When my kids were in preschool, I was part of a carpooling group. One mother sometimes showed up with bruises on her body. She always had an excuse. Then one morning, she didn't show up. Later, I learned she'd fled a violent marriage. I've always thought, If only I'd known, maybe I could have helped.

Simply, with a Republican Congress sitting shotgun, Mitt Romney will put the middle class on the roof and take us for a long, painful ride.

If we have a foreign country, which it appears that we do, interfering in an election in any way, we need to know that, and we need to do everything we can to make sure that never happens again. If the bigger questions of collusion or whatever from this administration are true, this country needs to know it and action needs to be taken.

I am pro choice, I believe everyone should have the right to decide for themselves.

So, I'm not impressed by BP's promises and I'm not ready to take the word of a company with a track record of pursuing profit over safety.

I have stood on the line in Everett, Wash., where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes. I would challenge anybody to tell me that they've stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody building anything.

We havent been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that, rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?