The 'FISA Amendments Act' would gut the oversight system established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which subjected domestic spying to review by a special intelligence court.

In campaigns, promises are usually treated skeptically. Past positions are viewed as the one reliable way to gauge a candidate's instincts.

Honestly, anchoring the news on a nightly basis is the hardest job I've ever taken on.

It always rankled me - in law school and the legal profession - when lawyers would speak to each other in their own exclusive language.

Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

It is a world of extremes, which can be characterised most clearly in terms of exclusion. That means political exclusion, whereby the rights of citizens are marginalised by the interests of big business: George W Bush's environmental policy, for example, is clearly formulated in the interests of U.S. energy companies.

I think it's totally possible and plausible that racial balkanization is a recurring aspect of the nature of human politics.

Congress has been productive when focusing on bites of policy that don't inflame the divisions within the party and quietly do the work of governing.