Illegal immigration is not just a matter of interest in states along our border with Mexico. It is having an effect on local economies, schools, health care delivery, and public safety all across the country.

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 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.

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.

Since 2001, the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law, major legal barriers prevented intelligence, national defense, and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information.

And while the U.S. can never be 100 percent safe from a future strike, our government is working around the clock on measures to protect the American people.

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.