National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account.

If we have George W. Bush as president, we're going to go back to the kind of policies we had when his father and Ronald Reagan were president.

Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children, and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.

I also focus on Bush and his administration - who do a lot of lying - and how a right-wing media has allowed them to get away with a lot of stuff that, in a different media environment, they probably wouldn't be able to get away with.

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.

I wish I had spent more time at the office and less time in prison.

It is my fondest wish that in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster.