It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: 'Sit down and shut up,' but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out.

I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better.

I really want Congress to do its job, the constitutional power that they have, to halt an imperial presidency, to halt this fundamental transformation of America that is making us an unrecognizable mess of a nation at this time.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy.

Abraham Lincoln suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

What can we do to nurture and support a people capable of living in freedom?

Well, it's always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built. Politics isn't just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.