I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making, like, $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions.

It is Republicans that have led the fight for women's equality. Go back through history and look at who was the first woman to ever vote, elected to office, go to Congress.

Women are the primary healthcare consumers in the country. 80 percent of all healthcare decisions are made by women.

Look at what is happening in China and in Russia. They have units that are specifically targeted cyber warfare. They are carrying it out. Our critical infrastructure is attacked thousands of times a day.

I think my generation has had an unbelievably easy time profiting from the world that was made for us by our parents and grandparents. We are essentially a rather frivolous generation. The Blair government was my generation's shot at power. It had some good things, but it had some flaws.

The fact that I have always been deeply invested in politics, and African politics in particular, inevitably played a role in my first novel and, of course, in my decision to write about a handful of particular conflicts in Africa as a journalist.

When there is a parliamentarian crisis, the only solution in a democracy is early elections.

Once our country is fully engulfed in a debt crisis, our economy will be torn apart, and every American will be a victim of the federal government's failure to prevent this disaster.