All alone in a committee room of the Senate Office Building in Washington, I was reading the dry typewritten pages in an unpublished report of an almost forgotten congressional committee hearing.

And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction.

In a democracy there is a centralization of governmental power in a simple majority.

Newspapers write ringing editorials declaring that this is and always was a democracy.

Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.

I think it is the responsibility of anyone involved in politics to always think of what Japan can do to contribute more to the peace and stability not just of Japan and the region but of the entire world.

The federal government... knows how to put a missile in someone's room half way around the world with technology. Why don't we use some of that technology to save some lives here in America?

I know the government needs to ensure economic growth... we just hope it takes care of the environment, too.