The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.

After my election there was talk of a postracial America. And such a vision, however well intended, was never realistic.

I've consistently said, we need to support charter schools. I think it is important to experiment, by looking at how we can reward excellence in the classroom.

One of the best parts of the holiday season is spending time with the special people in your life.

If you look at sort of how politics has divided itself here in this country, the big divide right now is between urban areas, which have become increasingly Democratic, and rural or exurban areas that feel as if they're being ignored.

In order to make the tough decisions we have to know what our values are and who we're fighting for and our priorities and if we are spending $300 billion on tax cuts for people who don't need them and weren't even asking for them, and we are leaving out health care which is crushing on people all across the country, then I think we have made a bad decision and I want to make sure we're not shortchanging our long term priorities.

We will send an additional 475 service members to Iraq. As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission - we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq. But they are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment.