A political consultant, when we first started thinking about Senate race, said, "You can have one funny name. You can be 'Barack Smith.' Or you can be 'Joe Obama.' But 'Barack Obama' - that's not gonna work."

My sister is a teacher, so I am a strong support of teachers, but I'm not going to be bound by just a certain way of talking about these things, in order for us to move forward on behalf of our kids.

We've taken bold action at home by making historic investments in renewable energy, by putting our people to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings, and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy.

Many of us were kind of irritated with Obama for larding it with tax cut, which we didn't think was going to be stimulative.

The Bush Administration's failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.

I'm not so out of touch that I don't see how young people interact today.It was horrific. And that's an example of something that it's not as if that's the first time that a hate crime has taken place in this country. Hate crimes have been taking place for hundreds of years in this country, but it's there on video.

My finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes that they should be paying higher taxes.