Legacies are hard to come by, after all. And if you have one going, you ought to do what you can to keep it alive.

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.

There's no such thing as legacies. At least, there is a legacy, but I'll never see it.

It's just not practical to think that can happen.

They're moving targets. I don't think anybody in the Senate really has a good sense going into the fight ... [of] what we're going to be voting on.

Sen. Nelson has proved himself to have a moderate record in support of the president's judicial nominees the vast majority of the time. I think it goes to show he calls them as he sees them.