As both a First Amendment absolutist and as an American, I want to keep our government as far away from our press as possible.

People actually have the nerve to ask me if I want to go to a haunted house. Why would I want to go to a place where I have to pay my money for creepy strangers to be able to harass me without legal repercussions?

It's time to stop locking people up for victimless crimes.

To me, it seems pretty obvious that socialism is terrible. After all, do you know what's not terrible? Freedom.

I myself have been the victim of some absolutely horrific speech throughout the years; I know how bad it can make you feel - and yet, I still believe firmly that no words directed at me could ever feel worse than having to worry about losing my right to use my own.

Kids only have a certain number of years to be kids, and the last thing we should be doing is incarcerating them for wanting to make that short-lived magic last.

The truth is, one of the best things about being 15 years old is that things like candy are still exciting. Once you get older, once you've been knocked down enough by this cruel thing we call life, that just won't be the case anymore. Eventually, you'll become jaded.

I've lived a passionate life.

See, believe it or not, I actually support complete free speech not because I don't care about the welfare of the American people. I support it because I do.

Yes, dodgeball encourages competitiveness. Yes, the stronger, more athletic kids are going to be more successful at it than the weaker ones, but what game doesn't have winners and losers?

I think there are no good people at a white supremacist rally, and apparently that's just a real controversial take.

I'm all for teaching about important concepts like consent; I'm also very aware of how damaging and destructive it can be to be a victim of sexual harassment.

Keeping some people behind bars often hurts more than it helps - not only for the people who had been incarcerated and their families but also for society in general.

Attending Columbia had always been my dream, but the truth is, my decision not to go wound up opening the door to things that would have, in the past, seemed too big to even be worth dreaming about.

I will never, ever support a law that could clearly lead to an abuse of power just because of some lip service assuring me that it won't be used that way. To me, that's not enough.

Far too many people believe that they are owed some kind of 'safe space' from opposing ideas, and the fact is, that just isn't true - and we shouldn't allow people to say that it is true without correcting them.

As a general rule, I don't like to see laws that allow for the arrest and incarceration of people based on a sort of subjective standard.

The truth of the matter is, 'uncomfortable' does not equal 'unsafe,' and 'disagreement' does not equal 'danger.'

The bottom line is, our law enforcement is tasked with protecting us from harm - not with creating it by levying penalties for 'offenses' that present no real risk to anyone.

A person in power should never use his position to intimidate citizens from exercising their rights.

Personally, my general winter rule is that, if I'm not being paid to leave my apartment, then I'll be damned if I'm leaving.

Many people have made sacrifices to continue their education, or to allow their children to continue theirs. Others have made sacrifices by taking a path that didn't include continuing, because they could not afford to do so. None of these are things that could ever be replaced with cash.

Hillary Clinton had the backing of the entire DNC during her 2016 run, and yet, after she lost, all she could do was whine incessantly about how many people had wronged her throughout the process and made it so unfair.

Personally, I chose my own undergraduate institution in large part because the scholarship options made it affordable for me to attend. Make no mistake: The financial feasibility of each school's cost was a major part of making my decision, as it was for almost everyone I knew.

My first job ever real job in the field was as an airborne traffic reporter and producer in Los Angeles, but I was laid off pretty quickly - which was totally fair, because I'm terrible with directions, and that's kind of the whole job.

My favorite tweets are the, 'I used to like and then you said this,' 'I used to like you then you suggested that president Trump was not the savior of all of us.' It's absolutely ridiculous.

In fact, despite the fact that he's somehow managed to brand himself as a moderate choice, Michael Bloomberg's record is actually that of an authoritarian nightmare.

For years, fiscally conservative advocacy groups were giving then-Republican representative Justin Amash awards, praise, and donations. Now that he's an independent, however, many of those same groups are snubbing him entirely.

All too often, we see politicians on both sides desperately twisting themselves into partisan-hack pretzels, for the sole purpose of defending their own 'team' or attacking the other, without any thought to principles or values whatsoever.

To Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders is bad because she and her buddies in Congress don't 'like' him.

My later jobs as a waitress felt like a posh paradise after my first one at Boston Market.

I know it can be difficult to try and achieve your dreams when you don't have the same advantages as some other people may have, but this is a country full of opportunity where amazing things can happen, if you are willing to hustle and be smart about it.

I myself have appeared on countless panels alongside people with whom I've disagreed, at times even vehemently - and yet, the thought of closing out those segments by grabbing their notes and ripping them up has never even crossed my mind.

The truth is, every situation is different and has its own unique set of circumstances. That is reality, plain and simple.

No one, and I mean no one, gets personally offended by someone saying a food that they like is just okay - as if I had just attacked one of their character traits - unless 'character trait' is exactly what they consider liking that food to be.

The bottom line is this: It is not, in a country that was founded on the values of individual liberty and personal responsibility, the job of the government (read: completely uninvolved taxpayers) to pay for someone else's mistake.

Perhaps the most common argument against the advocates of cancel culture is that they're lame and uncreative - and I think they generally are.

Nutrition advice is, quite frankly, subjective.

See, locking people up who present no real danger to society isn't just unfair to those people and those who love them. It is, but it's also unfair to the people who pay to keep them there: the taxpayers. Let me be clear: Locking someone up is not free.

If I had my way, no one would ever be separated from his or her family over a personal choice that involved only his or her body.

The truth is, sometimes the best way for the government to help those in need is to stop itself from 'helping' them at all.

Now, to anyone with even half a brain, a newspaper apologizing because a reporter did some reporting makes about as much sense as a doctor apologizing because he gave someone a diagnosis.

Absolutely no one should be arguing for a system aimed at increasing ignorance.

There are cruel, terrible things that happen in this world that are even more traumatizing than the existence of Jeff Sessions. Yes, it can be painful to read about them - but we can never hope to change what we cannot first recognize.

Politics has become absurdly, stupidly, restrictively partisan.

One of the main foundations of our country is supposed to be that we value individuality, and unfortunately, that seems to be getting lost.

No one should ever feel compelled to replace the development of and adherence to his or her own set of personal values and beliefs with an adherence to some partisan label.

It's true: Whenever I see a government rule that could clearly be used to punish people for doing innocuous things, it is never enough for some government official to just assure me that it won't be used that way. Those assurances, after all, aren't binding; they're lip service.

The bottom line is: If any government has a rule that would legally allow it to punish people for things that don't deserve punishment, then that law should be scrapped or changed.

All too often, I will see people on the left slam Trump for the way he treats or talks about other people. Then those same individuals - sometimes even in the same breath - will go on to say even worse things about the people who voted for him.