I would rather people not smoke. I certainly appreciate the fact that smoking is not legal in restaurants and bars. That used to stop me from going out at night because you'd go someplace and your clothes would reek and you wouldn't enjoy the experience and that affects your rights. It's always a question. Whenever you are talking about these issues, it's not a question of restricting rights. It's a question of restricting whose rights, and providing for whose rights and that's a tricky balance.

Deeper state intervention in an economy means that bureaucratic waste, inefficiency and corruption are more likely to hold back growth.

Academics were not a challenge when I was fifteen in college. The challenge was figuring out how to fit in socially.

There is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

I don't take things off. I either check things off or I add things.

Sometimes you check things off because you've done them. If you aren't checking stuff off your bucket list, you aren't living very well.

International institutions like the Security Council, the General Assembly, the G20, the BRICs, the IMF, etc., continue to be little more than an extension of the (increasingly conflicting) values and interests of member states.