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.

Clearly, there has been a lack of imagination about how much can go wrong.

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.

Sarah Palin is now the guy who hangs out in the high school parking lot, showing off his car, five years after he graduated.

Chris Christie who proposes accepting Syrian refugee orphans under the age of 5 because they may not be vetted well enough. You can`t trust them. The 5-year-olds might it be terrorists. After all, they`re from Syria.

I'd rather have none at all than a grain too much.

There's nothing about the way my life unfolded that should be seen as at all prescriptive for what anybody else wants to do.