From kindergarten to graduation I went to public schools and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world.

I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother. Private schools are useful and we often use public funds to pay for their infrastructures and other common needs.

I was never a Certified Public Accountant. I just had a degree in accounting. It would require passing a test which I would not have been able to do.

Republicans rarely criticize Obama for lack of empathy - in part because liberals have traditionally been seen as standing up for the weak and the vulnerable. Conservatives can be just as empathetic. But they believe that in most cases it's not government's role to be the primary dispenser of empathy.

The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation no entity large or small public or private can thrive or survive intact with debts as huge as ours.

In the Pentagon Papers case the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been that doesn't mean that it couldn't be published.

We cannot improve on the system of government handed down to us by the founders of the Republic. There is no way to improve upon that. But what we can do is to find new ways to implement that system and realize our destiny.

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it but had the representation of democracy in it.

Journalists should denounce government by public opinion polls.

To Republicans I humbly suggest that we make it possible for Democrats to give up their quest for redistribution of income and wealth by our acceptance of an appropriate role for government in financing those public goods and services necessary to secure a social safety net below which no American would be allowed to fall.