After a 15-year career in television news, sometimes spent biting my tongue in the name of objectivity and balance, I retired to raise our two small children.

If you live in the overlapping world of politics and media, as I am learning, anything less than full transparency can potentially do you in.

You're never going to hear me say, 'Well, I've been critical of Obama five times, so now I need to be critical of McCain five times.' That is a false equivalence, and that's what I think is wrong with journalism.

We will fiercely challenge those forces within the education establishment who impede innovation in our schools and who protect and defend inequality and institutional failure.

I was the only one in my family to be musically inclined, and my mother loved that. It encouraged my grand aunt to find me a music teacher, because it was quite obvious music was in me.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

Comedy is learning to be funny, and you learn to be funny in small rooms with young audiences.

My mother passed away when I was 14, so there were certain things I missed in terms of upbringing. Maybe my mother would have said, 'You have to get a real job.' I don't know because I didn't have that experience. My fortes in school were Spanish, sports, reading and theater. That's what they encouraged.