There is a recognition that Second Amendment rights, like First Amendment and other rights, come with responsibilities and limitations. There is no reason both sides of the gun debate can't support policies that both protect the right to legally own guns for sport and safety, and reduce the likelihood of mass fatalities.
The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.
I never let politics get personal. You can have the most intense, heated debate on issues, and so long as you keep it on issues, you can go out and have coffee afterwards and you're good friends.
As much as the constitutional argument matters to me, what really matters to me is this sort of moral question of can we order somebody to risk their lives about a military mission if we're not willing to debate, vote, and say that the military mission matters?
I've slipped on occasion into the realm of irresponsible invective, but I try to avoid it and generally recant when I fall short. Because name-calling does nothing to improve understanding or move the political debate forward.
A potlatch is similar to a court case in that both are prohibitively expensive; both involve lengthy speeches and the vigorous examination and debate of the actions, rights and legal responsibilities of the participants. One has food, singing and spiritual rites; the other, not so much.
Polygraphs have sparked a fierce debate for at least a century.
Today the people from my State of Tennessee would listen to this debate, or even talk about a reference to God on our money or in the Halls of Congress or in our Pledge and say, please, let common sense and logic win the day and prevail versus legal mumbo jumbo.
Another example of the educational inequality is the current debate over publicly financed school vouchers which will provide educational opportunities to a privileged handful, but deprive public schools of desperately needed resources.
As has been pointed out with Libya, the debate over Libya, sometimes we allow diplomatic relations with imperfect regimes because progress can best be made through engagement instead of isolation.
Why aren't we talking about Hillary Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time? That's a pretty valid attempt to influence an election. Somebody giving her the debate questions and the answers of an election.
I am convinced that we as a body must conduct a formal and legitimate debate about election irregularities.
If the court is a political institution making important political decisions, then the public should debate the politics of Supreme Court decisions.
It's a complicated issue, and you can't boil it down in a tweet... two sentences cannot sum up the whole gun debate... The minute you try to talk about it honestly and openly, you get raked over the coals.
Let's start to have a grown up debate in this country about who we are and where we want to go and what kind of country we want to build.
When you're talking about a trade you're saying, 'Is it good for this team or that team, did they give up too much?' That kind of debate is great for the game.
My goal in Baghdad was to facilitate a debate here in the United States on America's policy toward Iraq, a debate that's been sadly lacking.
So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.
The No Child Left Behind Act will be one of President Bush's enduring legacies. And it was engineered and inaugurated with a truly bipartisan coalition in Congress. Accountability, standards, and truly measuring student performance just makes sense. The only real debate about the law was and is whether or not it was adequately funded.
The word 'tolerance' once meant we all have the right to argue rationally for our deepest convictions in the public arena. Now it means those convictions are not even subject to rational debate.
Scotland needs comedy more than ever. With the independence debate, finally after 300 years, reaching room temperature.
With 'Poison,' I'm sure some people just hated the movie, but it also got caught up into a debate about arts funding because it was a film that received a National Endowment for the Arts Public Grant, and it won the prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
The debate on how to shrink the federal government is at the core of our problem of government not doing its job.
It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.
So much of what we get on our news debate shows is really people spinning one way or the other, giving their talking points one way or the other.
We need a government, not politics. Because there's too much politics. Of course there should be debate. But there seems to be so much pettiness and not enough good faith. It is civilized to agree to disagree, and this idea is slowly disintegrating. The great statesmen of the past knew this, and I think it helps drive civilization.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
While the political debate over abortion will continue for a very long time, the federal government can and should be doing more to support programs and services that provide women with better options.
When I am in the Scottish Parliament chamber, I often feel the need to sit for the entire debate. It's only courteous to listen to what everyone has to say, although I often find myself desperate to say something but too scared to stand up in case I regret it.
Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.
The most important event I covered was the Panama Canal debate, which dragged on for months.
I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
I come to urge my party to be open to debate and discussion; to move away from a lock-step litmus test which advocates abortion on demand in an effort to reach a broader national consensus.
There is no fun in getting into a debate or a contest of wills. If something important comes out of the conversation, okay. If not, that's okay, too.
Political civility is not about being polite to each other. It's about reclaiming the power of 'We the People' to come together, debate the common good and call American democracy back to its highest values amid our differences.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.