Part of what we're trying to do is lay out what really happened. For example, I've been trying to get across that the intelligence leadership did not just keep the country in the dark. They actively misled the country on key issues. When you have someone who heads the NSA saying we don't hold data at all on US citizens, that's one of the most misleading statements I believe that's ever been made about surveillance policy. And I think that now we're starting to get that message across.

Since 1994, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have considered it politically risky to offer a plan to fix America's broken health care system. The American public, though, has paid the price for this silence as health care costs skyrocketed, millions went uninsured, and millions more grappled with financial insecurity and hardship.

The Internet has become an integral part of everyday life precisely because it has been an open-to-all land of opportunity where entrepreneurs, thinkers and innovators are free to try, fail and then try again.

Until relatively recently, law enforcement's ability to determine an individual's location and track their movements was largely limited to natural human powers of observation.

Police departments no longer have to pay overtime or divert resources from other projects to find out where an individual goes - all they have to do is place a tracking device on someone's car or ask a cell phone company for that individual's location history and the technology does the work for them.

As Members of Congress we can now engage with our constituents via online innovations like the Huffington Post, while a small business in rural Oregon can use the Internet to find customers around the world.

The Bush administration did stop filling the reserve in 2002 when it helped the oil industry. Now they should do it to help the consumer.