My mom played the recorder. But not having electricity we had minimal exposure to music. As I got a little older we had Walkmans and things that were battery-powered but it would have been nice to be growing up in the iPod era. A tape only has six songs on a side.

We need somebody who's got the heart the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

I would like to promote the concept of a partnership of insurance companies physicians and hospitals in deploying a basic framework for an electronic medical records system that is affordable.

And as a nurse I know very well the importance for example of electronic medical records.

Marriage has been defined by every legislature that has ever sat in the United States from every State now 50 States the same way but now we have unelected judges altering and changing that fundamental institution.

Forty-five States as the gentleman just said have determined by people that were elected by the people of that State that marriage is the definition of one man and one woman.

I never thought I'd spend all my life with Gary. I suppose I was quite cynical about marriage. But with Jude I knew right from the beginning: there was an electricity I'd never felt before. It was so easy we talked for hours. It was a relief really.

You know for many elected officials they all started in the same place. You know marriage is between a man and a woman but they understand that they are moving inevitably catching up to the American public.

I think it's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy and that is marriage. I think for instance that it would be far easier for Americans to elect a black president or a female president than an unmarried president.

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on it adds up.

While there continues to be differences the important point is that all citizens and elected officials use democratic and legal avenues for solving those differences.

These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country and they are the reason why it is so expensive or one of the reasons it's so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run.

I suppose I am a frustrated musician so I annoy my family by playing guitar in the house. I used to be into acoustic stuff but my son Joseph is learning drums so now I have an electric guitar and we play Metallica. We have an amp and a PA in the garage with his drum kit.

I supported my friend Congressman Shuler over former Speaker Nancy Pelosi during our party's leadership elections in November citing a need for new leadership.

What happened with Hurricane Katrina was the American electorate was forced to look at what lay behind the veneer of chest-beating. We all saw the consequences of having terrible government leadership.