Peace cannot come from punishing the Palestinian people.

But through world wars and a Great Depression, through painful social upheaval and a Cold War, and now through the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has indeed survived.

The President's announcement sounded less like a national energy plan than like a page from an election-year play book. This Administration's plan to reduce obscene oil company profits is to regulate them less.

Reasonable, even intelligent people can, and frequently do, disagree on how best to achieve peace in the Middle East, but, peace must be the goal of our foreign policy tools, whether they be by the stick or by the carrot.

We all understand that compromise is part of the legislative process, yet at the same time, I would submit that wilderness is not for sale.

A free people, free to believe as we wish, free to speak our minds, free to raise our children as we see fit, will, make no mistake about it, endure.

Wilderness designations should not be the result of a quid pro quo. They should rise or fall on their own merits.