The next day I was put on paid leave from my new job at Louisiana State University. This is very painful to me, though once again I understand the circumstances in which my employers find themselves in light of these actions taken against me.

I was devastated by the loss of my job in March, although I can understand why it occurred.

Is the Justice Department incapable of regulating itself? Without strong regulation, the privileges we give them to investigate us, to conduct their normal anti-crime things, can spiral out of control.

After eight months of one of the most intensive public and private investigations in American history, no one - no one - has come up with a shred of evidence that I had anything to do with the anthrax letters. I have never worked with anthrax. I know nothing about this matter.

When I retired from the military, I come home. And the reason why I got into politics is, you know, I spent a lot of time away from my wife and my kids. And I come home, and I found out I have kids in my backyard that have it worse than the children I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Democracy only has substance if there's the rule of law. That is, if people believe that the votes are going to be counted, and they are counted. If they believe that there's a judiciary out there that will make sense of things if there's some challenge. If there isn't rule of law, people will be afraid to vote the way they want to vote.

This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.

You eventually have to figure out how to balance the books. So that's the reason I gave up my day job to come do this was to go fight to create the space where spending matches America's capacity to tax, and that means economic growth and a smaller, humbler federal government.