So China will be having to make some choices as to whose side it wants to be on. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a major improvement in our relationship with them, if they choose correctly.

And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up.

That is, while we believe that cost-benefit analysis is an important tool to inform agency decision making, the results of the cost-benefit analysis do not trump existing law.

You can't substitute promise after promise with known violators of prior promises at the expense of protecting ourselves or setting an example.

Let's not overlook, though, what we do know about the campaign finance scandal, and the fact the Chinese were involved in our presidential campaign and our congressional campaigns.

We're hoping for the best, but we need to prepare for the worst.

China is one of the world's greatest proliferators of weapons of mass destruction to these rogue nations.

So if you look back over the long history of China, they've never tried to take over the world, but they've been quite aggressive in their own neighborhood... in carrying out their own purposes and interests in their sphere of the world.

We also have to ask if we focusing on the most important priorities.

And it's difficult for the average American to understand why something like that could be so important and why a little small place like Taiwan would be so important to the PRC.

Nobody wants to open a business near a Superfund site and risk being sued.

I think that there is a relatively small number of people who are pushing for independence in Taiwan.

For example, lead paint in old houses can be a greater threat to children's health than lead that may be under some industrial site where there are no children.

While we believe there are fruitful opportunities to update and improve old rules, we do not want to set up a review process that could create a litigation morass.

So China will be having to make some choices as to whose side it wants to be on. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a major improvement in our relationship with them, if they choose correctly.

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists.

There's a lot more to competence than a law degree and a modicum of courtroom skill.

We have some real political differences among us, but we all share the same goals: clean air and water, injury free workplaces, safe transportation systems, to name a few of the good things that can come from regulation.

We just ask the agency to make reasonable and honest decisions, and the public deserves no less.

Superfund was passed with the good intention of cleaning up America's toxic waste sites.

Sometimes you have to, as I say, build bridges where you can - but draw lines where you must.

We've made some mistakes in this country in times past - the Korean conflict proceeding that, some say proceeding the Persian Gulf War, where we were ambiguous as to what we would do.

Clearly, the Chinese know that we want a good relationship with them.

The problem is that agencies sometimes lose sight of common sense as they create regulations.

For a long time in American history, people didn't even come up before the Senate. They didn't come before the Judiciary Committee, and up until about 1923, something like that.

And I believe in the 13 years Judge Roberts was there, he never turned down a request to give some assistance on a pro-bono case, and this was no different.

In the end, we may be hurting the very people we should be concerned about - the inner-city poor, those who already have to live with many risks in their daily lives, those who do not have clout here in Washington.

There are some hopeful signs coming out of China in the statements they've made since the since September 11.

But if the Chinese mainland, the PRC, attacked Taiwan, we'd be obligated to come to their aid.

I think that the justices were totally answering the way that they should. I think that the senators, as best I could tell, for the most part, Democrat and Republican, respected that.

Hopefully, we can build bridges, but we also have to draw lines.

But obviously, we can't afford to make some bad long-term decisions with regard to basic commitments our country has - trade those away for some short-term assistance that may or may not be there a month from now.

Hopefully we can build bridges but we also have to draw lines.

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

The people who voted for President Obama are just beginning to wake up to exactly what they brought in. The 'change' they envisioned is not the 'change' they have gotten.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.

In the beginning it was all black and white.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

At the beginning of 1955 only about 60 percent of American homes had TVs.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

What you really remember at the beginning was that you have to throw a budget together. We made some terrible mistakes at the beginning in my own budget that took us at least a year to catch up on.

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens.