Amy Klobuchar

Our support for Sonia is entirely nonpartisan.

Sonia Sotomayor went out of her way to stand shoulder to shoulder with those of us in public safety at a time when New York City needed strong, tough, and fair prosecutors.

She solemnly adheres to the rule of law and believes that it should be applied equally and fairly to all Americans.

I think you made a similar finding with different underlying facts in United States v. Santa.

I actually thought that Senator Schumer did a good job of asking you questions

I, too, am looking for a person with good judgment, someone with intellectual curiosity and independence, but who also understands that her judicial decisions affect real people.

I believe having judges with real-world front-line experience as prosecutors is a good thing.

Does that tend to be an indicator that there is some glimmer of hope here?

Let us all remember that there are real people behind these statistics.

That is what led us in Congress to extend unemployment benefits, something that we always did in the past.

We need to get our act together here in terms of these financial regulations.

I would think these numbers are important. People have to realize across the country that it's not just one person messing up here.

We're going to be working on health care reform this year, and if we're able to bring some costs down and make it more affordable and do it in a different way, do you think that would help people with their wages?

I know we discussed last year the health care effect here and the burden on workers of the cost of health care in this country.

You can't tell someone who has lost their job 'Hey, we've seen some good increases in consumer confidence.' That's not going to help them.

And that trend is similar to the regular unemployment rate?

How many jobs have been lost since December 2007?

The recession, as we've talked about, seems to be different from previous recessions, given the severe housing slump, the credit crunch and the global nature of the economic downturn.

What would you say, just to summarize, have been the biggest areas of loss for the types of jobs across the country?

Just to summarize, there were 611,000 jobs lost in the private sector last month, is that right?

Consumer spending did rise 2.2 percent on an annualized basis in the last quarter.

I always like to bring this up, because I don't think people think about this as much as they should.

I was actually just talking to Senator McCain about Asia, China, Japan and Vietnam.

There are reasons for some optimism regarding the state of our economy.

These are remarkable figures in the unemployment rate, depending on people who don't finish high school are at 14.8 percent; with high school, 9.3 percent; with some college, 7.4 percent; college degree, 4.4 percent.