Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern.

The truth is that you - people are doing scientific research with fetal tissue and it's not as if - no, this is brand-new news. This is something funded by.

If you get the U.N. to say we're going to solve the Syrian problem, if you get the Russians involved in a productive posture, you are making progress, but the Republican core says no strategy or failed strategy.

I don't think there's any shortage of tough, sometimes vicious rhetoric about President Barack Obama coming from the right. Talk radio shows dominated by conservatives.

I think the president's [Barack Obama] position has been very clear on Syria. He wants more aggressive, he's put the Special Ops on the ground, in fact one of the Republican criticisms is he's got thousands of Americans there. We just don't call them troops on the ground, we don't admit to it. But they are there.

I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber - as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals - are Christians but we journalists don't identify them by their religion.

Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims. This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims.