When you live in Washington, D.C., you do get a sense, in a very direct way, of the durability of our government and really, the greatness of the American system.
Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?
Homicide through gun violence is the leading cause of death among young African American males in the United States. If people look a certain way, they have a higher tendency of dying, of having their lives taken away.
Americans are hard working, innovative, proud people who want bad government policies and high taxes to get out of the way so they can take care of their families and pursue their dreams.
I'm not one of those who thinks the only way to fix what's wrong with American education is to throw more money at it. We also need to do it much better.
My heroes are, above all, the great 19th-century Americans: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and the others. I love the way they think.
I tend to be a great optimist when it comes to the United States and the American way of life, I think precisely because I wasn't born into it.
If I have a name out there from this thing called 'American Idol,' I don't understand why anyone wouldn't use it for good. That's the way the world should work.
Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line.
The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.
The weekend brought good news for our friends in the cattle industry. At long last, Japan has taken the steps needed for American beef to make its way back into the Japanese market.
These days, with 'American Idol' and all the other reality shows, young people become famous overnight, and that can be very difficult to handle, the way photographers follow you around and study your every move.
Beyond any question, the way the American founders consistently linked faith and freedom, republicanism and religion, was not only deliberate and thoughtful, it was also surprising and anything but routine.
Much of what we consider the American way of life is rooted in the period of remarkably broad, shared economic growth, from around 1900 to about 1978.
One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land.
But to make a holiday record that involves favorite American songs and then also get to sing about Jesus birth, it just seemed like a real easy, subtle way to combine a couple of things that I love.
People have no tolerance. They think all bugs are bad. It's the American way. If you don't like something, kill it.
'American Idol' is the fast track to fame. I'm just lucky it worked out. I don't feel different. The way people react to me is different.
Reducing trade barriers with this key ally will go a long way toward increasing market access for American farmers, manufacturers and service providers.
I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in it.
I remember how, when I lived in Paris, there was a McDonald's, and I'd always see Americans eating there and think, 'Why do they come all the way to Paris and eat at McDonald's?'
