NPR's Nina Totenberg on "Inside Washington," September 22, 2001:

We have gone through, I think, a kind of, what I would call a silly season, of thinking that there is really no need for a federal government, when in fact the federal government fought the Civil War, solved the Great Depression, fought the First and Second World Wars, won the Cold War. And now we're going... to find out why we are not just a loose confederation of states, but a republic and a federal national government and that's what this period is for.

†