When you are interviewing someone, you have a chance to follow up, to press, to dig in. In a debate there's 30 seconds for the other guy, too. And the goal is to get them to engage with each other, not to engage you necessarily.

Even marginal progress could be affected by investigations in Little Rock and in Washington.

Discrimination at any level sends a harmful message to youth, gay or straight alike, and that discrimination has no place in Scouting.

If it were the Clinton people, they'd be sitting around figuring out how to pull themselves out. Instead the president is continuing to go around the country and peddling Social Security, which the needle is not moving on.

This is what happens with a breakthrough. The first ones through the door often get bruised if not broken. Eventually, with a little political acumen and racial sensitivity and a lot of hard work, a smooth new place can emerge.

We used to say in the black community that if somebody else caught a cold, we caught pneumonia.

I find that those who voted for George W. Bush are less offended by his religious references, and those who voted for Bill Clinton did not seem offended at all when people prayed at his inauguration.