The biggest thing I've learned from my dad is he's had adoring crowds of 8,000 at Berkeley, and 6,000 at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That's an amazing feat to have people coming out in one of the most liberal universities and one of the most conservative.

I think the key to getting rid of illegal immigration, no matter where its coming from, is that you need to have a good legal apparatus for immigration.

A Tea Party tidal wave is coming.

To defend our country we need to gather intelligence on the enemy, but when the intelligence lies to Congress, how are we to trust them? The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of their damn business.

Music is part of life. It is not the real life. I belong to that first: family, children. The important things.

I grew up in a family of Republicans. And when I was 18 and registering to vote, my mom's only instruction was 'You just go in and pull the big Republican lever.' That's my welcome to adulthood. She's like, 'No, don't even read it. Just pull the Republican lever.

The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it.

Remember that a woman who has given birth to a dead child has given birth and is recovering physically, too. Don't be afraid of grieving parents.