National legislation will prevent other states' flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents.

One of the things that I am concerned about is the degree to which we've seen a lot of commentary lately where there were, there are Republicans or pundits or cable commentators who seemed to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans were Democrats. That cannot be.

He described to me how crocodiles kill more people than sharks. There are just a lot of things in Australia that can kill you.

We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy, and we should do it today while our economy is in the position of global strength, because if we don't write the rules for trade around the world, guess what: China will.

One of the things that you come pretty early on to understand in this job, and you start figuring out even during the course of the campaign, is that there's Barack Obama the person and there's Barack Obama the symbol, or the office holder, or what people are seeing on television, or just a representative of power. And so when people criticize or respond negatively to me, usually they're responding to this character that they're seeing on TV called Barack Obama, or to the office of the presidency and the White House and what that represents.

If you like your doctor or health care provider, you can keep them. If you like your health care plan, you can keep that, too.

Our environment is too important to neglect and it's time for the federal government to focus on real solutions and live up to their promises.