Divorce is one of the key predictors of poverty for a child growing up in a home that's broken.

I support workplace clean air. But a federal ban on smoking would mean that you couldn't smoke in your own home. I don't care what people do in their home.

So when we're really addressing issues like poverty, you can't do that without addressing the real driver of some of those, which is stable homes, families. So that's why to me those issues are important. They're not frivolous. They're critical economic issues.

I've had the privilege of working with Bono for the past few years in the One Campaign to fight AIDS and hunger and disease around the world. Bono is an Irishman and a great humanitarian. And I remember him telling me of his admiration for America.

Nobody - myself included - believes that we could ever achieve total information awareness. But the government needs to set goals and long-range objectives. Total information awareness is a good goal.

If we don't have a vigorous questioning, aggressive journalistic community and mythology, democracy itself is in great jeopardy.

Now, mark it. This may be strong language, but heed it. The people mean it, and, my friends of the Eastern Democracy, we bid farewell when you do that thing.

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.