We all know members of the House and Senate - especially the House - who are just crazy and say things that aren't true, Democrats and Republicans.

Washington, as we know it, is essentially run by men and women who are not elected or even appointed to their posts, staff members unaccountable to traditional constituencies. They rise according to the needs and whims of their own special constituency of elites.

My journalistic heroes are Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel and Tim Russert and Edward R. Murrow, among others, because they were tough.

You know what takes effort? Being kind, being patient, being respectful, telling someone how you feel politely instead of just avoiding them for six weeks.

Resist the temptation to subject yourself only to that which re-affirms what you already think.

My job is to not take for granted when somebody says, 'Oh, this is all just a made-up, phony scandal,' or, 'What this person did put the U.S. government at risk.'

I still think of myself as a Philadelphian. I still root for the Philadelphia teams. Other than my house, I still feel most at home in terms of cities when I'm in Philly.

I don't want to compare President Obama and President Trump on these issues, because they're different, and the scale isn't even remotely the same. But President Obama said things that weren't true and got away with it more for a variety of reasons, and one is the media was much more supportive of him.

I have a wife and a son and daughter. What do I need to do to make their lives better, happier? What can I do in terms of my time or my attention given that I am very busy at work? That's a personal rule of thumb I live by from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed.

Exercise has its hazards. Runners are sidelined by shinsplints, freestylists by swimmer's ear, and who hasn't heard of tennis elbow? But the fitness buff of the '90s has a far greater worry. StairMaster Butt.

I have very vivid memories of my parents talking about Nixon, my mom watching Watergate on the black-and-white set in the living room. The mayor at the time in Philadelphia was a guy named Frank Rizzo - a Democrat, a real bully, a racist.

Mean is easy. Mean is lazy. Mean is self-satisfied and slothful.

Equating brutality and despotism with leadership is not an American value.

It's the exact opposite of my job to take what the government says at face value and say, 'This is the truth because the government says it, and the government never lies.'

Normally, at a debate or a town hall, I would be quick to say to someone, 'That was rude,' or, 'We're going to try to keep it civil here,' or, 'Let's not have personal attacks.'

Don't get me wrong: politicians have been lying for a long time, long before Donald Trump was born, but the degree of just nonstop rage, grievance, prevarication, I haven't seen, probably because we haven't had a direct line from a politician's id to the public before.

They say history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

My dad's a hero in a lot of ways. He was a 1960s and 1970s hippie and a member of the protest crowd.

Whenever journalism students ask me what they should be doing, I say that if you're on social media, you should be following a ton of people that you don't necessarily agree with just to get their perspectives.

The only politician in my family was my grandfather's grandfather, who was the mayor of Winnipeg from Jan. 1, 1917, until Jan. 5, 1917, because he lost the recount. So he was mayor of Winnipeg for four days.

There's no bias when it comes to facts, and there's no bias when it comes to decency.

My mom is from Canada. Both my grandparents were from Canada.

In practice, conservatives are no less inclined than liberals to adopt superior stances or to tell people how to live their lives.

The tone of good web writing grows out of email. It's more direct, personal, colloquial, urgent, witty, efficient. It doesn't waste your time. It reflects that engagement, responsiveness, and haste of web surfers, as opposed to the more general passivity of print readers.