I'm an Angus King independent.

My position is that it isn't government's job to mandate patriotism. To me, mandating a pledge of allegiance to a government is something Saddam Hussein would do.

Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief.

If you work for the federal government, the average salary is $7,000 higher than the private sector. Something's wrong with that, when you're making more money working for the government than you can working in the private sector.

Governments are run by people. People can be bad.

Listening is as important as talking. If you're a good listener, people often compliment you for being a good conversationalist.

If waterboarding's OK, why don't we let our police do it to suspects so we can learn what they know? We only seem to waterboard Muslims... Have we waterboarded anyone else?