Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.

When I was in Vietnam I learned a lot about the promises that soldiers make to each other. The Marines have a promise to never leave behind their dead. In this country, as citizen soldiers, we need to make the commitment to each other that we will never leave our veterans behind.

What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States.

Glossed over the disastrous war and its multibillion-dollar price tag and implied again that our presence in Iraq is somehow improving the situation in that chaotic and turbulent country. The Congress must stand up against Bush's plan to escalate the war.

My hope is the Trump administration will approach Russia strategically, with a clear purpose of trying to find more common ground, but without giving up on fundamental values and principles that are at the core of the United States' foreign policy.

I look forward to standing up and holding George Bush accountable for pushing seniors off of Medicare into HMOs.

We still have a lot of work to do to protect our own democracy.