Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

You know, what genuinely makes me uneasy with the way things are going are not - is not really that Trump is going to do everything he said he was going to do, it`s that he has no idea of his job as president. Plus, the people who have been up close and realized that he has no idea how to do this job are leaking like sieves.

The Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank's marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.

It's better to be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.

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.

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

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