With the right person in place, a very distressing chapter in the Justice Department's history can be closed and the process of restoring its credibility as a strong and independent department can begin.

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs, not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.

And in an issue with this kind of concern to a committee that bears the oversight responsibility, I think you can see that we're very dismayed about it .

While the distance between the United States and Iraq is great, Saddam Hussein's ability to use his chemical and biological weapons against us is not constrained by geography - it can be accomplished in a number of different ways - which is what makes this threat so real and persuasive.

Let the record show that you can be a United States senator for 21 years. You can be 79 years old. You can be the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and one of the most recognizable and widely-respected veteran public servants in your nation. But if you are female while all of those things, men who you defeat in arguments will still respond to you by calling you hysterical and telling you to calm down. They'll patronize you and say they admire your passion, 'sweetie,' but they deal in facts, not your silly, girly feelings. It's inescapable. You can set your watch by it.

People who travel should be on guard. All our military, our police and I think the word has been spread. And people know to be careful to watch, to report. Something that looks suspicious to you, don't be embarrassed to go to an authority and say, "Look, I saw this and it seems suspicious to me."

If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them... 'Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in,' I would have done it.