AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton his family friends and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started.

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

My dad was a golden gloves boxer in the Marine Corps then a deputy sheriff. My mom worked as an office assistant.

My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate depressing sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.

Without tradition art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation it is a corpse.

Mr. Speaker I rise today to recognize the Peace Corps as it reached its 45th anniversary on March 1 2006.