Look how Bill Cohen and George Mitchell worked together. It's the stuff of legends. And now it's the stuff of almost ancient history, regrettably, but the way those two really worked together.

I think, though, with that whole sense of integrity and a lot of things that have been going on, the shared leadership rather than the titular head.

His great passion for education and [making sure] people have an opportunity. Of course that's what came out of the George Mitchell Institute and his scholarships in those high schools.

George [Mitchell] introduced the idea that we'd go on a retreat [and] to really regularize caucuses. He's the one who had I think [Tom] Daschle become the Democratic Policy Committee chairman, so I think it lived through with Tom.

I would say George Mitchell was like Clark Kent sometimes with his horn rimmed glasses and his very quiet manner. People say, well, he's just a quiet leader, but then he emerges as super hero and begins to move this legislation. He led by example.

I will fight in the United States Senate this year to fund a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008, a mission that would potentially increase Hubbles power and efficiency by a factor of 10 and allow us to look back almost to the beginning of the universe.

I knew of Senator [George] Mitchell because he was very close friends with who was soon to be the senior senator, Paul Sarbanes. Paul Sarbanes and George Mitchell were kind of pals together.