As the 2012 elections approach the finish line, the chatter among columnists and political reporters is about upcoming books that take readers inside the campaigns, cutting-edge efforts to micro-target voters on Internet social applications, the enormous money flowing through super-PACs, and extreme political polarization.

It's almost a shock to me to go into places, and there's smoking these days. Boy, my life has changed, because everybody used to smoke.

In the last 100 years only Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford lost their bids for reelection. President Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term.

When you hear someone delivering a divisive message, that's endangering our country that you stay up and say, you know, as an American, I do not think what you're saying is good and right. And if you do in a peaceful manner, you have every right.

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history.

The Republicans want to turn Medicare into a voucher plan that will end guaranteed coverage of medical bills for the elderly.

The power of the silent filibuster to distort Senate politics is now accepted on Capitol Hill and by the press as normal and not worth mentioning. Let me be the skunk at this political garden party and say this stinks. Representative government was not designed to work this way by the Founding Fathers.