So President Obama wants to change America. I understand that. We don't need to change America. We need to change the White House. We need to change the leadership in the White House.

And this administration and this House leadership have said quote-unquote they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.

I think that if Republicans are given the reins of leadership in the House or Senate or both we will have to govern in a way - at least put forward solutions whether or not the president goes along with them or not that deal with these long-term challenges.

The 9/11 Commission recently released their report citing important changes which need to be made to improve our nation's homeland security. I voiced my disappointment with the House leadership when this report was left until after the August recess for action.

The House Republican leadership has simply run out of ideas.

From a parent's right to know what their children are doing to protecting citizens across the country from the growing threat of gang violence the House Democrat leadership is simply out to lunch.

We should see the leadership from the White House setting dates certain for certain goals of achieving greater alliance on alternative and renewable energy sources but we are not.

Unfortunately the Republican leadership in the House right now seems to have been strangled by the tea party.

Whose leadership whose judgment whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?

Moreover as the leadership of the House confirmed last year the Administration remains opposed to a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide due to Turkish objections. This approach sends absolutely the wrong signal to Turkey and to the rest of the world.

What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell forever shifting blame to the last administration is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago - isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

I wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a presidential nominee. That knowledge would have made me a better legislator and a more worthy aspirant to the White House.

The medieval university looked backwards it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward and is a factory of new knowledge.

I rise today to discuss the National Intelligence Reform bill. I commend my colleagues in both Houses for their hard work in coming to an agreement. As with any conference each voice is heard but none can dominate and compromise must be achieved.

If you look at the publishers I've worked with generally they're a great bunch. Creation is unlike any other publishing house you can think of. The people I've worked with have integrity and intelligence and almost always less money than ideas.

According to Richard Clarke the former White House counterterrorism chief Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.

As a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence I will be participating in several hearings on the startling revelations contained in the report.

The White House is giving George W. Bush intelligence briefings. You know some of these jokes just write themselves.

The Clinton White House today said they would start to give national security and intelligence briefings to George Bush. I don't know how well this is working out. Today after the first one Bush said 'I've got one question: What color is the red phone?'

Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker and they liked us to learn poems by heart which I found I loved doing.

With the world as it now presents itself there is something perverse and probably dysfunctional about a person who stays in the same house for 40 years. What about the expanding family syndrome the school-lottery migration the property portfolio neurosis? Have you no imagination?

In my imagination yes I remember when I was six years old I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination it becomes my life and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.