Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic Chinese Japanese Korean or Russian combined.

American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading math and science. We're even trailing France.

What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system massive funding for science and technology a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

I love the script and I just thought it was a great role. Like I say it's like this - the script is like this sad funny desperate love song to the lost American man.

The sad fact is that the same terrorist scenarios if they occurred in five different States there could be five different sets of responses to the American people. We need at a minimum a level of coordination on communicating threats to the public.

To the indefinite uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement a sort of intellectual hash which has neither taste nor character.

At a time when 2500 American soldiers have given their lives for the cause of bringing democracy to Iraq it is sad and frustrating to watch the Republican establishment disgrace the exercise of democracy in our own House of Representatives.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shook our nation to the core. Americans were deeply frightened sad and angry and they rallied around a President who at the time showed impressive certitude and calm.

The whole westward expansion myth is seen as romantic. But it's a joke a blot on American history.

The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman I'd done this privately I wanted him to look at it approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.