You [the Gallaudet students] have brought the deaf community together.... You are my heroes.

The Gulf War was like teenage sex. We got in too soon and out too soon.

Obesity now contributes to the death of more than 360,000 Americans a year. The incidence of childhood obesity is now at epidemic levels. Alarm bells are going off all over the place. But our government has done virtually nothing.

America's health care system is in crisis precisely because we systematically neglect wellness and prevention.

There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist.

When those pictures of Abu Ghraib came out, I thought, my gosh, this is like the tiger cages for prisoners in Vietnam all over again. Only we were actually doing it ourselves, we weren't hiring another government to do it.

While President Bush's tax give-aways for the rich are pushing us further into debt, he compensates by increasing the out-of-pocket costs to our veterans.

Let's face it, in America today we don't have a health care system, we have a sick care system. We wait until people become obese, develop chronic diseases, or become disabled - and then we spend untold hundreds of billions annually to try to make them better.

That signal's come and gone a lot in my life-time, that prairie progressivism died . I think prairie progressivism is still there. Every once in a while, odd things take place.

Stem cell research holds enormous promise for easing human suffering, and federal support is critical to its success.

I don't know if there's any secret recipe. Just a lot of hard work. Pay attention to your constituents. I always had a great Iowa staff that did all my great constituent service work. And I found that people would forgive me for a lot of my liberal sins because I paid attention to the home front.

Today, only two groups in the United States have total immunity from lawsuits: foreign diplomats and HMOs. We believe it's time to end diplomatic immunity for HMOs. Holding them accountable is the only way to guarantee that you get the health care your family deserves.

I've always been for immigration reform in 2007 I just didn't feel it had enough protections.

Let's face it, in America today we don't have a health care system, we have a sick care system.

I think the American people said, look, you know, we can't control what every government does to its people, but we shouldn't be aiding and assisting a government in having these kinds of repressive prisons. It added to the public outcry against our involvement in Vietnam.

Politics is like driving. To go backward put it in R. To go forward put it in D.