To get elected as a Democrat, it's hard to be from the city. It's hard to be a graduate of Duke University.

A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics.

I`ve always thought of him [Barack Obama] and from conversations know him to be a guy who takes the long view, who doesn`t get too high, doesn`t get too low and seizes the opportunities when they`re there and knows how to ride the wave. I ascribe that to Hawaii. He`s a body surfer, so he knows how to get on the wave. He knows just the right time.

In the ever accelerating world of the Internet, e-campaigning has gone from a novelty to a necessity in less than a year. With increasing sophistication and urgency, campaigns are using the Web as a bulletin board, advertising medium and organizing tool.

If Rand Paul is going to go anywhere, he is going to have to expand it beyond merely this argument about where we put troops and don`t put troops and make it both a generational argument and a change argument. And he`s got a chance to do that.

Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is.

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.