But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home that's no excuse ... Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

Our destiny is not written for us, but by us.

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.

The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of the recession because that would just suck up and take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.

Even if the criticism is not always perfectly informed and in some cases I would deem unfair, just the noise, attention, fuss probably keeps powerful officials or agencies on their toes. And they should be on their toes when it comes to the use of deadly force.

I believe moderates will need to be driven out in order to usher in the progressive era.