We shouldn't assume that government is always trying to do the wrong thing.

We know hackers steal people's identities and infiltrate private e-mails. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.

One of the brightest lights of our time-a brilliant writer, a fierce friend, and a truly phenomenal woman.

I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face.

By 2016, the people who had looked to [Barack] Obama for change were looking somewhere else.

Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

With effort we can protect the foundation of our democracy, for which so many marched across this bridge, the right to vote.