You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time, not only with the votes we cast, but the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideas.

Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?

Across the globe there are girls who will one day lead nations, if only we afford them the chance to choose their own destinies.

We all know a lot of people who died in 9/11, the World Trade Center. A lot of money funding that mission is directly tied - from the 9/11 Commission, directly tied to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas.

Senator Joe Biden is pretty clean and articulate for a white guy.

We've come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn't move us forward. Sometimes one side is up and the other side is down. But there's no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, nonideological way to solve the problems that we face.

We are very grateful for the vital contributions Germany has made to this fight, training local forces in Iraq, sharing intelligence providing reconnaissance aircraft including the recent deployment of additional NATO AWACS.