It is no coincidence that our country has not been attacked since 9-11. Our initiatives to protect the homeland and aggressively take the fight to the terrorists have been factors in that success.

One of the first items of Congressional business in 2006 will be an effort to renew the USA Patriot Act.

Decisive action has been taken on the home front with passage of the USA Patriot Act, which has strengthened the hand of law enforcement agencies to stop terrorists before they can act.

Legislation to create a new 10 percent tax bracket, reduce the marriage penalty, cut the tax rate on dividends and capital gains, and increase the child tax credit have been essential elements in this economic expansion.

The private sector can go forward, if it must, with destruction of embryos for questionable and ethically challenged science. But spend the people's money on proven blood cord, bone marrow, germ cell, and adult cell research.

Talk about national interests: When we went in with Operation Iraqi Freedom, some of our allies, Turkey, for example, would not let us through. How much trouble did that cause us, because we were not able to go into Iraq through Turkey?

It may have hastened the move of the former Minority Leader Trent Lott, to the private sector because there was such an outpouring of bitter criticism...The result, if this is successful, will not be much different from what Sen. Lott and others were trying to enact back then...It may be that we are all just older and wiser.