First, the year 2004, the year past, the Comptroller General of the United States, David A. Walker, said that arguably it was the worst year in American fiscal history, clearly setting our Nation on an unsustainable path.

I think the job of leadership is to expand what can be talked about and to get consensus on the nature of the problem, and that is most of the job. Because once you do that, once you have diagnosis, treatment options are obvious.

This Congress is simply not doing its job under Republican leadership.

Equality under the law is the slow triumph of hope over history.

The Internet has brought democracy to so many other things. It's about time the Internet brought democracy to democracy.

Global poverty is the product of reversible policy failures overseen by politicians, past and present. The poorest of the poor don't vote in American or European elections. They don't make donations to political parties or hire lobbyists in D.C., London or Canberra.

History will eventually depict as legitimate the efforts of the Iraqi resistance to destabilise and defeat the American occupation forces and their imposed Iraqi collaborationist government.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.