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"The United States Senate has
long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world.
But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level
of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of
congressional immunity."
"It is strange that we can verbally
attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold
ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor. Surely the
United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal.
Surely we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we dish
out to outsiders.”
"Those of us who shout the loudest
about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently
those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of
Americanism: the right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the
right to protest; the right of independent thought."
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