we should all be so fortunate as to live a worthy life and at the moment of our passing have a person with the talent of Bill Moyers memorialize our time on Earth. On Saturday, Bill Moyers, the PBS journalist who served as special…

Within the powers of Congress, we are not silent when it comes to the conduct of our military in this country.

If I can ask the Senator to yield further for a question, there was a recent episode in the last 2 years when the Public Broadcasting Corporation took a show by Bill Moyers off the air and wanted to replace it with a show authored by the…

last month we had a controversial and spirited debate over immigration. It went on for several weeks on the floor of the Senate, and many Members of the Senate thought about it and voted one way or the other. The net result is that nothing…

there is hardly a family in America that hasn't had an experience with tobacco and cancer. My family is no exception. When I was 14 years old, my 53-year-old father died of lung cancer. He smoked two packs of Camels a day. He was…

The airwaves belong to the American people. Those who profit from them do it by permission of the people through their Government and those who use those airwaves should do it responsibly and should seek to provide both points of view…

Does the Senator concede that those who use the people's airwaves to make a profit have to do it with a license from our Government?

What is the Senator's response if the marketplace fails to provide? What if it doesn't provide the opportunity to hear both points of view? Since people who are seeking the licenses are using America's airwaves, does the Government…

I ask the Senator, in the interest of an educated electorate, whether he thinks Americans should hear both sides of the story, a fair and balanced approach when it comes to information?

I salute the Senator from Michigan. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he brings an important bill to the floor. This is a bill which decides how we are going to authorize funds for America's military. We are enjoying the…

I was going to ask the Republican leader, in the two previous Defense authorization bills brought to the floor of the Senate, how many times did we impose a 60-vote requirement on amendments to that bill? The answer is none, never. It was…

If the Senator from Virginia has not covered it in his floor remarks earlier, what has been the impact of these frequent redeployments on Active Guard and Reserve with regard to retention and recruitment? In other words, if my Guard unit…

I have been told there is an implicit understanding, for example, with Guard members that they would serve 1 year, for example, and have 5 years before redeployment. In fact, that has not been the case in my home State of Illinois, where…

so we understand what happened, the Senate passed an ethics reform bill. It is a big bill. There are a lot of provisions in the bill that we felt were necessary because of some of the wrongdoing that occurred in Washington over the last…

I acknowledge my colleague on the other side of the aisle is standing in for the Senator from South Carolina, but if we are ever going to get to ethics reform, we clearly have to move to conference, and conference is going to require…

It was Obama's fellow Illinois senator, Dick Durbin, who relayed his concerns to the Senate majority leader.

I ask the majority leader, wasn't there a clear message from the last election that people wanted us to clean up the culture of corruption in this town, that they wanted ethics and lobbying reform? Isn't that why the Democratic majority…

in our Nation's history, this Nation of immigrants, we have always struggled with this issue. As soon as people arrive on this shore, there is a question about how many more can we take? What does it mean for our Nation if more people come…

This was an historic day in the Senate. I was up after the vote on immigration with Senator Kennedy. We had a little press conference to talk about what happened. We needed 60 votes to move the immigration bill forward, for more…

Chicagoans take our green spaces very seriously. In fact, if you look at the great seal of the city of Chicago, you will see, written in Latin, the city's motto: Urbs in Horto--City in a Garden. So it seems only natural that Chicago is…

today, I introduce the Housing Fairness Act of 2007, legislation that would strengthen efforts to detect discrimination and enforce equal housing opportunities. This legislation is especially timely given that June is National…

I believe the speech which he has just made on the floor of the Senate is in the finest tradition of the Senate, like its author. Senator Lugar's speech was thoughtful, thorough, and honest. It was a challenge to all of us on both sides of…

Senator Harry Reid is misunderstood by many Americans. Because he is soft spoken, and not as assertive as some politicians are, there are many on the outside who question his leadership capacity. No one on the inside questions it. He is…

we are going to have a bill come up next week, a critically important bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act. I confess I come into this debate with strong feelings. I am a product of a family where my mother and father, my two…

I want to join Senator Reid, and all of my colleagues, in congratulating Senator Robert Byrd on reaching yet another historic milestone in his lifetime of public service. To have the privilege of casting even one vote in the U.S. Senate is…