My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

The past two decades revolutionized the way we access information. You and I can have our questions answered with the click of a mouse at any time of day. If America, both corporation and citizen alike, can use these services to solve problems, why can't Washington?

The Republican Party is terrific at determining how a program will impact the federal budget, but we're not nearly as good as the Democrats in explaining to people how our agenda will directly benefit them and their families.

I never got into politics for it to be a career.

In a democracy, you can be right and still lose power.

It's an exciting time in the world - democracy, in all its different shapes, is rolling around to new countries all the time. To have a chance to shape the democracy in my home country is an honor.

Social justice for parties like the DMK, DK and the PMK is nothing but practising dynasty politics. Their concept of social justice is successor and family rule.

The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.