Growing richer every day, for as rich and poor are relative terms, when the rich are growing poor, it is pretty much the same as if the poor were growing rich. Nobody is poor when the distinction between rich and poor is destroyed.

The political power of the Country must fall eventually into the hands of certain great families as it always has done in other republics.

It does not, surely, require such torrents of blood to satisfy any reasonable man that nothing can be a more impious presumption than for either side to think themselves entitled to count the Almighty as an ally in such a pitiful display of human passion.

If one has not influence to stem the torrent of popular delusion he is reduced to the melancholy part of a spectator in the midst of the ruin.

The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat.

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor, all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion.

The fundamental purpose of government is to protect its citizens.

For almost two centuries, American gray wolves, vilified in fact as well as fiction, were the victims of vicious government extermination programs. By the time the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, only a few hundred of these once-great predators were left in the lower 48 states.