Al Franken

I just wanted to, as we do these hearings, make sure that we, No. 1, find a way to separate the good actors from the bad actors.

I rise today to support the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. But I also rise today to put General Kagan's nomination in the context of the history of the Supreme Court and…

It seemed to me that during the Bush administration there seemed to be agency capture of a certain type.

What I found interesting about your testimony was how nuanced all of this is and how sometimes we can get--by painting things with a broad brush, we can miss things and kind of create stereotypes of capture that actually do not serve us…

the FCC has been captured by corporations that it is supposed to be regulating

I think that is harmful to the esprit de corps at an agency.

I mean, this is a real problem that we have.

I think we fixed it in the reform bill by eliminating----

they would not use this to favor their own programming

I look forward to the witnesses' testimony and to working with my colleagues to protect the integrity of our administrative agencies against the threat of capture.

FCC stood for 'firmly captured by corporations.'

OK. Dr. Troy, I will give you a chance to respond.

I talked about FEMA and what appeared to be--and I think it is hard to argue with the perception that there was cronyism going on there.

I do not see any reason why anyone would expect that they would hold to those promises

Episodic scandals and recurring disasters are no way to go through life.

Didn't we see scientific language change in that period?

My State has a deep interest in the work of NIGC and making sure that it is executing its regulatory duties in an effective, efficient manner.

I am looking forward to delving deeper today into these questions and hearing the various perspectives that we have represented on our panel.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for being here today.

I want to follow up on mortgage fraud and what Senator Kaufman was talking about.

The fact is, after Citizens United, the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies will be able to spend as much as they want in our elections, even if they are under foreign control. President Obama alluded to this in his State of the Union…

I rise today to urge my colleagues to allow debate on the DISCLOSE Act, a commonsense measure to fix just some of the problems created by the Citizens United decision. For a century, Congress has done everything it could to make sure the…

we just have an interest that the people who have been victimized in so many different ways by this oil spill in the gulf are not victimized twice

we are very proud of you, Mr. O'Neill, for the work you did on the Exxon Valdez case

it would do everything possible to ensure nothing like it happens again.