You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away.

The first thing I would do would be to move forward with an agenda to make sure that we give D.C. the opportunity to elect its own representatives and have some political power on Capitol Hill.

We don't have this huge footprint, we are less likely to be targeted as, you know, occupiers [in Afghanistan and Iraq].

We need scientists to design new fuels. We need farmers to help grow them. We need engineers to invent new technologies. We need entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. We need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high-tech, zero-carbon components. We need builders to hammer into place the foundations for a clean energy age. We need diplomats and businessmen and women, and Peace Corps volunteers to help developing nations skip past the dirty phase of development and transition to sustainable sources of energy. In other words, we need you.

That window is closing. . . . Now, the clock is ticking. . . . We're not going to have these talks just drag out in a stalling process. . . . We haven't given away anything - other than the opportunity for us to negotiate

By the end of this decade, a majority of our Navy and Air Force fleets will be based out of the Pacific, because the United States is and always will be a Pacific power.

I think [ unpopular presidential candidates ] indicates, at least on the Democratic side, that we've got more work to do to strengthen our grassroots networks.