The tears running down my face last night and this morning were of something so much more than happiness, so much more than simple relief. They were an exhalation.

I did not fully understand the power of our inspired cliche; until I moved to a place - even one as civilized as France - where they are not born with it .

In the election returns, hidden in plain view, is license for President-elect Obama to fundamentally rethink U.S. policy toward Cuba and expand on his incremental approach.

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On Monday afternoon a day before the election, after placing Obama-Biden signs on doors in Northeast Philadelphia for nine hours, I sat down on a stranger's stoop, by myself, and cried.

Following the Iowa caucuses, I came away believing then, as I do now, that Obama's powerful voice that emerged that night had the potential to have a profound impact on America.

I thought, maybe finally the last barriers separating blacks from believing they can get, and will get, what they strive for, can begin to be crossed.

President Obama is going to be held to a very high standard by the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. We'll be watching, and holding everyone in Washington accountable.

The official reaction here has been congratulatory toward president-elect Obama, though notes of worry that the new administration could usher in protectionist trade measures are being voiced.

For whatever else the election of Barack Obama accomplishes or fails to accomplish, I think it has put an end to the nearly-decade-long Age of Incuriosity of the Bush administration.

We fought. We hoped. We worked. We cried. We panicked. We debated. We held our breath. It's not hyperbolic to say that we helped shift the course of the world.

Obama's victory does not spell the end of racial disparity in America, but it is a ringing sign of progress, a triumph on the road to greater equality and realizing the Dream that Martin Luther King, Jr. revealed to us.

A man plastered in Cynthia McKinney stickers poked me right on the Obama button fixed to my coat. "Hold him accountable. Stop the war," he said and dashed out of the car and up the stairs.

We set about the task of freeing ourselves from the darkness of this decade and the shadows that have for too long haunted us. In this respect, all of us -- all races -- are a little more free at last.

I'm experiencing something unbelievable, transformational, surreal. It occurs to me that the last time I had this feeling was on the morning of 9/11. Only this time, the towers are going back up.

I'm so glad to be alive. I'm wiped out by the last eight years, but I don't care. Some things are bigger than I am, and bigger than life, and I just lived to see one of them. Toot, 'ya did good.

It looks like I still have a lot of work left to do, a lot of marching and protesting--even though I did that already for others and they're not doing the same for me.

Obama and McCain accomplished two very different objectives last night: Obama unified and inspired; McCain departed with grace. Here's what history will remember of the speeches of November 4, 2008.

They way I see it, the GOP has two paths it can take. One leads to a sustainable future, the other will land them somewhere between Neve Cambell's career and stacks of left over Cool Runnings VHS tapes.

The president-elect represents a new, post-Clinton, beyond centrism, post-racial, new politics, internet-driven phenomenon. The nation is fed up with neoconservative imperialists, radical fundamentalists, and failed supply-siders.

Throughout the north side of Pittsburgh, one of the city's three major Black districts, they lined up before dawn, hundreds deep in the 47-degree weather as if they were waiting for history to be made.