Geographically Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep.

Yeah I spent my teen years in West Virginia and when I was a kid in Louisiana. I definitely have that exposure to two different sorts of rural: the South and Appalachia.

President Obama's fight for rural America is personal. He was raised by a single mom and grandparents from Kansas. He hails from a farming state Illinois.

I was brought up in a very open rural countryside in the middle of nowhere. There were no cell phones. If your lights went out you were lit by candlelight for a good four days before they can get to you. And so my imagination was crazy.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness in a way fosters the imagination. But growing up Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

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.

The H-1B visa program which helps sustain our rapidly growing economy and also helps meet the health care needs of families living in rural New Mexico.

When I gave birth to my fourth child I suffered from post partum hemorrhaging. I almost lost my life. I was lucky to be under the care of trained health care personnel. I started wondering then what was happening to women in rural villages.

A common misconception is that the costs of health care are cheaper in rural America when in fact the reality is that they are more expensive and more difficult to access.

Many health care providers particularly physicians in rural and urban areas are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.