Iran is not a make-believe country. It is a real country populated by some 75 million people - real people; including, I daresay, a majority who are philosophically and by education inclined toward the modern, secular world, and particularly American values.

It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being.

There are some people who believe that these are not real stories with real people, but they actually are.

Budgets are moral documents. Federal funding should reflect the priorities and the values of the majority of the American people.

The Bush-Cheney administration had betrayed some basic American values. So there was hunger for change.

Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.