I'll leave here with my head held high and with confidence that history will judge my time here.

The American people can be - and deserve to be - assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws.

I'm not going to let people who work in the United States Department of Justice have their characters be assailed without any basis.

I don't even talk about whether or not racial profiling is legal. I just don't think racial profiling is a particularly good law enforcement tool.

At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message.

Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia - which was inappropriate, certainly that . . . to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people.