Cruz Rips Senate Dems for Rejecting Text of First Amendment

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) railed against a proposed constitutional amendment by Senate Democrats to restrict campaign speech at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, going so far as to propose replacing the text of the Democrat’s amendment with the First Amendment, a proposal that Democrats on the committee unanimously rejected.

During the hearing, Cruz argued that the Democratic amendment would give Congress the power to severely restrict or ban political speech, stating the proposed amendment “would repeal the free speech protections of the First Amendment” and would endanger “the liberty that we revere,” a position that he shares with the ACLU, who says the proposal would “severely limit the First Amendment and would lead directly to government censorship of political speech.”

He added that he thought it strange that Senate Democrats thought they were smarter than the framers of the Constitution. In the end, he proposed an amendment to strike the text from the proposal offered by the Democrats and replace it with the First Amendment. Cruz’s amendment was unanimously rejected by the Democrats at the hearing.

"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton

"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

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