Pentagon dollars are essentially seen as a different kind of funding that doesn't have to stand for itself and make an argument for itself in the house of Congress.

So this is the only TV show in America where I am quite confident that you, the audience, will share my excitement when I tell you that coming up in our next segment, we have the best graph ever. Best graph ever.

The folks celebrating Jim Bunning are seeing him as an anti-government, anti-spending activist. But to embrace Jim Bunning is to embrace a strange record, if you really are a libertarian, if you really are a deficit hawk, if you really care about spending and responsibility.

The spy boom has been a beautiful windfall for architects, construction companies, IT specialists, and above all defense contractors, enriching thousands of private companies and dozens of local economies hugging the Capital Beltway.

When it starts to seem like you have popped into bed with a specific party, it makes it difficult for people to believe you are not doing someone else's bidding for them.

It used to be that we disagreed over the basic facts we were fighting over, and we had different opinions about them. Now I think we accept different sources of authority. ... And people can establish credibility on their own say-so as long as nobody follows the trail and calls them out on it.

My life is better with every year of living it.

I'm not a screamer. I'm confrontational, but I don't think that translates into anger.

It's not just the small-potatoes post-9/11 Homeland spending that feels a little off mission. It's the big-ticket stuff too.

If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that's a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that's a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public.

People who disagree on important issues don't agree on the facts.

I loved being on the radio. Being paid to talk? It's like being paid to eat.

I think service is honorable, and that was always inculcated in me.

I would like to be a polyglot.

The problem that I think is reasonable to assert about Fox and its coverage is that they make up stories out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out of them.

Having a place out of the city is a shortcut toward the mental reset I need.

I don't think about people watching me on TV. I think it would stress me out.

I have a file of letters and bits of ephemera from friends who have died. I have had lots of friends who died of AIDS.

I'm a national security liberal, which I tell people because it's meant to sound absurd.

I'm hopeless by e-mail, by phone, by text.