What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.

I'm a product of an East Coast liberal arts educational system.

George Bush and John Ashcroft were religious in a scary way, but the rational among us could always take heart that, deep down, the Bush administration was more cynical than messianic.

The moral angle to the foreclosure crisis - and, of course, in capitalism we're not supposed to be concerned with the moral stuff, but let's mention it anyway - shows a culture that is slowly giving in to a futuristic nightmare ideology of computerized greed and unchecked financial violence.

In America, it takes about two weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you've been around for years.

Being a wiseass in a groupthink environment is like throwing an egg at a bulldozer.

One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas.