We need strong, lawful, fact-based regulation out of EPA.

So, if we wonder why the Senate is the last place in America that still does not get it, that climate change is a real problem for our people and that carbon pollution is something that people should pay for when the emit it, big…

I honestly believe at this point without that we do not have a chance of passing a significant climate change bill here.

It actually gives me goose bumps to think about the path that has brought you here today.

These calls for restraint and modesty, and complaints about 'activist' judges, are often codewords, seeking a particular kind of judge who will deliver a particular set of political outcomes.

It is fair to inquire into a nominee's judicial philosophy, and we will here have a serious and fair inquiry.

I particularly reject the analogy of a judge to an 'umpire' who merely calls 'balls and strikes.'

And so when we come to this distinguished Committee and say that this was in keeping with the practice of the Second Circuit, we have looked at it in every way that we possibly can to ensure what took place.

Let me just raise one question.

I think that homeland security was favored at the expense of hometown security, and there is, I think, a reasonable case to be made that it was done for political purposes to make America look like it was on a wartime footing.

I would love to get to a place where the State and local folks who are enforcing that prerogative are doing a little bit less scratching of their heads as to why the Federal Government is putting so much money into things that they…

If you extend the Bush strategy, I believe, on the trajectory that it was launched on, it drives you to a civil liberties collision that is unnecessary and I think unhelpful.

I think you are not giving yourself enough credit for the leverage you might have.

I think that the irony here is it is the good times where the seeds are sown for the bigger harvest of the future.

I want to share with you my concern that the classified elements of the previous administration's cyber strategy in my view put us on a collision course with very basic civil liberties questions if the trajectory is not adjusted and…

In fact, the latest demonstration of policy is that when pushed to the extreme we will use lethal force to protect Americans.

It strikes me that the gunmen who've taken these ships on aren't exactly rolling in luxury, that there's a financial infrastructure which could be attacked, as well as a physical infrastructure of ships and pirates and self-defense of our…

One of the aspects, I think, of the political structure of Somalia is it's dominated by tribal arrangements.