The ideals that bind us together are as old as our nation, but so are the forces that pull us apart.

I want to say to you is that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did not intend to drive a stake in the heart of religion and to drive it out of our public life. What they intended to do was to set up a system so that we could bring religion into our public life and into our private life without any of us telling the other what to do.

The other thing we have to do is to take seriously the role in this problem of . . . older men who prey on underage women. . . . There are consequences to decisions and . . . one way or the other, people always wind up being held accountable.

It simply doesn't make any sense for us to have illegal aliens in our custody in our courts and then let them go back to living here illegally. That's wrong and we should stop it.

Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.

Our mission in this new century is clear. For good or ill, we live in an interdependent world. We can't escape each other. Therefore, we have to spend our lives building a global community of shared responsibilities, shared values, shared benefits.

I regret to say that my hand did, in fact, have an improper relationship with Chelsea Clinton. The incident represents a profound lapse of judgment for which my hand takes sole responsibility.