I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.

One camp accepts the Court's limits on contributions but urges the reinstatement of spending caps - even if this requires a constitutional amendment subjecting political speech, if not pornography, to government regulation.

Given the difficulty of resisting such temptations over the longer run, a proper concern for the welfare of congressional souls may well be the ultimate argument in favor of term limitations.

In rendering its decision in our case, the Supreme Court equated money with speech because these days it takes the first to make yourself heard.

The Court made an exception, however, in the case of candidates contributing to their own campaigns because of the rather reasonable presumption that a candidate is incapable of corrupting himself.

If enough people openly engage in conduct once considered reprehensible, we rewrite the rule book and assume that God, as a good democrat, will go along.

The kind of corruption the media talk about, the kind the Supreme Court was concerned about, involves the putative sale of votes in exchange for campaign contributions.

Moreover, we are showing a dismaying tendency to recast God in Man's image.

Under the circumstances, may I suggest another means of encouraging probity in elective office. I refer to term limitations, which can serve ends beyond that of saving congressional souls.

Once it becomes impossible for members of Congress to make a career of legislative service, the temptation to bend a vote for whatever reason may yield to the better angels of their nature.

As a consequence, the Court ruled that the limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment, but it accepted the $1,000 limit on individual contributions on the ground that the need to avoid the appearance of corruption justified this limited constraint on speech.

In the last analysis, of course, an oath will encourage fidelity in office only to the degree that officeholders continue to believe that they cannot escape ultimate accountability for a breach of faith.

I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.

This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.

They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies.

Unfortunately, the media, which are not at all reluctant to act in their own self-interest, have succeeded in equating reform in the public mind with further restrictions on just about everyone else's freedom of political speech.

I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them.

What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.

What distinguishes the campaign finance issue from just about every other one being debated these days is that the two sides do not divide along conventional liberal/ conservative lines.

It would seem, therefore, that this constitutional safeguard may no longer serve its original purpose, especially when, as we learned last year, some acts of perjury may now be acceptable - in this world, at least, if not the next.

Unfortunately, in today's world we have to be reminded that the power of an oath derives from the fact that in it we ask God to bear witness to the promises we make with the implicit expectation that He will hold us accountable for the manner in which we honor them.

For any new technology there is always controversy and there always some fear associated with it. I think that's just the price of being first sometimes.

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, what shall be done with the free negro?

I have the New York Daily News to thank for the jeans controversy.

I think the Bravo test is really important for a number of reasons. It's kind of symbolic. It raises a lot of the issues that are related to the whole controversy over nuclear testing.

That was after Napoleon died because there is still a controversy as to whether Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic. And the French say the British did it and the British say the French did it, but he died before the test for arsenic was available.

Michael Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It caused quite a controversy, because his nose isn't eligible for another fifteen years.

If it matters, it produces controversy.

The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.

There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end.

I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy.

Even though Rush is not me and the situations were very different, I think, in the Rush Limbaugh thing, ESPN was criticized for not acting, and you remember that after a couple days of controversy over Rush.

But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

Anybody can decide a question if only a single principle is in controversy.

Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.

It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.

I know the pundits and the news media have carried a lot of commentary about cameras in the courtroom, and there's a lot of controversy about it as a result of the Simpson case. But I have not had enough time to step back and enough time to evaluate that.

I am a shocker. I like to create controversy. It's my trademark.

It can't hurt, publicity is publicity, controversy and all that, it's all good.

An entertainer should in his public performance keep himself out of any controversy, political or otherwise.

Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name - which, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral and only one majority can possibly be right.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.

I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.

I just lead my life as naturally, as normally as I possibly can. But I can't help it if controversy is hounding me day in and day out. I'm quite amazed sometimes by the way they go about it. I grow a beard and it lands up in the editorial in The Times of India.

The abortion controversy is important for what it says about our stance toward procreation and children altogether.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.