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

Polluters do not want to pay.

the voices of the polluters and the polluting industries still prevail on the question of climate change.

The family farmer with the cattle pond can rest assured.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary for your visit to the Providence VA. It was a wonderful trip, and it shows your commitment to our veterans.

This is something we've got to do, and I want to work with you and I'm sure all my colleagues do and the chairman to address this issue.

In fact, Admiral Mullen was talking about young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in their 20's in California who are essentially homeless.

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

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

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 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.