Instead of taking a very high-paying type of law job or something that I might be able to do, I have been a legislator. That's what I do. I think it's an honorable profession - if you're honest and have integrity and work hard.

Its the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency, because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true.

I have long believed that Israel should seek to give up the so-called Occupied Territories in return for security, and that a Palestinian state should be established. I have felt that way all my life. I think it is unreasonable to ask the Israelis to do this in a context where there is no guarantee at all that suicide bombers will be controlled.

I will also continue to strongly oppose any reauthorization of the Patriot Act that does not protect the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans with no connection to terrorism.

Speech doesn't corrupt. Money corrupts, and money isn't speech.

Americans want to defeat terrorism and they want the basic character of this country to survive and prosper. They want both security and liberty, and unless we give them both, and we can if we try, we have failed.

If a trip is worth taking, members of Congress should be prepared to justify paying for it out of their office accounts.