state of arrest - even though the island has been within the national borders, political system and customs territory of the U.S. for a century.

After one hundred years of federal rule, the United States House of Representatives has moved to provide for the first meaningful route to self-determination for the Puerto Rican people under our federal system.

In historical and constitutional terms, the recent political status vote in Puerto Rico was a necessary but obviously not decisive step on the road of self-determination leading to full self-government.

Self government is the hardest thing that people can do other than fighting a civil war.

Texans can run Texas without the federal government telling them what to do.

[There is no] right of Congress ... to force a good thing upon a people who are unwilling to receive it. The great principle is the right of every community to judge and decide for itself whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil to adopt it.... Whenever you put a limitation upon the right of any people to decide what laws they want, you have destroyed the fundamental principle of self-government.

The Congress of the United States says to the people of Puerto Rico, once and for all, that they are a part of the United States domain and will always remain there; that the legislation for independence in Puerto Rico must come to a decided and permanent end.

Where there is only a national representative government without local self-government, there is no liberty as we understand it

What is the basic unit of "self" in the expression "self-government?" How large does your group have to be before it can be a government unto itself? In fact, do you have to be part of a group at all?

Our devotion to individual freedom limits our readiness to give central government the power to override our traditional power structure.

I deem it my duty again to call your attention to the condition of the District of Columbia. It was doubtless wise in the framers of our Constitution to place the people of this District under the jurisdiction of the General Government, but to accomplish the objects they had in view it is not necessary that this people should be deprived of all the privileges of self-government. Independently of the difficulty of inducing the representatives of distant States to turn their attention to projects of laws which are not of the highest interest to their constituents, they are not individually, nor in Congress collectively, well qualified to legislate over the local concerns of this District. Consequently its interests are much neglected, and the people are almost afraid to present their grievances, lest a body in which they are not represented and which feels little sympathy in their local relations should in its attempt to make laws for them do more harm than good.

The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.

This is a country that historically has had very little central government.

Nor let it be supposed that any people is likely to remain content with semi-independence [autonomy]. It may welcome this as a first step, a partial concession, but not for long. There is no logical stopping place, no halfway house which will make a permanent home on the road to equality, and those who have once got well started on that road grow increasingly impatient and resent every effort to delay them on their way to their final goal.

I am now to address a free people: ages have passed away, and this is first moment you could be distinguished by that appellation…. Your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation! In that new character I hail her! And bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto perpetua.