Syria and Iran have always had a pretty tight relationship, and it looks to me like they just cooked up a press release to put out to sort of restate the obvious. They're both problem countries; we know that. And this doesn't change anything.

I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this - it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.

Mitt Romney has spent his entire life finding ways to solve problems.

It took us in this country 11 years to get from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution.

This heinous crime should be of particular concern to all of us. . . . I know my colleagues will agree that the murder of Americans overseas cannot go unpunished. I will continue to closely follow developments in this case[.]

I know how it feels when you're coming into a new situation, that the other guys won the election.

I think there were two messages in last year's election. One is pretty obvious. People were mad as hell at the president [Barack Obama] - and wanted to send a message. We all got that. Our new members were also hearing, and I was hearing as well, that people didn't like the fact that the Congress was dysfunctional. Now they may have been confused about where the dysfunctionality was cause the president kept pointing to the House. Factually, that's not accurate. The dysfunction was in the Senate.