I have been following the attempt to initiate or revamp federal involvement in the health of Americans since it was a major topic for my high school debating team in 1947.
My memories are of my dad taking me to football on Saturday mornings, and my mum taking me swimming. Those are the things I remember from my childhood, not sitting around the table debating capitalism and the profit squeeze.
The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.
Al Jazeera aired a new tape of Osama bin Laden. It was the usual stuff, he called Bush evil, the Great Satan, called him a war monger. Basically, the same thing you heard at last night's Democratic debate.
I'm pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don't see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I'm petrified of being wrong.
A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.
Good people can disagree - all you want is honesty, because you know, if I disagree, I'm willing to debate you on that, and then let the public decide what's good policy and bad policy.
What distinguishes the campaign finance issue from just about every other one being debated these days is that the two sides do not divide along conventional liberal/ conservative lines.
You do now have one in three people, as shown by the famous Carlton Monarchy debate poll, saying they want to get rid of the Monarchy. That was unthinkable even three, four years ago.
Such an emphasis on the immanence of God as Creator in, with, and under the natural processes of the world unveiled by the sciences is certainly in accord with all that the sciences have revealed since those debates of the nineteenth century.
Unfortunately, science cannot be reduced to short, catchy phrases. And if this is all that the general public can comprehend, it's no wonder that we spend so much of our time in the interminable debate about belief in God, or lack thereof.
We shouldn't be debating whether to deal with the current code by allowing it to be extended or not. We should have a president who shows leadership and comes to Congress and says: 'You know what? We need to reform this whole tax code.'
For the life of me, I don't understand what honest motive there is in putting this in front of this body to philosophically debate marriage on a constitutional amendment that is not going to happen, and which is enormously divisive in all of our comm...
As we begin this debate, I am confident that we will hear the supporters of this bill argue in the name of Ronald Reagan that this research is consistent with his long-held views about the sanctity of life.
Whether greater cybersecurity requires a greater sacrifice of our digital freedoms is an important debate that we should be having, preferably with all the facts in front of us.
Maybe It's not the biggest blockbuster film, but there will be some people that will see it, that will be debating it, that will be questioning their own sense of spirituality. If the film resonates, then I have succeeded in what I set out to do.
The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart form the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines.
I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field.
I'm more a collector of identities and words that feel right to me. To me this is an inarguable point. I am who I say I am and that's not up for debate.
I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.
No matter how you cut it, this real debate on personal accounts is about the legitimacy of Social Security; it's not about the solvency of Social Security.
