Science took a back seat to politics.

I think one of the most important things is going to be to draft an agency-wide media policy.

The trajectory of what the Bush administration has left us is not sustainable.

I could not be more proud of what Chairman Feinstein is doing. I could not be more confident in her leadership.

Institutions were damaged to make this happen, most profoundly, the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice.

You need to know in order to advise your principals well.

The hearing will come to order, with my apologies for a delayed start.

I think it is one of the most important hearings the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold this year.

Yes, he did not have to have special knowledge to know that that assertion in the OLC opinion was false.

Accountability can help restore our reputation around the world.

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

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

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.

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…

Polluters do not want to pay.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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…

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…

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.