Campaigns waged with lies presage governments racked by distrust. The sclerosis starts there.

Another way in which our system is unfair. Why do Iowans get so much of a bigger voice every four years than everybody else? Ditto for New Hampshire. There are proposals and it could well happen that we could have a rotating calendar where different years different states went first. I would endorse that.

I think the media has to continually remind itself, and I think we do but sometimes not well enough that we're not just an economic property.

I don't know that it's a lack of creativity so much as it is , a lack of resources. And maybe a little bit of a lack of will but when you look at what fills every hour, let's just take CNN as an example, not because I think they're particularly egregious, but, they're sort of the ongoing hour, hour, hour. Why do they give us bulletins every single day on the latest poll? Very easy to cover a poll, right?

Books are personal, passionate. They stir emotions and spark thoughts in a manner all their own, and I'm convinced that the shattered world has less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever smaller part of it.

I think what we journalists too often do is we assume the status quo is unchangeable. I think all sorts of issues of political reform, electoral reform need more discussion than they get.

Shiatsu, deep-tissue or maybe even Rolfing: Which manner of pummeling becomes a cephalopod most?