In a time of tight budgets, difficult choices have to be made. We must make sure our very limited resources are spent on priorities. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children's classrooms and in their future.

The fight for reform comes down to a simple goal: giving our citizens the confidence that government serves the people first and the people only.

Government does not create jobs. It only helps create the conditions that make jobs more or less likely.

Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns, their communities will be consumed.

I was reluctant to be critical of the United States because I thought the United States could do no wrong; that the government could not lie to its people.

When governments fail us, what else can people do except take to direct action? When corporate power can so dominate government policy-making that whole communities are placed at risk, where else can people turn?

If people are stealing the resources of this nation, if people are taking bribes - if judges or persons in authority, whether they are judges or whoever they may be in government, ministers, whoever, if they are taking bribes - it attacks the fundament of our existence as a society.

An interim government was set up in Afghanistan. It included two women, one of whom was Minister of Women's Affairs. Man, who'd she have to show her ankles to to get that job?