And in this community, as in all others, the Golden Rule still applies - we must be act toward other nations as we would have them act towards America.

Unless action is taken soon - unless we can display the same vision of that earlier period - we will lose the treasure of California's open space and environmental beauty.

We need Democrats and Republicans in Congress to work together to fashion a very comprehensive pushback to Russia, not just the cyber-hacking, but their bribery of officials in Europe, their social media campaign, their overt media campaign.

I think Barack Obama has the overall right strategy and he's been right to resist bringing in massive numbers of American troops. The Iraqis would love to have Americans die for Iraq and the Syrians would love to have Americans die for Syria.

There was certainly merit to the criticism that the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein had about how James Comey handled the Hillary Clinton investigation. And I don't think Director Comey ever adequately explained why he treated the Clinton investigation one way and the Trump investigation another.

We need Trump to lead the liberal democratic order around the world. No other nation can do that the way we can, and it's going to be very hard for Congress to do it over his opposition.

But it is equally incontrovertible that if our intelligence gathering process is seriously flawed, we had better find out and find out fast if we are to avoid another Sept. 11.