Listen, the estate tax is a lousy deal, particularly for farmers and small business owners. I mean, you get taxed twice. You get taxed when you build your business, and then they tax you when you die.

DUBYA: Every good school — every school that succeeds — by the way, it's a Blue Ribbon School. So I asked Margaret — like, I remember coming up, everybody was a blue ribbon school. I don't know if you remember those days. It was kind of a feel-good era. Just say, okay, you're a blue ribbon school, and everybody feels better about education. There's less than 300 Blue Ribbon schools across America this year. I think — what did you say, thirteen —
EDUCATION SECRETARY MARGARET SPELLINGS: Two hundred and thirty nine public.
DUBYA: Two hundred thirty nine public schools are Blue Ribbon Schools, and maybe a dozen here in the state of Illinois.

There's a lot of issues that I'm sure we'll be talking about today — North Korea and Iran, hopefully the Middle East, maybe some local issues here in Chicago. It's my honor to be here. Thank you for coming. And now I'll start answering some questions, starting with one of the senior members of the press corps — are you over 60? You look like you're about 65. Anyway, go ahead.

[The Supreme Court was] silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made.

I am willing to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court.

At my press conference, they spent a lot of time talking about the world. And I told them today — like I'm going to tell you now — that my biggest job is to protect — is to work to protect the American people. And I think about it all the time. They ask, what's the job like to be President. And the answer to that job is you make a lot of decisions. It's a decision-making experience.

I will be making the troop level decisions based upon what General George Casey recommends. We owe that to our troops. We owe that to their families. We owe that to the Iraqi.

In my judgment, we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects, and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time, protect the environment.

I can't imagine a tax code that penalizes marriage. It seems like to me we ought to be encouraging marriage to our tax code.

We have a duty in your government to protect the American people. So the second big task at hand is to make sure we do everything we can to protect our homeland. And I will assure you I will continue to work to spread freedom and democracy, and therefore, peace, in parts of the world that are desperate for freedom, democracy, and peace.

I believe we are called to do the hard work to make our communities and quality of life a better place.

To address the cost of medical care, we need to apply 21st century information technology to the health care field. We need to have our medical records put on the IT.

We'll get to the bottom of this and move on. But I want to tell you something — leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them — there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are.

The House of Representatives will take up this issue in the coming weeks, under the leadership of a man from Illinois, a guy who I've got a lot of respect from, Speaker Denny Hastert.

The crux of the plan I laid out said that if a person has more money in their pocket, they're likely to demand an additional good or a service. In our type of economy, when you demand a good or a service, somebody is going to produce the good or a service. And when somebody produces that good or a service, it's more likely a fellow citizen will find work.

It is clear there are people in the Middle East who hate peace, people who want to kill in order to make sure that the desires of Israel to live in secure and peace don't happen, who kill to make sure the desires of the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and others of a peaceful state, living side-by-side with Israel, do not happen.

Since I was [last] here [in Chicago], thanks to the bravery of our military, and to friends and allies, the regime of Saddam Hussein is no more. The world is peaceful and free.

For the sake of health care for all Americans, we must reform the medical liability system. ...I am very grateful for the Illinois State Medical Society for hosting me today. This distinguished organization was founded in 1840 in Springfield, the same time that Abraham Lincoln was practicing law in that city on North 5th Street. Lincoln was a lawyer who believed in discouraging unnecessary litigation.

Listen, when people come after us, we're plenty tough. We're a compassionate nation. And so we're on the hunt. You just need to know we're after them one by one. One by one. And so long as I'm the President of this country, we're going to chase them down one by one to make sure the American homeland is secure.

It's important for people to understand, particularly in Washington, this Department of Homeland Security is not a good Republican idea, it's not a good Democrat idea, it's simply an American idea, and they need to get their work done.

I want to thank Tom Ridge for coming. He's a man — I asked him, I said, you know, you need to serve your country. He was serving as the Governor of Pennsylvania. I said, you've got a nice mansion over there.

It's going to be hard to do what they've done — 90 children over 35 years is a fantastic feat. But it's a fabulous tribute to Americans making the decision to help somebody.

I was — and I must confess, it did confuse some of the folks at the Crawford, Texas coffee shop, when I was traveling around the country with Theodore Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, thanking him for working on this bill. But we put it all aside, all the typical Washington, D.C. bickering and name-calling, and decided to do something right for the children, and passed a great piece of education reform.

It's amazing to me that we've got an enemy, on the one hand, that's willing to convince young males to commit suicide on behalf of a cause that's empty and, at the same time, try to escape the justice of America in caves.

The first condition to make sure that people can find work is to make sure our nation is secure, secure against an enemy that wants to attack us.

You're expressing a firm national commitment that's so important, that we will not surrender our freedom to travel, that we will not surrender our freedoms in America, that while you may think you have struck our soul, you haven't touched it, that we are too strong a nation to be carried down by terrorist activity.

And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry, is to tell the traveling public: "Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Go down to Disney World in Florida, take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed."

The world sees our compassion toward one another, as neighbor helps neighbor, as neighbor grieves with neighbor, as people from all across our country want to hold the families who have been dangered — who have been hurt — in their arms.

And we will look at all kinds of technologies to make sure that our airlines are safe, and for example including technology to enable controllers to take over distressed aircraft and land it by remote control.

Some countries may wanna participate in one way, but not in another. All we ask is that you participate. All we ask is that you use the same amounta effort the United States will to win this war against freedom, to win this battle against global terrorism.

I'm also honored to be here with the speaker of the House — just happens to be from the state of Illinois. I'd like to describe the speaker as a trustworthy man. He's the kind of fellow who says when he gives you his word he means it. Sometimes that doesn't happen all the time in the political process.

It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.

That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century.

DUBYA: There's Adam Clymer, major league a—hole from the New York Times.
DICK CHENEY: Yeah, big time.