We create our own government. We are responsible for its beauty and for its ugliness. We are responsible for its glories and for its failures and, most important, we are responsible for amending those failures no matter who are their most immediate architects.

There is a lot in American politics (and in American life) that is angry, greedy, reckless and violent.

We have a revolutionary history to honor and uphold. Which was what Nelson Mandela did. He reminded us of that which we need to be reminded, over and over again, about our own best selves.

In order to get big things done, sometimes, presidents have to be deft at moving the pea around under the shells.

The institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing large spectacles of mass entertainment. The fundamental absurdity of that notion requires the promulgation of the various deceits necessary to carry it out.

Campaigns are no longer high-minded exchanges of ideas, even though God knows we need more good ones - ideas, that is.

If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?