Everybody I knew, practically, was a journalist when I was a kid - my father, all of his friends. I never wanted to be like those people.

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.

The print magazine and print journalism industry is obviously in a great deal of trouble, and one of the things that happened when this business started to give way to the Internet and to broadcast television is that a lot of organizations started cutting specifically investigative journalism and they also started cutting fact-checkers.

The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending - with the exception of the money spent on them.

The problem with the Tea Party is that it's been used in a way that scares people into supporting an agenda that's counter to their own interests.

In the years just after 9/11, even being breathed on by a suspected terrorist could land you in extralegal detention for the rest of your life.

The joy of being a consumer is that it doesnt require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.