Peace with the Palestinians will open ports of peace all around the Mediterranean. The duty of leaders is to pursue freedom ceaselessly even in the face of hostility in the face of doubt and disappointment. Just imagine what could be.

When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive Malcolm X was alive great great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.

Now do I think there has to be shared sacrifice among other nations in the world who want a stable and secure world? Absolutely there has to be. But I don't think that America can ever abdicate its leadership role in the world because of who we are and where we've come from. We are the symbol for the world for freedom and liberty.

There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty the noblest cause of them all.

The words spoken by the leader of the free world can expand the frontiers of freedom or shrink them. When Ronald Reagan called on Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall ' a surge of confidence rose that would ultimately breach the bounds of the evil empire.

Penn State is a leader in food science.

Women oftentimes are the ones making those economic decisions sitting around the kitchen table and trying to figure out how to pay for rising gas prices or food prices or the health insurance costs. And I think that they see where they expect their leaders in Congress to also make those tough decisions.

Yet food is something that is taken for granted by most world leaders despite the fact that more than half of the population of the world is hungry.

Let us build a 21st-century rural economy of cutting-edge companies and technologies that lead us to energy and food security. Such an investment will revitalize rural America re-establish our moral leadership on climate security and eliminate our addiction to foreign oil.

You know rural Americans are a special people. Their labor puts food on our table and fuel in our gas tanks. Their service in our military sets a powerful example of leadership honor and sacrifice. Their spirit of community inspires us all.