In 1989 when I switched from Democrat to Republican with God as my witness not one thing changed about what I believed about one man and one woman in a marriage or about diversity of color. That's a good thing.

The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.

When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public.

Though every legal task demands this skill it is especially important in the effort to frame public policy in a way that is properly responsive to human needs and predicaments. The question is always: How will the general rule work in practice?

So my own suspicion is that the attorney has stopped this prosecution because part of her defence was to question legality and that would have brought his advice into the public domain again and there was something fishy about the way in which he said war was legal.

They seem to have forgotten that and are back saying the only purpose of P2P networks is for illegal trading of owned goods. We claim part of the reason for P2P is for legal trading of what ought to be in public domain. And what is in public domain in many cases.

The Republican Party looks at massive immigration legal and illegal as a source of cheap labor satisfying a very important constituency.

I do have two data identities. I have my name Bruce Sterling which is my public name under which I write novels. I also have my other name which is my legal name under which I own property and vote.

The Republican majority will stop at nothing to prevent access to the legal system for those who are hurt.

We get information in the mail the regular postal mail encrypted or not vet it like a regular news organization format it - which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do when you're talking about giant databases of information - release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks.

I come from a profession which has suffered greatly because of the lack of civility. Lawyers treat each other poorly and it has come home to haunt them. The public will not tolerate a lack of civility.

Each experience I go through - marriage my public life my personal life - I'm learning as I go.

Our learning ought to be our lives' amendment and the fruits of our private study ought to appear in our public behavior.

I didn't go to film school so my learning was done out in public and showed up on the screen.

In many ways it was much much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people publicists and so forth implicitly.

Public office is supposed to be a public trust. This is a clear sign of the rampant corruption at the highest levels of the Republican leadership.

House Republican leadership have refused to allow a clean minimum wage vote. Close to 15 million Americans will be affected if we did this. Do Republicans really expect a family to live on less than $11 000 a year?

The public sector certainly includes the Department of Labor. Those are jobs that are available. They are open and they are good paying jobs. The government as a whole has been actually retrenching under President Clinton's leadership.

The truth is the Republican leadership has created a credit card Congress that is recklessly selling out the future of America our children and our grandchildren and President Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible President in the history of America.

This Congress is simply not doing its job under Republican leadership.

It is sad that the Republican leadership is not as interested as they say they are in protecting the institution of marriage as they are in waging a campaign to divide and distract the American people from the real issues that need to be addressed.

I think that if Republicans are given the reins of leadership in the House or Senate or both we will have to govern in a way - at least put forward solutions whether or not the president goes along with them or not that deal with these long-term challenges.

We need real leadership Democrat Republican and independent to stand up and say we have to live within our means.

There's a very big gulf between the black civil rights leadership in America and the black middle class in America. The black middle class are conservative. Many of those minorities can be persuaded to be members of the Republican Party.