There is no bigger judgment for a president of the United States than how you take a nation to war.

Unlike George Bush and his friends at the big oil companies, I'm going to work for a real energy policy for this country that decreases America's dependence on foreign oil and helps lower the costs to American families.

I want to fully fund education, No Child Left Behind, special-needs education. And that's how we're going to be more competitive, by making sure our kids are graduating from school and college.

Folks, Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from Alaska. Mitt Romney talks like he's only seen Russia by watching 'Rocky IV.'

I think that for many of us, the years of the Civil Rights movements - Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy running for president in 1968 to end the war and so forth - these were defining moment in terms of trying to hold government accountable and have a level of responsibility and truth-telling.

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.

America must always be the world's paramount military power. But we can magnify our power through alliances.