Clean energy is good for the environment, good for national security, and good for thousands of Americans who desire a rewarding career.

Reaffirming the justice of the American system bolsters our legitimacy with allies, thereby encouraging further cooperation and improving our national security.

Allowing suspects to indefinitely linger in our cells is, in fact, detrimental to our national security goals. If a suspect is proven to be a terrorist, for the sake of the victims and deterring any future attacks, he or she must be brought to justice. America has done this with Timothy McVeigh and hundreds of other terrorists.

For centuries, America has led the world on a long march toward freedom and democracy. Let's reclaim our clean energy leadership and lead the world toward clean energy independence.

To hear both critics and defenders talk about the fitness of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, you'd think the most successful Supreme Court justices had been warm, collegial consensus-builders. But history tells a different story.

I wouldn't want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer - figuratively, anyway - if we were all coding software or running companies. We also want musicians to awaken our souls, writers to lead us into fictional lands, and philosophers to help us exercise our minds and engage the world.

Science today is a highly collaborative exercise, and to convert it into a contest, as the Nobel does, is a bad way to look at science.

When I left my parents' home when I was 19, I went to the University of Florida, and within 24 hours was in the mental health department. And within 20 minutes, I was being told by the director there that they didn't have what I needed there.