Michael M. Honda Quotes
The Constitution is never tested during times of tranquility; it is during times of tension, turmoil, tragedy, trauma, and terrorism that it is sorely tested.
Honda, Michael M. "Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001." Congressional Record, vol. 147, Government Printing Office, 12 Oct. 2001.
Bush, more so than any other president, claimed executive powers that had never been claimed by other presidents even in wartime. At the time the senator made this statement, the Supreme Court had ruled against the President on several of his claims and others were pending. The powers ranged from the right to hold even American Citizens incommunicado without filing any charges or going before a court or even allowing a court to review the action if the President Claims the person was an “enemy combatant” or “terrorist”; to the right to spy on American Citizens phone calls in America without any court review and even went so far as to claim the right to question Americans or other suspected enemies by methods that are classified as “torture” by most nations and is even illegal by the American Military Regulations for interrogating prisoners.
This was an insult to the George W. Bush administration which had stretched the Constitution more so than any previous administration, had asserted Presidential powers that had never been asserted before and had had several of its more controversial policies and practices overturned by the Supreme Court.
In a 1949 dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago Jackson claimed the majority view would “convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”
Michael Makoto Honda is an American politician and former educator. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in Congress from 2001 to 2017.
