As committed as I am to protecting our state from crime associated with illegal immigration, I am equally committed to holding law enforcement accountable should this statute ever be misused to violate an individual's rights.

The recent efforts in Arizona … threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.

The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.

When you've been in government for 21 years, as I have been, the issue of retrospect and what you should have done is a really futile activity. I was right 70 percent of the time. But I was wrong 30 percent of the time, and there were an awful lot of mistakes in 21 years.

Confederate history is full of many things that unfortunately are not put forth in a proclamation of this kind nor are they things that anyone wants to celebrate. It's one thing to sound a cause of rallying a base. But it's quite another to distort history.