Enacting elements of the Affordable Care Act isn't backtracking on core principles, but rather understanding that new ways to help make health care affordable builds stronger businesses and saves struggling hospitals. And that is a very attractive offer.

Of course, Mississippi participates in federal matching programs for everything from preserving the post-Civil War home of Jefferson Davis to beaver control.

As for my state of Mississippi, our governor, Phil Bryant, said the state could not afford the matching funds required to trigger the federal match for Medicaid expansion. We won't do it even though in 2014, the federal government would pay over $50 for every one dollar Mississippi chips in.

After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses - staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents.

If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system.

Hillary Clinton understands that we have to invest in education and jobs for our young people, not more jails or incarceration.

I have not decided if I want to be a teacher or an actor, because I like both of them.

There's a nastiness to conversations about U.S. education reform, which are characterized by the kind of stark taking-of-sides that's usually reserved for debates over guns or abortion rights.