the American public has been delicately insulated from the actuality of our ongoing wars. While a tiny fraction of men and women fighting our wars are deploying again and again, civilian life remains pretty much isolated in cost-free complacency.

Humans are ambitious and rational and proud. And we don't fall in line with people who don't respect us and who we don't believe have our best interests at heart. We are willing to follow leaders, but only to the extent that we believe they call on our best, not our worst.

Senator [Tom] Cotton and his fellow lawmakers are back in D.C. and Republicans are split, they are divided about what to do with the repeal to feel Affordable Care Act. That`s topic that Senator Cotton was really berated for at that town hall event that almost did not happen.

I don't want to be president. Like, "Today your job is Libya, Japan, unemployment, the government shutdown - oh, and by the way, Yemen, Syria and Jordan. That's your job today. And you'd better get it right."

I don't feel there's anything about my experience of being gay that gives me more insight into "don't ask, don't tell," for example, than anybody else.

These are career non-partisan apolitical staffers with a combined 150 years of experience at the State Department gone, just like that right off the top [right after Secretary Rex Tillerson was sworn in].

we ought to realize by now (see Korea, see Vietnam, see Afghanistan, see Iraq, see Iran) that deploying the US military, or dealing billions of dollars a year of arms to our ally of the moment that can serve as a regional rival to our enemy of the moment, is not always the best way to make threats go away. Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn't make every international problem a nail.