RollingStone – article and video: “Pelosi is at the height of her power, having recaptured the House, dispatched an attempted coup of her leadership, and faced down the president in a very public, extremely high-stakes fight. Her approval rating has risen eight points since November, and now sits higher than it has been in more than a decade. Nancy Pelosi has waited a long time for this. Born 78 years ago, she was the youngest of Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.’s seven children, and the only girl. While her elder brother was groomed to follow in their father’s footsteps, Pelosi got married, moved to San Francisco, and raised five children before she seriously considered a run for office. When she arrived in Congress, after winning a special election in 1987, women made up just five percent of the House of Representatives. Pelosi served for two decades before she was elected the first female speaker of the House, in 2007, the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government, and second in line to the presidency…”

The wisdom of our founders was that we would have co-equal branches of government. I think in a large sense, my responsibility now — and it seems to be having an impact — is to impress upon the other branches of government, the executive and the judiciary, the role of the legislative branch. That means to not only pass laws — the Constitution gives us the power of the purse, it gives us the responsibility for oversight, and we will exercise that power. And if we don’t, we would be delinquent in our duties. As speaker of the House, I see my responsibility to honor the Constitution — separation of powers as a co-equal branch of government…”