In many campaigns, one candidate or another is asked to answer for comments he or she made in the past. The answer is usually gibberish - 'That was a long time ago,' or 'I was trying to say something else.'

Opinion pages have an impact on public debate, and they sometimes reveal things the government would rather have kept quiet.

The 24/7 nature of online debate, on the web and across social media, has allowed for more vibrant discussion of the opinions we publish - and your own.

I have sometimes thought the power of computers had exceeded our ability to use them, but Mr. Jobs and his team kept giving us devices that made indispensable things easier in ways you never thought of.

I'd get off the set of 'The Wire' at 3 A.M. or even 4 A.M. and drive home to Washington to see my kids sleep and give them a kiss. I'd get up at 7 A.M., while the kids were still in bed, and drive back to Baltimore.

In any household, whenever you are a family that's going through something tough - whether it's an illness or whatever the case may be, families tend to close their doors and become more private.

Negroes could be sold - actually sold as we sell cattle, with no reference to calves or bulls or recognition of family. It was a nasty business. The white South was properly ashamed of it and continually belittled and almost denied it. But it was a stark and bitter fact.

My father and mother do not know literacy. I cannot go to school due to financial difficulties. I started to working at a butcher as an apprentice when I was 14.