The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the governing classes.

If everyone has to be a watchdog in order to make government work, then the foxes will also volunteer to serve.

Creating a positive future begins in human conversation. The simplest and most powerful investment any member of a community or an organisation can make is to begin with other people as though the answers mattered.

Leaks and whispers are a daily routine of news-gathering in Washington.

A profound political question is suddenly on the table: Must the country continue to give precedence to private financial gain and market determinism over human lives and broad public values?

The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.

The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization.