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)
“In front of a widow’s house is a sure spot for trouble.”
—Chinese proverb.
“They seldom looked happy. They passed one another without a word in the elevator, like silent shades in hell, hell-bent on their next look from a handsome stranger. Their next rush from a popper. The next song that turned their bones to jelly and left them all on the dance floor with heads back, eyes nearly closed, in the ecstasy of saints receiving the stigmata.”
—Andrew Holleran (b. 1943)
“When a man says that he is Jesus or Napoleon, or that the Martians are after him, or claims something else that seems outrageous to common sense, he is labeled psychotic and locked up in a madhouse. Freedom of speech is only for normal people.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“He has the earnestness of a prophet. In an age of pedantry and dilettantism, he has no grain of these in his composition. There is nowhere else, surely, in recent readable English, or other books, such direct and effectual teaching, reproving, encouraging, stimulating, earnestly, vehemently, almost like Mahomet, like Luther.... His writings are a gospel to the young of this generation; they will hear his manly, brotherly speech with responsive joy, and press forward to older or newer gospels.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)