We are unique among advanced countries that we don't have universal health care. My hope was that I was able to get a hundred percent of people health care while I was president. We didn't quite achieve that, but we were able to get 20 million people health care who didn't have it before. And obviously some of the progress we made is now imperiled because there's still a significant debate taking place in the United States. For those 20 million people, their lives have been better.

I think that people are concerned about the breakdown of the family but they also don't want to see discrimination against gays and lesbians who they work with and they want to be able to make sure that gays can visit each other in hospitals and be able to inherit property.

There's no way to resolve Syria without Iran being involved, given its financing of Assad and the fact that Hezbollah is probably the most effective fighting force that Assad can count on.

Back in the '50s and '60s, most politicians were concerned about not talking about faith, partly because there were consequences you had to deal with - (for instance) Catholicism had been made an issue.

How do we in the African American community build a culture in which we are saying to our kids, "Here's what it takes to succeed. Here's the sacrifices you need to make to be able to get ahead. Here's how we support each other. Here's how we look out for each other."

Those who are troubled by our existing programs are not interested in a repeat of 9/11, and those who defend these programs are not dismissive of civil liberties. The challenge is getting the details right, and that's not simple.

What we've seen at least since 1979 is Iran making constant, calculated decisions that allow it to preserve the regime, to expand their influence where they can, to be opportunistic, to create what they view as hedges against potential Israeli attack in the form of Hezbollah and other proxies in the region.