When a politician uses the word 'folks,' we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

I don't join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn't have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven - that's none of my business, ultimately. I won't lecture her on the philosophy of science.

When candidate Donald Trump ran for the highest office in the land, he promised to fight for forgotten Americans. In the presidential election of 2016, the forgotten Americans of the Upper Midwest and the coal country of Kentucky and West Virginia, many of them life-long Democrats, delivered a decisive win for this first-time Republican candidate.

In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children.

They say not everyone can be MGR. I agree. MGR is a revolutionary. Not in a 1,000 years can there be another MGR. If anyone says he will be the next MGR, he is insane. But I have the confidence that I can give the government that MGR gave to the people of Tamil Nadu.

It's Congress' job to keep an eye on the other agencies and the workings of the entire government. It is our constitutional duty.