Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.

There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle.

Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government. The White House, the Congress and, increasingly, the judiciary, reflect their interests. We appear to have a government run by remote control from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. To hell with everyone else.

Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization...Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber, reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility.

A profound transformation is happening here. The framers of our nation never envisioned these huge media giants; never imagined what could happen if big government, big publishing and big broadcasters ever saw eye-to-eye in putting the public's need for news second to their own interests. I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined ... .

Capitalism is out of control, thanks in no small part to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which said that a corporation is a person, even though it doesn't eat, drink, make love, sing, raise children or take care of aging parents. You can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations are considered people.

There is a historic strain of dominion theology which says, taking its references from the Psalms, that man is made just a little lower than God, and that we are the crown of creation. That interpretation has come at the expense of the one that says when God, in the story of Noah, intervened to save human life against the flood, against the acts of nature, He did not stop with human beings. He made sure that every kind of animal was represented twice on that ark.