To me, that means getting back to the point where our Constitution means that you don't tap people's phones and poke into their e-mail and you don't arrest people and keep them hidden for a year and a half without charging them.

There are those who would keep us slipping back into the darkness of division, into the snake pit of racial hatred, of racial antagonism and of support for symbols of the struggle to keep African-Americans in bondage.

The Islamic community today is faced with a new version of an old struggle. My late mother used to say it doesn't matter whether you came to this country on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, through Ellis Island or the Rio Grande. We're all in the same boat now.

We're failing our children with education, we're failing our environment.

Well, if you pick a fight with somebody that's smaller than you and you beat them, where's the honor in that?

My parents were always philosophizing about how to bring about change. To me, people who didn't try to make the world a better place were strange.

All I really want to be is boring. When people talk about me, I'd like them to say, Carol's basically a short Bill Bradley. Or, Carol's kind of like Al Gore in a skirt.