If you're an American and you are, you know, subscribing to the ideals and the creed and the values that we believe in as a country, you know, then we don't have a religious test in this country.

Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

I think we would have made a lot more mistakes and would have accomplished a lot less had we not been grounded in some basic truths.

That just gives sort of the democracy an opportunity to test ideas, for those who lost to catch their breath, regain energy, re-energize themselves and then get back in the arena, and then we'll make some more progress in the future.

... the fact is it didn't happen in the first month, the first six weeks, in a way that was at all acceptable. And since I'm in charge, obviously, we screwed it up.

I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal - and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.