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.

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

Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?

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.

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.

There's a very healthy tradition in America of skepticism of centralized power. If we ever lose the skepticism of centralized power, we'll lose the essence of the country.

Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party-tinged Republican, is the advance guard of a new GOP push to dismantle public-sector unions as an electoral force.