There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington the place we learned to despise during the last administration.

I came home every Friday afternoon riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon.

There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.

The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington D.C. and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest most open and most ethical Congress in history.

For the first time in our history ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Having bought furniture for my own house and bought furniture for our house in Washington a furniture store seemed like a good idea and it also played into my personal history.

Hollywood has a history of raising expectations beyond Washington's reach of appealing to the very American desire to mythologize political leaders particularly the president.

Our liberal New York/Washington-based media would never in a million years put Liberal Godfather Ted Kennedy on the spot about his clan's bad behavior to whose lurid history he himself has contributed so much.

This is the greatest society in all of human history the greatest country ever. Many of the decisions being made in Washington today by both parties are threatening that greatness. And if we stay on this road we're on right now our children are going to be the first Americans ever to inherit a diminished country.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

In my view far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting the New York Times the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

Security is still the most important issue facing Washington state residents and millions of Americans - the security of having a job of access to affordable health care of a quality education and of protecting our homeland and defending our nation.

If Obamacare is allowed to stand - and Congress is allowed to make the purchase of government-endorsed health insurance compulsory - there will be no meaningful limit on Washington's reach into the lives of the American people. That is certainly not what the Founders intended.

Giving governors more leeway in administering health care could represent a small positive development in the ongoing saga of Obamacare. Unfortunately instead of choosing flexibility President Obama and his left-leaning advisers always default to rigid 'Washington knows best' answers.

Prior to passage of Obamacare Americans spoke out against the individual mandate they didn't want to change the health care they had they didn't want a 3 000-page bill that empowered 15 Washington bureaucrats to decide the future of the doctor-patient relationship.

True health care reform cannot happen in Washington. It has to happen in our kitchens in our homes in our communities. All health care is personal.

I visited those friends who'd just had a baby and she was washing dishes and he was cleaning the house and I burst with happiness. And in their minds they were in this terrible domestic rut.

When I was waiting tables washing dishes or mowing lawns for money I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path my own journey an American journey where I could think for myself decide for myself define happiness for myself.

I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software.

I'm against big bureaucracy in Washington making health care decisions. I just have an aversion to bureaucrats. But it's not just government bureaucrats. I don't like HMO bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats either.

We Brits print banknotes out in Debden in Essex and have contracted it out to the private sector. Here in the U.S. it is a government operation right in the heart of Washington next door to the Holocaust Museum.

Government is by its very nature a destroyer of liberties the Obama administration specifically is promising to interfere with the economy and the health care system so profoundly that Washington will soon have us all in chains.

I think the country's getting disgusted with Washington partly because of the decline of civility in government.

By the time Obama came into office Washington had already agreed over a period of a few weeks to a $700 billion government infusion into the world banking system. Nothing of the sort had ever been done before and it was done spit spot with very little national debate.