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.

You know I don't think we need the Republicans to steal family values from us.

There are no doctors in my family, and I've joked about this, that my dad got the doctor daughter he always wanted. But I would make a terrible doctor - I hate the sight of blood!

I did not want my children to grow up only knowing other upper-middle-class kids like themselves.

No one in my family wrote. And there was no real introduction. I suppose I somehow blundered into it when I was about six or seven years old. I was asked what present I would like, and, without knowing why, I responded that I would like a journal. It was a beautiful journal - so beautiful that I didn't want to sully it.