It is absolutely important that we have a unified alliance and that we explain to the Russians that you cannot be a 21st-century superpower, or power, and act like a 20th-century dictatorship.

The problem with all these tired excuses for inaction is that it suggests a fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we can.

It's time to "stop being ambivalent." ... They (groups like the Islamic State) have no ideology beyond violence and chaos and the slaughter of innocent people.

How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love?

n case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died - an entire town destroyed.

I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago 's South Side.