A courtroom is supposed to be a place where the status quo can be disrupted - even upended - when the Constitution or laws may require, where the comfortable can be afflicted and the afflicted find some comfort, all under the shelter of the law.
Rhode Island works hard to reduce air pollution in our communities. We passed laws to prohibit cars and buses from idling their engines and to retrofit school buses with diesel pollution controls. But there is only so much a single state can do, particularly against out-of-state pollution.
If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this Earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics. We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason.
As a co-founder of the Defend Social Security Caucus in the Senate, you can count on me to continue to stand up for our seniors and fight any back door efforts to cut benefits.
I'm not running for the U.S. Senate because I think Lincoln Chafee is a bad man.
Is keeping Big Oil happy with subsidies from the American people more important than addressing our deficit? Should a billionaire who makes a multi-million-dollar gift to a museum receive more tax bang for his charitable buck than a middle-class family who gives to their local church?
Each generation in this country gets the responsibility of being the ambassadors for this American democracy that our parents and grandparents fought, bled, and died for.
The bottom line is that our kids deserve a brighter future. They deserve an opportunity to attend college, regardless of their wealth or class. And our economy needs an educated work force that can compete in the global race for jobs.
If you look at the casualties, the federal government isn't waging a War on Coal. If anything, coal is waging a war on us.
I think people really understand that clean air and clean water and not having factories dumping their emissions into the atmosphere and into the rivers and into the sea has been a very good thing for America. EPA stands watch for very important principles that go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt.
You can measure the warming oceans with a thermometer. You measure sea level rise with a yardstick. You can measure the dramatic increase in acidification with a simple pH test, and you can replicate what excess CO2 does to seawater in a basic high school science lab.
When we breathe it in, soot can interfere with our lungs and increase the risk of asthma attacks, lung cancer and even premature death. The smallest particles can pass into the blood stream and cause heart disease, stroke and reproductive complications.
As a Senator from Rhode Island, I wish that once - just once - the fossil fuel industry and their paid-for PR machine would concede that burning their product causes real harm to other people.
I think a lot of the people who feel out of step with contemporary society or feel that they've been left back economically or feel disaffected and are drawn to the Republican Party, they are looking for a news source that will tell them something they would like to hear and then is reassuring, emotionally rewarding, and confirming.
The Founding Fathers set up the American judiciary as a check on the excesses of the elected branches and as a refuge when those branches are corrupted or consumed by passing passions.
Millions upon millions of secret spending by the fossil fuel industry that was unleashed by the disastrous 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision - this money not only fuels the campaigns of many candidates; it also represents a threat to those who don't toe the polluter line on climate change.
The dreadful decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission was the culmination of the Republican appointees' careful work to open American politics to corporate influence.
Frankly, we should have an ARPA-O, an Advanced Research Projects Agency for oceans research, to match DARPA for defense and ARPA-E for energy. And we should have an Oceans and Coasts Fund to match the upland- and freshwater-directed Land and Water Conservation Fund.
If everyone on the Court always voted for the prosecution against the defendant, for the corporation against the plaintiffs, and for the government against the condemned, a vital spark of American democracy would be extinguished.
The best way to shine a light on all of this 'dark money' flooding into our elections would be for Congress to pass legislation requiring all organizations to disclose their political spending in a timely manner.
