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.

One of the things that I've urged the president-elect to do is to develop a strong working relationship with the intelligence community and I think it's important that Congress, on a bipartisan basis.

I don't believe we can get very far, with leaders who write off half the nation as a bunch of victims who never take responsibility for their own lives.

Let's not play games. I was suggesting - you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.

The framers, in their wisdom, designed the [political] system so that power's pretty disbursed.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.