Americans who have parents raised during the Great Depression or World War II understand how drastically things have changed on the home front. My father did not care a whit whether I liked him, and it would have been unthinkable for him to pick up my stuff. There were rules in the house, and they were enforced.

My job is to watch the powerful. It's a simple job description, watch powerful people and make sure they don't hurt the folks.

The Factor concept is very simple: Watch all of those in power, including and especially the media, so they don't injure or exploit the folks, everyday Americans. Never before in the United States had a television news guy dared to criticize other journalists on a regular basis. The late Peter Jennings, a friend, told me I was crazy to do it. "These people will not allow anyone to scrutinize them," he said. "They will come after you with a vengeance." And so they have.

I believe that inside many Americans lies certain uneasiness about capital punishment.

For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few. Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy.

As the tree is bent, so it will grow.

On the foreign policy front, Barack Obama is not a confrontational man. He stayed away from all confrontations, and you can look and see what happened overseas. It's a mess everywhere. So he made major mistakes, major policy mistakes. Those mistakes are not going to be forgiven by history.