When I went to college, my goal was to be a college history teacher. I majored in history.

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier, Christmas Day of 1982, just after I had been first elected to a full term, that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

I was the United States Attorney for Maine for three years, and then was appointed a federal judge.

And I spent that time working as an insurance adjuster and going to law school in the evening, and then when I left law school, I joined the Department of Justice in Washington.

I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there.

Our firm view is that the president has no legal authority, none whatsoever, to commit American troops to war in the Persian Gulf or anywhere else without congressional authorization.

My mother was an immigrant from Lebanon to the United States. She came when she was 18 years old in 1920.