Let's deal with reality. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom.
I think that what I'm doing is right. And election-year politics, which intensifies everything, is not going to drive me off that course.
You constantly hear about voter fraud... but you don't see huge amounts of vote fraud out there.
There are a whole variety of reasons I want to be attorney general, a whole variety of things that I do as attorney general that go beyond national security.
I don't have any intention of resigning.
I think they clearly do not fit within the prescriptions of the Geneva Convention. It's hard for me to see how members of al Qaeda could be considered prisoners of war.
Good luck with your asparagus.
Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.
I don't even talk about whether or not racial profiling is legal. I just don't think racial profiling is a particularly good law enforcement tool.
I'm a 21st century guy, secure in who I am.
It's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods. These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if - and the 'if' is important - if no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely.
I'm a hard headed lawyer.
With all do respect, senator, I don't think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue. I'd be more than glad to come back in an appropriate setting to discuss the issues that you have raised.
It pains me whenever there's the death of a law enforcement official.
Whether it is an attempt to bomb the New York City subway system, an attempt to bring down an airplane over Detroit, an attempt to set off a bomb in Times Square ... I think that gives us a sense of the breadth of the challenges that we face, and the kinds of things that our enemy is trying to do.
Guantanamo is a chief recruiting tool for al-Qaida. It has put a wedge between the United States and at least some of its allies.
I look forward to working with the NRA to come up with ways in which we can use common sense approaches to reduce the level of violence that we see - in our streets, and make the American people as safe as they possibly can be.
I'm not going to let people who work in the United States Department of Justice have their characters be assailed without any basis.
I understand the Second Amendment. I respect the Second Amendment. I think we need to use common sense tools to keep the American people safe, to keep our streets safe.
One cannot understate the importance of eliminating Bin Laden. He was a symbolic head of the organisation and, as we now know, an operational head of the organisation.
Operation Fast and Furious was flawed in concept and flawed in execution. The tactics used in this operation violate Department of Justice policy and should never have been used.
It's a sad indication of where Washington has come, where policy differences almost necessarily become questions of integrity. I came to Washington in the late '70s, and people had the ability in the past to have intense policy differences but didn't feel the need to question the other person's character.
In the months ahead, I will leave the Department of Justice, but I will never -- I will never -- leave the work. I will continue to serve and try to find ways to make our nation even more true to its founding ideals.
