My father was predisposed to drunken rages. I would hide under the bed. My sister and I were talking just the other day about the terror a drunken man in a rage can create in a child.

Let me be clear - no one is above the law. Not a politician, not a priest, not a criminal, not a police officer. We are all accountable for our actions.

In no small part I think all of us kind of look in the mirror and feel good or not feel good about the person we seen in the mirror in no small part because of the jobs we have.

So laying people off is not something I do lightly, it's not something I relish.

You can't just trot out a brown face or a Spanish surname and expect people are going to vote for your party or your candidate.

Look, you're not going to get me to say that Democrats don't make mistakes. We do. I mentioned two areas - pension reform and seniority and tenure. I've done both - I've advocated for both. I've advocated for - seek for reform as well.

I don't want to describe either Governor Mitt Romney or the Republicans as stupid, but I will say this - if you look at their platform, the 2012 platform, it looks like it's from another century and maybe even two. It looks like the platform of 1812.