Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas play with language solve problems use my imagination and draw on my own childhood.

In my wildest imagination I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood in the poor rural community of Eufaula Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity and even the good in him is hardly accepted.

We need to have a pro-growth policy put in place that offers people hope and offers the opportunity for businesses to expand and for them to have confidence in what the world is going to look like for the next two or three or four years with respect to economic policy.

For me Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

I doubt I'll be singing forever because at some point people aren't going to want to hear my music and I hope that I'll still get the opportunity to write songs.

Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope by a limit imposed from without but falsely identified as lying within.

Conservatism is not about leaving people behind. Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up to give them the tools at their disposable that make it possible for them to access all the hope all the promise all the opportunity that America offers. And our programs to help them should reflect that.

I'm still really close with everyone at home and their parents - and their brothers and sisters. I was so so so lucky to grow up as part of a community and I don't take that for granted. I try very hard to stay part of it.

Here at home when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again and rekindle an American spirit of community.