Notable House Floor Speeches, Freedom of Speech
On November 16, 1999, Cohen defended Philadelphia School District Superintendent David Hornbeck from calls by Tom Druce that incoming Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street should not reappoint him as Superintendent. He said "the fact that Mr. Druce or other members of this House may disagree with remarks made by the superintendent of schools is absolutely no reason to use the powers of this House to seek his firing. As Mr. Roebuck said (James R. Roebuck), people in this country, even people who are despised by every single member of the State House, have the right to speak. It is not a right we graciously give people because we like them. Freedom of speech for those we like is meaningless. Mr. Hornbeck's freedom of speech is not dependent on whether he has majority support in the House of Representatives or not; it is something inherent in every American citizen and every Pennsylvania citizen. To attempt to muzzle Superintendent Hornbeck's speech is an outrage. It is an invitation to endless further litigation.... The attempt to discipline a school superintendent because his remarks are disagreed with is at the very best a very, very foolish thing. I would hope over the next several weeks the maker of this threat would reconsider this threat and decide to let Mr. Hornbeck speak and to let a speech be just a speech and not an ongoing public issue."
Read more about this topic: Mark B. Cohen
Famous quotes containing the words notable, house, floor, freedom and/or speech:
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Instinct.—When our house burns down, we even forget our lunch.—Yes, but we go back to it later in the ashes.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The distant box is open. A sound of grain
Poured over the floor in some eagerness we
Rise with the night let out of the box of wind.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Colossians, 4:6.