As a judge, when I saw veterans in legal trouble, I created the state's first veterans court to help them get treatment and get back on their feet.

Families in Illinois don't want lies and political mudslinging.

Both of my children - my daughter Caroline, a public school teacher, and my son Elliot, an Army Ranger - are dedicating their lives to public service; thus, they have inspired my own decision to run for Congress.

I truly feel that being a woman, and particularly a mother, has had a large impact on my campaign.

Nor should the U.S. military be forced to remain in Iraq essentially as an army for one side of a civil war.

Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that.

Your generation and mine have had very little real experience; we've been severed from the direct experience of war by some very good things. By the end of the draft, and by the defeat in Vietnam.

I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly 'legitimate' state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals.