McKinley decided he could not stop the cries for war, even after Spain accepted all but the last of his demands. On April 11, 1898 he sent a war message to Congress. Not soon after that, Congress recognized Cuban independence and authorized force against Spain.

Cuba rebelled against Spain in 1868 and fought for ten years.

The U.S.S. Maine was sent into Havana's harbor to protect American citizens and property and to intimidate the Cubans into behaving. Then it exploded on February 15. It killed more than 250 sailors.

On February 25, Theodore Roosevelt cabled naval commanders in the Pacific to prepare for military action against Spain. President McKinley ordered most of the cables undone, but he did leave Admiral George Dewey. Dewey was told to attack the Spanish fleet in the Philippines if the U.S. went to war with Spain.

Late in March, McKinley sent a list of demands to Spain, including; compensation for the Maine, an end to the reconcentration camps, a truce in Cuba, and Cuban independence. Spain accepted all but the last.

We will not allow anyone to perform any terrorist acts inside or from Afghanistan against anyone. We are a free country where Osama is living as a guest. This is the reality and it is up to the world to accept it.

My songs are somewhere between story and situation. There's also character and mood. I'm an intuitive writer, both with instrumentals and songs with words.

I really love the traditional aspects of Judaism. My wife is born and raised a Catholic and I enjoy celebrating those rituals as well. I am very spiritual but not in any way religious, no.

Lately all my friends are worried that theyre turning into their fathers. Im worried that Im not.

Everyone I dated was gay.

The dance world was a big part of my growing up.

The characters are that vague TV high school age, but they'll be in high school as long as we need them to be.

I'm thinking about doing a First World War film.

Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.

I have a self-defense mind. I've had it all my life.

There's a little bit of gospel in everything I do. But I don't know if I will ever do a gospel album. There's a big universe out here, and I don't want to just sing to the church. I want to sing to the world and bring them a message of love. I love going to church and singing gospel songs, but right now there's a message that the world needs.

I was raised mostly by my mom.

Many years before I had left a beautiful country and a rich nation and I returned to that country six years later to find it fundamentally changed and in a state of upheaval, and in great spiritual and material need.

Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong.

They are all gone into the world of light and I alone sit lingering here.

That's why our country is such a beautiful, beautiful experiment: We manifest, we allow freedom if you follow certain rules and if you work really hard. That's at the root of our cherished values.

Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.

There is no sin except stupidity.

I was kind of a wild child. I wasn't taught the niceties of life.

I skate about 15 to 20 hours a week and also incorporate a lot of off-ice training. I take ballet and Pilates classes and lift weights with my physical therapist when I'm not on the ice.

Travel makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.

I'm from a council estate myself, and the biggest release we had as kids was football. That's where all the great players learn their trade - as kids having a kickabout.

I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. I know rather that the sun, around which my planet Earth revolves, is a middle sized star in a galaxy called the Milky Way that has over a hundred billion other suns or stars within it.