I'm a Slovak. And when I was growing up, I believed that I was Czechoslovakian because of what Russia did. They came in and took two separate countries - Slovakia and the Czech Republic - put them together as one.

I'm against the draft. I believe we should have a professional military; it might be smaller, but it would be more effective.

Our military doesn't defend our American people. Our military is the strong-arm muscle of corporations.

I think they should let gays in the military because we are the United States of America. And if a gay person wants to serve his or her country, why should they not be allowed to?

Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is the politics of managing mistrust.

What we need is to make our senior citizens feel secure once more with their own Social Security and Medicare. But going forward, we need to personalize that program in a way that the government can't go in and raid it any more.

Africans require, want, the franchise on the basis of one man one vote. They want political independence.

In fact, when I fought the 1996 election, being Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's daughter, it has its own plus and minus, so I told my father, 'please don't come for campaigning with me'.