New Yorker: on Principles & Values

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Congress is a shit show, scandalizing every single day

AOC: Honestly, it is a shit show. It's scandalizing, every single day. What is surprising to me is how it never stops being scandalizing. Some folks perhaps get used to it or desensitized to the things that may be broken, but there is so much reliance on this idea that there are adults in the room, and, in some respect, there are. But sometimes they're just susceptible to groupthink.

Donald Trump: Trump Tower glitz: Italian marble 80-foot waterfall

Doug Mastriano: Prayed that God would influence Capitol election protest

Hillary Clinton: Hillary's paradox: she's not as liberal as people think

A: There are ten or twelve plausible candidates for the Democratic nomination for the President, some of whom we haven't really thought about yet. It could be Mark Warner, from Virginia, or Evan Bayh, from Indiana. Each person has a reason that he-and they're all men-would be a better alternative nationally to Hillary Clinton. What's bubbling beneath the surface right now is a feeling that Hillary Clinton could certainly capture the nomination, but she is not the best person to run for the Presidency. This goes back to the paradox of Hillary Clinton: she is a moderate figure-she's never actually been as liberal as people think. But by 2008 the country will have had sixteen or seventeen years of knowing Hillary, and people's ideas about her are fairly fixed. If only because of the amount of money she's raised, she's formidable, and she's in the way of all of these other guys

Howard Dean: DNC pursuing a 50-state strategy to take back the House

A: Howard Dean decided to put a lot of DNC money into a program to build the state parties in all fifty states. But the congressional leadership is saying, We have a finite amount of money and we have the opportunity to take back the House in 2006, so give us that money and we'll pour it into Ohio, or Florida-into congressional districts that we think we have a chance of turning. Most Democrats seem to agree that Dean's arguments and his detractors' both have merits-to put all that money into winning the House in 2006, and from there build up to bigger wins.

Q: So is 2006 really about 2008?

A: 2006 is important in its own right, but of course 2008 is it. I don't want to say "the whole enchilada," but it's extremely important. 2006 is when a lot of ideas are going to be road-tested, in policy and in strategy, for both parties.

Howie Hawkins: Danger of Trump doesn't mean electing "any damned Democrat"

John F. Kennedy: JFKs's Addison disease kept secret for decades

Yet it is impossible to conceal the sheer physical strain of the Presidency. The absence of peers and friends takes the greatest toll. Kennedy, who liked to compare his critics to hecklers at a bullfight, quoted a poem by the matador Domingo Ortega: "Only one is there who knows / And he's the man who fights the bull."

Sally Yates: AG should say no to president in order to obey the law

At the hearing to officially confirm her for the position, in March, 2015, Republicans, including Jeff Sessions, asked her whether she would stand up to President Obama if he defied the law. "They were all over me about 'Look, you've got to be independent. You don't work for the President,' " Yates said. "They're absolutely right. You've got to be able to say no to the President. You've got to make your own decisions about what's lawful and constitutional."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: America without censorship: I'm not a cancel-culture guy

KENNEDY: I'm not going to pick out people and say that they're evil, they should be cancelled, or whatever. I know what my values are. I believe in the same America that my father and my uncle believed in: an America without censorship; an America that fights for our Constitution; an America that is a moral authority around the world, that projects economic power around the globe rather than military violence--if I can get people to support that, I don't care if they're Republican or independent, or what they are.

Q: Somebody like Alex Jones has nice things to say to you; do you say, "Alex Jones, I don't want your support"?

KENNEDY: I'm not a cancel-culture guy.

Q: That's not cancel culture. That's a principled insistence that he's a bridge too far.

KENNEDY: That's not consistent with my political philosophy.