Jay Leno Quotes

But I warn my colleagues that we will fail in our efforts to protect the homeland if we do not take additional steps to avoid a trade-off between protecting ourselves against terrorists attacks and preparing for and responding to natural disasters.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said there is a new credible terrorist threat. He said everything is under control; not to panic. And then he went back to his harmonically sealed bunker.

Today Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge lowered the terror alert from orange to yellow. Does anybody need 16 miles of duct tape?

America has survived and grown stronger through September 11th and subsequent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq and those who seek to do us harm. We have faced - and met - tremendous challenges ramping up a public health and safety system to protect Americans from future threats.

Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time.

When we talk about safety and security of the American people, politics falls aside pretty quickly.

The backbone of our nation's domestic defense against terrorist attacks will continue to be the men and women in local law enforcement and emergency services.

I go to bed at night worrying that I didn't do enough that day to make sure I protect the American people.

It's especially important since September 11 for people to be trained for the unexpected. We want to try to make sure people are safe.

First responders will be on the frontlines if there is a terrorist attack in our communities, and we must provide them with the tools they need to do their difficult jobs.

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

We have no more fundamental obligation in government than to ensure the safety of our citizens.

And how the government communicates about homeland security is central to how the public responds.

I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

City government can and must help San Franciscans prepare for emergencies in order to avoid tragedy where possible and minimize loss of life and property when emergencies occur.

If national safety - the ability to respond to hurricanes, terrorist attacks, earthquakes - depends on the execution of explicit plans, on soldierly obedience, and on showy security drills, then a decentralized security scheme is useless.

Four years after 9/11 it is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis. It is scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on a terrorist watch list. It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork barrel spending, not risk.

Assure personal survival in any kind of disaster.

If terrorists attacked New York, Washington, or San Francisco with a weapon of mass destruction, the next day we will all be asking what steps we might have taken to prevent it. So the question is, “Why do we not take those steps now?”

I want to give the American people assurances that we are protecting them.

Let us learn from the lessons of September 11 and not wait for a major strike before we act. We must work together - Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the White House, government and the private sector - to make our country a safer and more prosperous place.

We know that terrorism is going to happen in the future, and we need to be prepared for it.

After the 9/11 attacks, I dutifully stocked up on rolls of duct tape and N-95 masks, as the government recommended.

How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

If you're Chris Christie, who is governor of New Jersey, a state that obviously was impacted by 9/11, this gives you an opportunity to talk about how, as governor, you had to deal with terrorism and security issues.