We need a grassroots movement and government policies and programs to change the food landscape and the built environment to give our children a chance to have happy healthy successful lives.

It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.

The question Americans should ask is not whether a candidate is affiliated with a particular faith but rather whether that candidate's faith makes it more likely he or she will support policies that align with their values.

Washington D.C. is what is broken not the immigration policies. We have good laws. We have people suffer every day because of government's failure to enforce the law and be respectful to the process we have. We have a pathway to citizenship already in place.

I'd like to see much more understanding of emotional issues around hurt abandonment disappointment longing failure and shame where they stem from and how they drive people and policies brought into public discourse.

As long as the G.O.P. led by its increasingly visible women continues to insist that the problem is not their policies but women's failure to understand their own lives and interests the gender gap won't go away.

Within the U.S. the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here I fear the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo.

I hope that in future Congresses there will reemerge a recognition that climate change is a reality that our policies to meet our energy needs must also deal responsibly with environmental issues including the damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.

Liberals in Congress have spent the past three decades pandering to environmental extremists. The policies they have put in place are in large part responsible for the energy crunch we are seeing today. We have not built a refinery in this country for 30 years.