In the American constitutional system of three different branches, conflict - and I mean that peaceful, vigorous debate - it's a feature of our system, not a bug. We need less all-or - winner-take-all politics.

I think I'm one of five people in the Senate who's never been a politician before. And now that I am a politician, what I find weird about it is that I respect myself less.

I don't understand what the president's [Donald Trump] position is on Russia. But I can tell you what my position is on Russia: Russia is a great danger to a lot of its neighbors, and [Vladimir] Putin has as one of his core objectives fracturing NATO, which is one of the greatest military alliances in the history of the world.

[Vladimir] Putin is an enemy of political dissent. The U.S. celebrates political dissent and the right for people to argue free from violence about places where our ideas are in conflict.

I didn't go to Harvard because I thought they had good academics. I went because they had crappy enough sports so they'd let me play.

The U.S. affirms freedom of speech.[Vladimir] Putin is no friend of freedom of speech.

So [Vladimir] Putin is a mess. He's committed all sort of murderous thuggery, and I am opposed to the way Putin conducts himself in world affairs, and I hope that the president also wants to show moral leadership about this issue.

Let's be clear: Has the U.S. ever made any mistakes? Of course.Is the U.S. at all like [Vladimir] Putin's regime? Not at all.

People think if they voted for somebody, they should reflexively defend everything they do or say. And if you voted against somebody, you should just as reflexively oppose everything they do or say. It's not very helpful. What's more constructive for our kids is to go on a case-by-case basis, evaluating particular policies.

We should vigorously debate policy differences. We have too much all-or-nothing in American politics.

While Admiral Neffenger is an impressive man, it is naive and dangerous to pretend installing one director can heal what ails TSA, the Department of Homeland Security needs to admit that it has a crisis of bureaucratic complacency - lacking an overarching vision and coherent measures of success and failure.

We obviously have to honor the commitments that have been made to the people who are already retired or near the retirement age. But we need to tell the truth about the fact that when we set the retirement age at age 65 in America, life expectancy was only 62.

I think the category of perpetual adolescence, it's a new thing, and it's a dangerous thing. Adolescence is a pretty glorious concept. It's about intentionally transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. Peter Pan is a dystopia, and we forget that.

We're not at war with all Muslims, we're at war with a subset of Islam that believes in killing in the name of religion, as jihadis do.