Law-abiding Americans deserve to know that their government will not secretly tap their phones, read their medical records, access their library accounts or otherwise invade their personal lives, with no oversight or accountability. Law-abiding Americans also deserve to know that when law enforcement can show an impartial judge clear evidence of criminal activity or a threat to national security, swift and decisive action will be taken to protect the public. That is the balance we must achieve.
I do think it's true that a huge amount of the oversight that the White House engages in with respect to the Executive Branch is out of fear that somebody's going to do something crazy and drive the president off a cliff.
He who knows how to teach a child is not competent for the oversight of a child's education unless he also knows how to train a child.
For things that worth little or nothing we care a lot; and we oversight what is necessary; because every man goes towards the exterior; and if he doesn't regain consciousness quickly, with pleasure remain involved in it.
Our success has come from the lack of oversight we've provided, and our success will continue to be from a lack of oversight. But if you're going to provide minimal oversight, you have to buy carefully. It's a different model from GE's. GE's works - it's just very different from ours.
In order to do vigorous oversight, the leadership of the intelligence community has got to be straight with the American people and straight with the Congress. For there to be vigorous oversight, the intelligence community's got to be straight with the American people and the Congress and that has not been the case.
The mole rat is the only rodent born without a fur coat. With a good lawyer, someone would pay for that little oversight.
We need a return to transparency and a system of checks and balances, to a president who respects Congress' role of oversight and accountability.
We must not falsely teach American history in our schools. We have a law requiring state textbook oversight to guard against frauds like Zinn, and it was encouraging to find that no Hoosier school district had inflicted his book on its students.
Congress is supposed to provide oversight, the voters are supposed to provide oversight. And you [the media] were supposed to provide oversight. That's why you have special liberties and that's why you have special protections.
It felt like an oversight to me, something that needed to be corrected. They [women who hid Jewish children] deserved to be understood and remembered.
I've always been fond of the saying that when it comes to oversight and reform, the federal government does two things well: nothing and overreact.
It is high time for some congressional oversight backbone.
I think there's always a role for Congress under every instance in every administration to conduct oversight of the executive branch.
Hopefully, at some point, people will at least credit the Republicans with carrying out their oversight responsibilities and with pursuing a principled course of action even in the face of everyone's short-attention spans.
The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to.
The methods that will most effectively minimize the ability of intruders to compromise information security are comprehensive user training and education. Enacting policies and procedures simply won't suffice. Even with oversight the policies and procedures may not be effective: my access to Motorola, Nokia, ATT, Sun depended upon the willingness of people to bypass policies and procedures that were in place for years before I compromised them successfully.
It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
I think it's something that the citizenry needs to be vigilant about - participating in democracy, and that includes issues like what's going on and how much secrecy and transparency there should be. That's an on-going thing - in a democracy you want checks and balances and oversight, but you need a covert agency to protect the country. It's a very tricky balance and I think it changes as the world changes and I think we all need to be mindful of that.
