Our growing national debt is a threat to our national defense and to our domestic priorities, including research and development, education, health care, and investments in our economic growth.

As a member of the House Pro-Choice Caucus and a strong defender of a woman's right to choose, my bottom line here is this: women have a constitutional right to access abortion.

I voted against H.R. 4712, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which is nothing more than a shameless attempt to intimidate doctors, spread misinformation about abortion, and decrease women's access to healthcare.

Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy shared more than just being leaders during critical times and the misfortune of lives cut short. They shared a power of will to drive the nation, sometimes single-handedly, toward a destination that few but they realized was attainable.

If you have money and you have fame, but you don't have any confidence in your blackness, then it's all for nothing.

I think, always, with a new book, I get nervous. I think mostly it is because work is really important to me, and a book doing well is important because it buys you another one. Not because of the money but if you keep doing interesting work, work that people like, they will want you to do more, and offers that are interesting come in.

It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone wanted to get in on it. Now it's just become very corporate. So all of these people who despise music end up being in charge.

The scary thing is a dramatic erosion of American position in the world - its economic, military position, as well as America's influence. Obama is not the man at the wheel desperately trying to conserve American power, influence and wealth. For ideological reasons, he wants the slipping to continue. He's actually the architect of it.