There is no doubt that the way journalism worked when I was growing up and getting started has changed forever.

But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.

Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.

I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces.

We already have two branches of federal government that factor political considerations into their decision-making, and our Founding Fathers determined long ago that we don't need a third.

Finally, let's keep well in mind the most important lesson of the auto rescue: While government should stay away from the private sector as much as possible, markets do occasionally fail, and when they do government can play a constructive role, as it did in the case of the auto rescue.

The fact I have an education forms my lyrical style, I'm sure. I studied the social sciences, history, stuff like that. I have an interest in politics, which maybe works its way into the songs in small, subtle ways.

European democracy, for me, is the best form of government invented by mankind.