The Patriot Act removed major legal barriers that prevented the law enforcement intelligence and national defense communities from talking and coordinating their work to protect the American people and our national security.

I will not nor will I ever publicly divulge sensitive intelligence sources and methods. For when that happens our national security is endangered and lives can be lost.

You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services.

In the fight against terrorism national agencies keep full control over their police forces security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.

Improving our national intelligence capabilities should remain a top priority and a continual process.

Our intelligence community needs better coordination of operations and exchange of information and that's why we need an overall director of national intelligence and a national counterterrorism center.

If you look at military and intelligence positions from the 1950s the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been against American national interests.

The Clinton White House today said they would start to give national security and intelligence briefings to George Bush. I don't know how well this is working out. Today after the first one Bush said 'I've got one question: What color is the red phone?'

Where the stakes are the highest in the war on terror we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing planning and collaborative enforcement.

There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington the place we learned to despise during the last administration.

When I think about the world I would like to leave to my daughter and the grandchildren I hope to have it is a world that moves away from unequal unstable unsustainable interdependence to integrated communities - locally nationally and globally - that share the characteristics of all successful communities.

For President Obama 'home of the brave' are not just the last words of our national anthem but also a call to action. This is why the president's policies and our platform include incentives to train and hire our troops returning home. Not only because of our moral responsibility but because it makes for a stronger more secure American economy.

The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it's a global operation. It doesn't know national boundaries or national borders.

Like most citizens of popular and international urban centres I don't take advantage of the cultural opportunities. Perhaps this comes from growing up in suburbia. Home is where you eat sleep read watch television and ignore your parents. It is not where you go to the ballet and then attend a heated panel discussion about it afterwards.

And you know being able to wear the stars and stripes when you step up on one of the blocks or you know when you step off of an airplane or when you hear the national anthem play you know it's one of the greatest feelings in the world because you know that there are people at home who are supporting you and watching you.

Prescott National Forest is right on the edge of my home in Arizona.

History offers no evidence for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to win wars improve combat readiness or promote national security.

I've been fortunate over my career to make a little history on the 16th hole at Augusta National.

The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence he embraced a radical doctrine of pre-emptive war unprecedented in our history and he failed to build a true international coalition.

History is filled with tragic examples of wars that result from diplomatic impasse. Whether in our local communities or in international relations the skillful use of our communicative capacities to negotiate and resolve differences is the first evidence of human wisdom.

What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.

With the perspective afforded by the passage of time where does 9/11 rank as a turning point in our national history? For the victims and their families innocents going about their lives suddenly and brutally murdered no other day can ever matter as much.

Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness.

The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts probably because the less mature a nation the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.