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And unless you think there is a serious chance you’re going to jail, don’t listen to your lawyer.

Barney Frank

Ronald Reagan got a lot of democrats. I wish he hadn`t. I got to Congress with Reagan coming to the Whitehouse. The Reagan Program, a very radical one, a very drastic one passed because he had a lot of democrats. He worked at it personally and also because Reagan retained a popularity.
BARNEY FRANK

Popularity Program Wish
People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
BARNEY FRANK

Entitled Innocence People Presumption
The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it’s that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.
BARNEY FRANK

Issues Moral Spheres
Take free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.
BARNEY FRANK

People Speech Tough
I wouldn’t want [gay marriage] to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current court.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Gay People United States
If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don’t hold it back for retaliatory purposes.
BARNEY FRANK

People Serious Thinking Violation
In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view.
BARNEY FRANK

Believe Excess Views
Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there’s no hierarchy.
BARNEY FRANK

Hierarchy Responsibility Together Working
Serving in Congress is like having a second shot at high school.
BARNEY FRANK

Congress Political School
Ridicule is about the most powerful weapon possible.
BARNEY FRANK

Politics Powerful Weapons
For the trustees to turn away from the entirely reasonable request of the students that a hearing-impaired individual be made president of the college is a very unfortunate expression of insensitivity.
BARNEY FRANK

College Expression President
I believe it is a good thing to get rid of Gaddafi. But does America have to do everything?
BARNEY FRANK

Believe Country Good Thing
[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.
BARNEY FRANK

Government Roles Trying
The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they’ve done the terrible things.
BARNEY FRANK

Done People Rights
Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
BARNEY FRANK

Believe Birth Government
Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Decision Receiving
The best antidote to prejudice is reality.
BARNEY FRANK

Antidote Prejudice Reality
The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left’s on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.
BARNEY FRANK

Ambition Essentials Reality
There were a lot of Romneys. There’s the Romney who was going to be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy; now there’s a Romney who checks with Rick Santorum on that issue.
BARNEY FRANK

Better Country Gay Rights
I have this fear that one day there’s going to be a fire in the Senate and there are only going to be 57 senators there and they’ll all die because they won’t have 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the building.
BARNEY FRANK

Fire One Day Vote
They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won’t be able to be outraged anymore.
BARNEY FRANK

Able Outrage Outraged
While I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively high number of jobs created in April, the fact is that job creation during this recovery period has significantly lagged both historical experience in recovery, and the projections of the Bush Administration.
BARNEY FRANK

Jobs Numbers Recovery
They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who’s getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn’t know how to promote homosexuality.
BARNEY FRANK

Kids School Two
When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.
BARNEY FRANK

Community Effort Law
Well, many of us believe that excessive media concentration is a subject that ought to be addressed, and it is, of course, the intention of the majority party not to allow that to be discussed.
BARNEY FRANK

Believe Media Party
I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the Army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.
BARNEY FRANK

Army Rights Thinking
Today, many people take for granted the notion that people whose lives are going to be very heavily affected by public policies should have a say in how they are formulated and carried out.
BARNEY FRANK

Affected Grant People Policy Public

And unless you think there is a serious chance you’re going to jail, don’t listen to your lawyer.

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And unless you think there is a serious chance you’re going to jail, don’t listen to your lawyer.

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