If we treated politics like more of a profession, like it should be, we would all be a lot better off.

If I make the mistake of eating breakfast, I want to go back to bed and/or eat again immediately.

We're all biased, right, in many different ways - politically, religiously, ideologically, the way our family raised us - and that's fine. Nobody wants to live in a world where everybody thinks exactly the same. The key, though, is to try to figure out where your biases are holding you back from solving problems.

Like the graduates of some notorious boot camp, my brothers and sisters and I look back with a sort of perverse glee at the rigors of our Catholicism. My oldest sister, Mary, was so convinced of the church's omnipotence that when she walked into a Protestant church with some high-school friends, she was sure its walls would crash down on her head.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

We are a democracy, and we get the leaders we deserve because we elect them.

Surely no issue unites us more than our appreciation for our military personnel who are bringing aid to devastated countries, defending us against terrorism, and fighting to make a free election possible in Iraq.

When people read 'Breitbart' every single day and convince themselves that Barack Obama is a foreign terrorist, that is not a problem of government. That is a problem of community failure, and we have to recognize that.