I don't run a car, have never run a car. I could say that this is because I have this extremely tender environmentalist conscience, but the fact is I hate driving.

The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.

I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.

The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.

It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

Charter schools are not a panacea.

I have long been an advocate of school choice, but I also believe the problem lies with school administrators and union leaders who refuse to believe there is such a thing as a bad school.

Schools alone are not to blame for underachievement. The breakdown of the family, poverty, and decaying cities with eroding tax bases have made a good public school education nearly impossible in many parts of the country.

An early attempt at education choice was charter schools. These were meant to attract the best and brightest students and provide them a level of education they often could not find in their local school districts. The problem is that, of the thousands of charter schools, many are outright failures.

I strongly favor shortening the campaign season and putting more primaries and caucuses on the same day, preferably regionally.

The decision in McCutcheon v. FEC is a devastating blow in efforts to rein in out-of-control costs of campaigns.

Our first priority should be to protect the homeland. If we don't, a future generation might ask, 'Who lost America?'

Like many other Americans, I'm tired of the U.S. taxpayer paying for foreign wars, especially when the countries we defend have raked in huge oil profits.

The U.S. military cannot fight Iraq's war for them.

It should be mandatory that any tax breaks go through appropriate committees and be voted on separately by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

A few states have taken redistricting out of the hands of partisans and put them in the hands of fair-minded committees. Every state should do the same.

Republicans want to use Obamacare in the 2014 elections against Democrats who voted for it. They want to see it fail, even at the expense of people's health.

High-quality health care is not available to millions of Americans who don't have health insurance, or whose substandard plans provide minimum coverage. That's why the Affordable Care Act is so important. It provides quality health insurance to both the uninsured and underinsured.

If we have intelligence on the location of terrorist training centers, it is insane not to act.

We need to gather intelligence, but we need to do so legally.

I don't have a problem with stepped-up surveillance as long as we follow the rule of law.

There is no doubt that terrorists acting under the banner of Islam have declared war on us.