The key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.

Almost no one under 60 remembers what fundraising was like before Watergate. Until the 1970s, campaign money was collected by "bagmen," familiar characters from the world of organized crime. As fans of Boardwalk Empire know, a bagman is a political fixer who walked around with stacks of $100 and $1,000 bills. At lower levels, he used brown paper bags. In presidential campaigns, the cash was more likely to be in briefcases. Classier that way.

I think it's a terrible system, but money in politics is like water running downhill -- it finds its way.

The only thing worse than a silly politician analyzing art is a silly artist analyzing politics

Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness.

The only reason the House hasn't done even more damage is that the Senate often sands down the most noxious ideas, making the bills merely bad, not disastrous.

The price of loyalty is incompetence.