The artificial primacy of defense among our national priorities is a constant unearned windfall for some, but it's privation for the rest of America; it steals from what we could be and can do. In Econ 101, they teach that the big-picture fight over national priorities is guns versus butter. Now it's butter versus margarine—guns get a pass. Overall, we're weaker for it, and at enormous cost.

As secretary of state you can go out in a helmet if you want to. Even in Switzerland in front of reporters.

I don't have any option. I'm not going to be less gay or more pretty. I can't try to have less personality or fewer controversial opinions.

That was like seeing a dodo and a unicorn all wrapped up in one

Senator [Tom Cotton] got a ton of blowback. He became the star of fake missing person`s signs, encouraging folks to call if they saw him and also to call him and ask why he had been missing while his constituents were looking for him.

Flint and its lead contaminated water are now the focus of sustained national attention including political attention.

I will say that Bernie Sanders are the opposite end of the spectrum from Donald Trump. We see him leading right now in the Republican Party in an intractable way.