Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes
Whatever your views are, we have a Constitution and we have a Bill of Rights, and we have a law of the land. Two thirds of Democrats in the Senate and three fourths of the Republicans. I signed it, and I am going to enforce it, and I am going to observe it. And I think anyone who is worthy of the high office of President is going to do the same thing.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 There was a major backlash in the South against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson, a Southerner himself, went right after the protesters.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908-1973, 36th President of the United States (Democrat, TX), Campaign Speech, October 9,1964
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was right. Even the vaunted Southern Filibuster was broken by the strategy and tactics Johnson and Senator Humbert Humphry, the Floor Leader for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
The president was asked if he supported the Supreme court's school desegregation decision:
In 1953 the Senator had proposed a Constitutional amendment that would severely curtail the treaty making powers of the President. President Eisenhower actively opposed Bricker and the right wing of his own party. The Senator was outraged. Despite Bricker’s complaining, the public and the Congress sided with the President.
This is the earliest surviving attempt of the Romans to formulate a legal code.
George W. Bush. See {618119} for the rejoinder to the defense.
Powell was the Secretary of State and Addington kept advising the administration that as long as the President was acting in defense of the country in his capacity as Commander in Chief, he did not have to obey any existing laws that had been Constitutionally passed which in the opinion of the President restricted or limited the President or the executive branch. Addington was an attorney and Assistant to the Vice President, but he was given much responsibility for administration policy. Powell the Secretary of State of the Administration could not have disagreed more and although most politicians including Republicans disagreed with the Addington thesis, Powell was one of the few Republicans to criticize the Addington position.
The President wanted Anderson to relay his message to other Republicans which he did. At that time the Southern racists were almost all members of the Southern bloc of the Democratic Party. Most Republicans were then advocates of non discrimination. By 2010 virtually all the racists, nativists, neo Nazis, anti Catholics, and anti Semites had gravitated to the Republican party if they were still active in politics. Reasonable Republicans were embarrassed as reasonable Democrats had been before the shift which resulted from passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Congress over the last century has ceded much of its Constitutional power to the President. Congress has much power to check the President, but just as Congress has not been very competent at legislating, oversight, and conducting hearings and investigations, it has not organized itself to use the powers it has very well.
He was commenting on the Constitution that had come out of the 1789 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and did not yet have the Bill of Rights.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to by his initials LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, in office from 1963 to 1969. He served as the 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963 and assumed the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson was also a United States representative and later majority leader in the United States Senate. Johnson is one of only four people to have served, at various times, in all four federal elected positions.
