Our party is a diverse one, as is my home state of Illinois.

Our timing is right... The election results are still fresh in the minds of my Republican colleagues and they don't want to go through this again.

We are dealing with the question of the 11 million people paying their taxes, having a path to legalization and, then, ultimately, to citizenship. Tough issues but we are coming together and I think we can do it.

Let me tell you, the first president to recognize the state of Israel was Harry Truman, a Democrat. And every president since, Democrat and Republican, have stood closely with Israel.

If we do nothing, as the Republicans suggest, we're going to see health care costs reach a point where small businesses can't afford it and families can't afford it. We're going to see people turned down from pre-existing conditions. We're going to find the Medicare doughnut hole - a gap in coverage that's going to hurt a lot of seniors.

God is not a franchise of the Republican Party.

Hard to imagine 40 years ago people could be convicted of a crime, fined, sent to prison for using the most common forms of birth control.