"It's almost like a bomb went off and that's nearly five months after the storm."
"Senate Democrats are pushing to delay a vote on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, whose confirmation hearings wrapped up today."
"I wonder whether he was one Samuel Alito in the 1980s, a different one today, whether he's running away from his record."
"I can't find anyone who thinks the so-called data-mining aspect of the secret surveillance program is legal."
"We are a democracy. Let's have checks and balances, not secret orders and secret courts."
"The new documents showed Alito to be an eager and early partisan in the ranks of ideological activists in his party's extreme right wing."
"No one is entitled to a free pass to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court."
"The Justice Department in the first Bush term was the least accountable Justice Department in my lifetime. Meaningful oversight and accountability were thwarted for years. We will be looking to see if..."
"I think he was just having a bad day, and I was kind of shocked to hear that kind of language on the floor."
"The administration has made it a practice to deny oversight cooperation to Congress. The stonewalling in the prison abuse scandal has been building to a crisis point."
"Today, Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, is calling for congressional hearings on the controversy."
"I'm sorry about administration officials led by the vice president repeatedly trying to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11. I'm sorry that truth tellers in the administration like General Shinsecki and Lawre..."
"In my view, a corporation is not a person. In fact, it's not even close."
"It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young people with a criminal record for smoking marijuana."
"The time is long overdue for the United States to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide healthcare to every man, woman, and child as a right."
"It is an absolute disgrace that in the wealthiest nation on earth, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country."
"I believe that in a democratic, civilized society, healthcare is a right, not a privilege."
"What we need is a progressive agenda which speaks to the needs of working families."
