Well, I think breathing life into the Endangered Species Act, taking those wolves back into Yellowstone, restoring the salmon in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest.

I'm a product of a Notre Dame education; those professors taught me a lot about how you separate the city of God from the state. I'm also a reverent follower of the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. My years of public life have simply confirmed the intensity of my belief that what I have learned from Joe Evans and Thomas Jefferson was correct.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

I have been very outspoken in my opposition to cuts in what I would call the means-tested entitlement programs: Medicaid, food stamps, and all of that. I feel very, very strongly that those cuts as proposed are unjust, but I am not prepared to label Ronald Reagan a "sinner."It seems to me that when you invoke the adjective "moral" you must be careful to distinguish what it is you mean by that.

It is like living in a wilderness of mirrors. No fact goes unchallenged.

I think of Martin Luther King phrase a lot when I'm deciding public issues. He said: "Here I stand: I can do no other." It is basically an affirmation of my ultimate responsibility to obey my conscience in my acts as a public official.

Well, what I tried to do is simply to get out on the land. And when I came to Washington, I think one of the mistakes we made early on was kind of having an ideological dispute up in the Congress.