For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together. That is the new challenge of the new world... learning to co-exist and not co-annihilate.

Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House.

Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

The reality of the Green party is that we are a party committed to bringing forward big ideas, new ideas and demonstrating by our conduct in parliament and through the election that we really want to work for Canadians, work across party lines, work across jurisdictions.

The media in the States can be quite self-reflective. When I lived in England, I was much more aware of the day-to-day politics that were happening. Living somewhere where the media involvement is greater and so omnipresent, you become pulled into it and, at the same time, because of that, politics changes and the way it's handled changes.

I mean, the part you don't like, I mean, that's the only part. That's the part no one likes, and that is the criticisms, and the unfair criticisms, I might add, of my husband. But that's also just a fact of life in politics.

To defend our country we need to gather intelligence on the enemy, but when the intelligence lies to Congress, how are we to trust them? The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of their damn business.