William P. Hepburn Quotes
No member ought to be compelled to go to another man, his equal and no more, a representative of a constituency no whit superior to his own, and ask for the poor privilege of calling his measure to the attention of the House.
The then rules of the House gave the speaker control of what legislation was introduced.
William P. Hepburn, 1833-1916, U. S. Congressman (Republican, IA), House debate, February 18, 1909
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Two years later with bipartisan support Speaker Joseph Cannon was stripped of his party and the Rules Committee was created.
This clause was a throwback to the days before the separation of powers where the legislature could imprison anyone they thought contemptuous or interfering with their deliberation. Contrast this with the earlier constitution of Massachusetts which forbade the legislature from acting as a judge or prosecutor. See {616750} and {616749}. Also this was a clear invasion of freedom of the press and freedom of speech provided by the Bill of Rights. However, at the time, it was not clear that the Federal Constitution was binding on State Governments on State Matters. Modern law is still ambiguous on this general point, but not on freedom of speech and the press which is currently definitely binding on the states.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
He was referring to Negroes who did not then have the fight to vote.
Since Theodore Roosevelt, the Presidency has become stronger and Congress weaker. The original idea of the framers of the Constitution was to have three co-equal branches of government. However Gingrich was so partisan on this point that he lost most of his credibility and lost his position of leadership in the House. He was constantly asserting the power of the House against Democratic President Bill Clinton while he never had when Republican George W. Bush was President. His house impeached President Clinton on charges emanating from Clinton’s sexual foibles and effort to keep his predilections secret. This not only impeded government for a long time, but angered the public. In the end the Republican Controlled House could not even get a majority of the Republican controlled Senate to vote against Clinton, much less the super-majority the rules required. Ironically, by the second term of George W. Bush’s administration most members of Congress and the American public had thought the Presidency had gotten to powerful relative to Congress and Gingrich’s objective became a national one, but Gingrich himself had been discredited and was completely out of office.
In most legislatures, the leader of the majority party can usually prevent any proposed legislation from coming to a vote. Many will use that individual power to block any legislation that they do not support. Others like Skelos believes that democracy requires that the entire legislature have the opportunity to vote on an issue and that a single individual or even a majority of the majority should not be able to block a vote as this would disenfranchise the legislators. In this case, the bill was to legalize Gay Marriage—a very controversial proposal. When the vote was taken, 4 Republicans and all but one Democrat voted in favor. The other Republicans and the one Democrat voted against. The bill passed and New York became the first large state to legalize Gay Marriage. Skelos, who opposed the bill, was castigated by conservatives of his own party for not using his power to prevent the vote from ever happening, and putting principle above party.
William Peters Hepburn was an American Civil War officer and an eleven-term Republican congressman from Iowa's now-obsolete 8th congressional district, serving from 1881 to 1887, and from 1893 to 1909. According to historian Edmund Morris, "Hepburn was the House's best debater, admired for his strength of character and legal acumen." As chair of one of the most powerful committees in Congress, he guided or sponsored many statutes regulating businesses, including most notably the Hepburn Act of 1906. The Hepburn Act authorized the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission to require railroads to charge "just and reasonable" rates.
