Mickey Edwards Quotations

Lobbying is a constitutionally protected activity because the opposite of lobbying is to treat public officials as demigods.

The president is always somewhere on the horizon in any midterm election, and in this one it might very well be more than the usual referendum on the president. Bush could be a heavy shadow in this election.

The Bush administration is certainly not the first administration to do this kind of thing, ... but they seem much more heavy-handed about it.

This is at a scale that is really shocking. There is a certain kind of arrogance that in the past you might not have had. They were so supremely confident that there didn't seem to be any kind of moral compass here.

It's easy to talk about our system not functioning. It's actually functioning exactly the way we've designed it to function by giving so much power to the political parties, which all of our, you know, leading founders - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison - all said don't create political parties like the ones we have now. We did it, and we're paying a very high price for it.

I would like to see a contribution-free election that permitted the people to vote as opposed to corporations. There really ought to be no money in the system except what an individual voter or citizen contributes out of his or her own pocket.

The Supreme Court's 1947 decision which introduced the wall of separation between church and state 'has fueled a movement to sterilize anything in American public life from religion.'

As presidential authority expands, and the role of Congress diminishes, the American people continue to lose control over their government. Today's assertions of executive power are indeed a nightmare and Peter Shane's extremely readable and well-informed book describes this disturbing transformation in frightening detail. For anybody who cares about our constitutional system of protected liberties, this book is indispensable. I couldn't put it down and grew angrier, and more concerned, with every page.