I prefer the word 'homemaker' because 'housewife' always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.

I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am -- and this ought to be made very clear -- I am a very serious woman.

The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.

They are a very extensive minority who have suffered discrimination and who have the same right to participation in the promise and fruits of society as every other individual.

All the men on my staff can type.

Women will not simply be mainstreamed into the polluted stream. Women are changing the stream, making it clean and green and safe for all - every gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, age, and ability.

Women will change the nature of power, rather than power changing the nature of women.