When you look at a Congress that has an 84 percent disapproval rating, that means that for the most part, the people of this country, and certainly California, are looking for new leadership.

I offer something very different from the lifelong career politicians who have worked their way up to run for higher office or those who can parachute in with checks for $5 million or $10 million, and that seems to be the definition of credible or legitimate. I'm rejecting that premise.

I've got the conservative ideas for putting our country back on track.

We need new energy back in Washington.

I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling.

Biology has tended to be an observational science, and deriving things from first principles has not been possible in the past, but I hate to predict the future on that.

This is what the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) represents. Experimental, explorational science. Learning about Mars as a new world. Discovering new things that will tell us about the history of our solar system, help reveal the secrets of life, and continue blazing the trail that may someday be traveled by the rest of us.

The acting thing is so beyond my control. Acting isn't mine. You're like a tiny piece in this big, corporate mechanism that needs chemistry and divine intervention.