The 9/11 Commission strongly recommends that the National Intelligence Director be fully in control of the budget from developing it to implementing it to ensuring that the National Intelligence Director has the clout to make decisions.

I can tell you that the Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been providing outstanding co-operation with our intelligence and law enforcement agencies as we work together to track down terrorists here in North America and put them out of commission.

In the aftermath of September 11 and as the 9/11 Commission report so aptly demonstrates it is clear that our intelligence system is not working the way that it should.

Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also in a way gave me permission to write about northern Montana.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins or nearly all save those worth committing.

Hope is the greatest thing for moms of autism. Hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning. I'm on a mission to tell parents that there is a way.

I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.

I stand before you as the governor of Texas but also stand before you the son of two tenant farmers. Ray Perry who came home after 35 bombing missions over Europe to work his little corner of land out there and Amelia who made sure that my sister Milla and I had everything that we needed included hand sewing my clothes until I went off to college.

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

I thought I had to make an impact on history. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I gave it 20 years of my best shot.

But when one believes that you've been appointed by God for a particular mission in history you have to be very careful about that how you speak about that. Where is the self-reflection in that? Where is the humility in that?

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined permanently blocked as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

ACT and SAT each have their own parts of the country. The GRE has its lock on graduate admissions. And so one could blame the companies but really economically they have no incentive to change things very much because they're getting the business.

Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards commissions and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time money and energy far beyond any real contribution they make.

I feel an independent accountability commission should audit all government services.

The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil that there must be opposition between its various branches and between political parties for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.

It is the mission of the next Conservative Government to build the Responsible Society.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history the stage of rule by brute force.

The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

The question is what I wanted to do with the new life God has given me. This is the mission I want to take on.

My mission is a cosmic mission. My concern is for all of humanity and not only this present world but the world hereafter. My mission penetrates the past present and future and encompasses all humanity.

Clearly some creative thinking is badly needed if humans are to have a future beyond Earth. Returning to the Moon may be worthy and attainable but it fails to capture the public's imagination. What does get people excited is the prospect of a mission to Mars.

And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

That is now my mission: to provide a European vision of growth employment prosperity - in one word our future.