If you are focusing your anger at government, you are focusing your anger at all of us. Government is just a personification of this country.

From the small clubs of the Harlem Renaissance where he began playing saxophone to world tours for the biggest of the big bands, Benny Carter redefined American jazz. From the start, his fellow musicians said the way he played the sax was amazing. They say that about me, too. (Laughter.) But I don't think they mean it in quite the same way.

It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is.

Putin wants to reestablish Russian greatness, not as the Cold War, but in 19th century empire terms.

So much of modern politics is focused not on honest differences of policy but on personal attacks.

This remains a very important opportunity for the American people to have their day in court against big tobacco and its marketing practices. I urge Congress to provide the funding to allow the lawsuit to move forward, and not to shield the tobacco industry from the consequences of its actions.

Our generation, like the one before us, must choose. Without the threat of the Cold War, without the pain of economic ruin, without the fresh memory of World War II's slaughter, it is tempting to pursue our private agendas -- to simply sit back and let history unfold. We must resist the temptation.