Judges From The United States

"The life I've led has only been made possible because I'm an American. The astounding people I've met along the way, the astonishing experience I've had, and the amazing opportunities I've been given have far exceeded anything I could have ever hoped for or expected."

"In a government which is emphatically stiled a government of laws, the least possible range ought to be left for the discretion of the judge."

"But how far this court, in whom the judiciary powers may in some sort be said to be concentrated, shall have power to declare the nullity of a law passed in its forms by the legislative power, without exercising the power of that branch, contrary to the plain terms of that constitution, is indeed a deep, important, and I will add, a tremendous question, the decision of which might involve consequences to which gentlemen may not have extended their ideas. I am happy in being of opinion there is no occasion to consider it upon this occasion; and still more happy in the hope that the wisdom and prudence of the legislature will prevent the disagreeable necessity of ever deciding it, by suggesting the propriety of making the principles of the Constitution the great rule to direct the spirit of their laws."

"I had seen firsthand that we were wasting unimaginable amounts of our tax dollars, increasing crime and despair, and severely and unnecessarily harming people’s lives, particularly our children’s, by our failed drug policy. In short, I had seen that our drug laws were a failure, and I simply could not keep quiet about it any longer."

"[W]e will look back in astonishment that we allowed our former policy to persist for so long, much as we look back now at slavery, or Jim Crow laws, or the days when women were prohibited from voting."

"We have never been a drug-free society and we never will be. Recognizing this fact, and recognizing the fact that these harmful drugs are here to stay, we should try to employ an approach that will most effectively reduce the deaths, disease, crime, and misery caused by their presence in our communities."

"Judge Gray's thorough and scholarly work, based as it is on his personal experience, should help considerably to improve our impossible drug laws. [His] book drives a stake through the heart of the failed War on Drugs and gives us options to hope for in the battles to come."

"Similarly, when drug users are forced to steal or prostitute themselves in order to get money to buy artificially expensive illicit drugs from the criminal underworld, that is a Drug Prohibition problem more than it is a drug problem. So too is the diversion of billions of dollars from the prosecution of violent street crime and fraud to the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug sellers and millions of drug users a distinct problem of Drug Prohibition."

"Gray first went public in 1992 as a critic of the nation's war on drugs because, he said, he had seen firsthand and up close how the drug laws have failed, how they waste tax dollars, increase crime and despair, and harm so many lives unnecessarily."

"So much money is wasted in the drug war. I've had two congressman, Orange County congressman, tell me that there are lots of people in Washington who now believe that the drug war is not winnable but that it is imminently fundable… Where President Eisenhower once talked about the Military-Industrial Complex, we now have the Prison-Industrial Complex. It's the same thing, the same disease."

"[I]t is much easier to control, regulate, and police a legal market than an illegal one."

"The biggest oxymoron in our world today is the term ‘controlled substances.’ Why? Because as soon as you prohibit a substance, you give up control to the bad guys. That’s a huge problem we’ve inflicted upon ourselves."

"Every time the penalties for selling drugs are raised, adult drug traffickers have an extra incentive to recruit children for their drug transactions."

"Nothing in the history of the United States of America has eroded the protection of our Bill of Rights nearly as much as our government’s War on Drugs… Conventional wisdom says that the only way to stem the tide is to grant law enforcement agencies greater and greater powers and to let them intrude more and more completely into the private lives of our people."

"Not only have more and more people realized that alcoholism really is a disease, but the legal system has also stated clearly in the California Supreme Court case of Sundance v. Municipal Court that people who are addicted to alcohol cannot be punished merely for their addition… It remains a critical part of our zero-tolerance policy that people who use illegal drugs cannot be considered in human terms. They must be treated as demons and we must contrast ‘drug cultures,’ on the one hand, with ‘decent’ people, on the other."

"Ask your local high school or junior college students and they will tell you the same thing they tell me: that it is easier for our children and underage adults to get illicit drugs than it is for them to get alcohol."

"The effect of our drug policy on the health of people who use illicit drugs stem from four basic problems: (1) a lack of information about medial hygiene, because our laws push drug users away from the medical professionals who can help them; (2) no quality control regarding either the strength or purity of illicit drugs; (3) the inability of many drug users to prepare and use injectable drugs under more medically hygienic conditions;… and (4) the enormous pressure on drug addicts to engage in dangerous criminal activity, such as prostitution, burglary and drug dealing, in order to get the money to purchase these artificially expensive drugs."

"Why don't we make distinctions between people who use drugs and people who abuse them? We automatically conclude that everyone who uses marijuana, for example, needs drug treatment. I agree that marijuana can have some harmful effects on the user, but, obviously, so can alcohol. I drink a glass of wine almost every night with dinner. Does that mean that I need an alcohol-treatment program?"

"There is no such thing as having both a free society, and a drug-free society. Put another way, dangerous as they are, these drugs are here to stay, and we should work to discover how best to reduce the harm they will cause in our communities."

"Many medical and legal professionals believe that in many ways marijuana is actually less harmful than my drug of choice, alcohol. So if adults choose to use marijuana instead of alcohol, the governments, as a matter of freedom and liberty, should not be able to prohibit them from doing so."

"Sending Robert Downey, Jr. to prison for drug use makes no more sense than locking up Betty Ford for using alcohol. Now if it's Darryl Strawberry and he uses drugs while driving, that's a different matter; he should do time."

"Since you [US “drug czar” McCaffrey] control a federal budget that has just been increased from $17.8 billion last year to $19.2 billion this year, is asking people like you if we should continue with our nation's current drug policy like a person asking a barber if one needs a haircut?"

"‘It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he does not want to hear.’ To that comment I offer a corollary: ‘Friends tell friends the truth.’ The real problem in this area actually is not the drugs themselves. The real problem is that our citizens and our leaders simply will not look at the evidence, even though it is all around us. Our present policy is exacerbating the problems and will not stand up to scrutiny. What we really need to do is to open the subject to rigorous public debate."

"Even high security prisoners like Charles Manson are testing positive in prison for illicit drugs… Our laws are not deterring many people from a life of drug abuse and drug trafficking, and if we cannot even keep these drug out of our prisons, how can we expect to keep them out of our communities?"

"The most widely used 'illegal' drug is marijuana, yet, by every measure, it is much less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. In my 30 adult years, this gross injustice has turned me very cynical toward the government."

"The war on drugs has done considerable damage to the fourth amendment and that something is very wrong indeed when a person gets a longer sentence for marijuana than for espionage."

"The drug prohibitionists must have marijuana illegal, because without that, the raw numbers of the users of all other illegal drugs combined do not come even close to justifying the prison/industrial complex that has been spawned to "combat" this drug menace."

"In May 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced a partnership with the Gates Foundation to 'reinvent education.' Cuomo called Gates a visionary and argued that the pandemic has created 'a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates'] ideas...all these buildings, all these physical classrooms-why with all the technology you have?' In fact, Gates has been trying to dismantle the public education system of the United States for two decades."

"It's a sad thing to say ... but that's classic Andrew Cuomo. A lot of people in New York State have received those phone calls. The bullying is nothing new. I believe Ron Kim and it's very, very sad, no public servant no person who's telling the truth should be treated that way. The threats, the belittling, the demand that someone change their statement right that moment ... many many times I've heard that and I know a lot of other people in this state have heard that"

"Governor Cuomo has complete discretion to be able to issue mass clemencies for the prisons. We know that de Blasio, the mayor, has the power to be able to release hundreds and thousands of people from Rikers Island and other jails. And so we really want them to be able to do that. There’s lots of pressure and demands that have been issued by local groups."

"[Cuomo] chose to protect business profits over people's lives and now the whole world is paying attention to that decision and he needs to be held accountable for that"

"'Just say no' isn't enough unless there is something to say 'yes' to.""

"We are not going to make America great again. It was never that great. We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping of women, 51% of our population, is gone, and every woman's full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution."

"New York State calls this attack on Jussie Smollett what it is — a hate crime. Homophobia and racism will not be tolerated"

"SALT encourages high-income New Yorkers to move to other states. And what you have to remember is even if a small number of high-income taxpayers leave, it has a dramatic effect on this tax space. We have one of the most progressive tax codes in the United States, which is a good thing. Which means the richer you are, the more you pay. However, that presents a very fragile economy because then you are relying on a very small number of people for the vast amount of your tax dollars. One percent of the taxpayers pay nearly half of all the taxes. One percent pay nearly half of all those taxes. Those one percent are the richest people in the state, they're the richest people in the country, and they are the most mobile people in the country. And you see the chart on the bottom. Top one percent - about 46 percent. Top five percent - 63 percent of all the revenue. Top 10 percent - 74 percent of all the revenue. Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. We did. Now, God forbid the rich leave. More than 95 percent of the tax increase from SALT falls on the top 20 percent of taxpayers."

"You know who came through Ellis Island? A gentleman named Richard Cawley. A poor Irish immigrant who came during the potato famine. You know who his grandson is? Vice President Michael Pence. You know who else came through New York harbor? Frederick Trump, grandfather of Donald Trump. The greatest arrogance is when you forget where you came from, and where you started, and this is the greatest arrogance. We all came from somewhere else. We are all immigrants."

"We’re the ones who are hit now. That’s today, but tomorrow it’s going to somewhere else, whether it’s Detroit, whether it’s New Orleans. It will work it’s way across the country"

"My brother Chris, is positive for coronavirus"

"We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population"

"We’re the only ethnic group in America that has been dismembered. We didn't migrate here or immigrate here voluntarily. The United States came to us in succeeding waves of invasions. We are a captive people, in a sense, a hostage people. It is our political destiny and our right to self-determination to want to have our homeland [back]. Whether they like it or not is immaterial. If they call us radicals or subversives or separatists, that’s their problem. This is our home, and this is our homeland, and we are entitled to it. We are the host. Everyone else is a guest. It is not our fault that whites don’t make babies, and blacks are not growing in sufficient numbers, and there’s no other groups with such a goal to put their homeland back together again. We do. Those numbers will make it possible. I believe that in the next few years, we will see an irredentists movement, beyond assimilation, beyond integration, beyond separatism, to putting Mexico back together as one. That's irridentism. One Mexico, one nation."

"We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."

"Kill the gringo. What I mean is we must kill the gringo economically and politically but not necessarily physically unless, of course, the worst comes to the worst."

"There comes a time in everyone's life when you have to admit you were wrong. It is Sunday morning and i am preparing to go to church and get right with God. But first I have to get right with my family, my friends, and the thousands of strangers who have been hurt by my insensitive remarks. I am sorry. I have damaged the national debate on the very real subject of sexual harassment, abuse and unfortunately rape. It is not a laughing matter. It wasn't when I prosecuted sexual misconduct for the State of Ohio, and it is not now. To my daughters, Katie Corrin O'Neill, Tiffany O'Neill Scullen, and my sisters Patricia O'Neill Sacha and Mary Kaye O'Neill, accomplished women all, please accept my public apology for dragging you into this matter. You deserved better treatment than this. I love you, respect you, and yes. I was wrong. Thank you for loving me enough to stand up to my departure from a loving life."

"If I offended anyone, particularly the wonderful women in my life, I apologize. But if I have helped elevate the discussion on the serious issues of sexual assault, as opposed to personal indiscretions, to a new level...I make no apologies. Suggesting the admitted conduct of Senator Al Franken and the alleged conduct of Judge Roy Moore are on the same level trivializes the serious subject at hand. There are Democrats out there who are saying neither one of them pass the purity test to sit in the United States Senate. And that is sad."

"Now that the dogs of war are calling for the head of Senator Al Franken I believe it is time to speak up on behalf of all heterosexual males. As a candidate for Governor let me save my opponents some research time. In my last fifty years I was sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females. It ranged form a gorgeous personal secretary to Senator Bob Taft (Senior) who was my first true love and we made passionate love in the hayloft of her parents barn in Gallipolis and ended with a drop dead gorgeous red head who was senior advisor to Peter Lewis at Progressive Insurance in Cleveland. Now can we get back to discussing legalizing marijuana and opening the state hospital network to combat the opioid crisis. I am sooooo disappointed by this national feeding frenzy about sexual indiscretions decades ago. Peace."

"As a 15 year jurist, I like to think I speak with clarity. So let me try again. When a United States Senator commits a non criminal act of indiscretion; and when it is brought to his attention he immediately has the integrity to apologize; and the apology is accepted by the victim: IT IS WRONG for the dogs of war to leap onto his back and demand his resignation from the United States Senate. It is morally wrong. And as an aside for all you sanctimonious judges who are demanding my resignation, hear this. I was a civil right lawyer actively prosecuting sexual harassment cases on behalf of the Attorney General's Office before and before you were born. Lighten up folks. This is how Democrats remain in the minority."

"Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual."

"Ignoring the lessons of our history, Obama’s economic policies of big government, enlarged federal control over our lives and eventually, as even he predicts, increased taxation has garnered a name of its own – “Obamanomics.” Obamanomics is simply the philosophy of socialism, loosely defined as “collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production or distribution of goods.” Nations that embrace socialism inevitably experience stagnation and economic decline."

"Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God upon which this nation and our laws are predicated."

"I’m a very strict constructionist of the Constitution and I know how to question, or I know how to vet—to use the word that the press uses all the time—candidates for judicial offices, and I think I would be very successful in the United States Senate in doing that because I think that there’s so many in the judiciary and legal establishment that don’t understand the Constitution, don’t understand the separation of powers, don’t understand the concepts of restraint of power in the Constitution."