Barbara Jordan (1936-96).

Deep in the hot summer of 1974, on July 25, a junior member of the House Judiciary Committee spoke for articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon.  Barbara Jordan said (with our emphasis):

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:  "We, the people."  It’s a very eloquent beginning.  But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people."  I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.  But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

Today I am an inquisitor.  An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemness that I feel right now.  My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total.  And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.

Barry Barnett

Blawgletter defends the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.