Every morning, I get up, get out of bed, and get on my knees and thank God for waking up in America ... (She is) the light of the world ... A nation of heroes ... The real stars are wearing body armor on top of their battle dress uniforms in 130 degree heat and they do not have stunt doubles to come in for them when the going gets rough and the bullets and the shrapnel start flying. They are the real stars, fighting terrorism and trying to free a nation.

I think, there are many people who are much smarter than I am, and many, many, many who are much harder-working than I am, but in terms of the range of my activities, they're unique.

I am back in LA now. And I keep thinking back to my time in New York after the bombings.... I was crying so much I could not see, and the other diners joined in, and I thought, What do you do with such atheistic evil?

People ask how I can be a conservative and still want higher taxes. It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren.

Could Congress really do its work if it held its sessions by teleconferencing? Could the Supreme Court? Nothing can replace the spark of intelligence that travels from person to person at meetings.

If we try to engineer outcomes, if we overturn tradition to make everyone the same, we ruin society. If we upset tradition to allow for an equal shot at the starting gate, everyone wins, except for the charlatans and would be dictators.

My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well.