The program grew out of a desire to address a gap identified after 9/11 ... The program does not involve the NSA examining the phone records of ordinary Americans. Rather, it consolidates these records into a database that the government can query if it has a specific lead - phone records that the companies already retain for business purposes.
The national government...will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.
The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
What patient can trust the knowledge of a physician without reputation or furniture, in a period when publicity is all-powerful and when the government gilds the lamp posts on the Place de la Concorde in order to dazzle the poor?
When taxes are too high, people go hungry. When the government is too intrusive, people lose their spirit. Act for the people's benefit. Trust them; leave them alone.
Government is merely an attempt to express the conscience of everybody, the average conscience of the nation, in the rules that everybody is commanded to obey. That is all it is.
Pluralist societies are not accidents of history. They are a product of enlightened education and continuous investment by governments and all of civil society in recognizing and celebrating the diversity of the world's peoples.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.
Since 1981, after our nations severed diplomatic relations, we've worked through a international tribunal to resolve various claims between our countries. The United States and Iran are now settling a long-standing Iranian government claim against the United States government. Iran will be returned its own funds, including appropriate interest but much less than the amount Iran sought. With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well.
Should one whole year from this July 4th pass while the crimes of this government are allowed to continue, we may have passed the point at which non-violent revolution becomes impossible.