The failure of the White House and Congress to seriously address the nation's fiscal situation is certain to broaden the belief among many voters that the U.S. political system is broken.

Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.

I think how pay gets determined is pretty broad - experience how people look what they bring to the job. But there's no question women are paid less. Women don't ask.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal or having any import to the world at large as opposed to men's work which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.

You cannot in human experience rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.

But as environment minister I am very interested in a thriving German automobile industry because I can only pay for the rising costs of environmental protection at home and abroad if there are people in Germany with jobs and who pay taxes.

I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing but the rise of the so-called conservative political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing.

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?

I was really fortunate growing up to have a broad musical education. My parents listened to all kinds of music rock soul Motown jazz Frank Sinatra everything.