I like Barack Obama as a person and I think he is a sincere man. I think he and his wife conducted themselves magnificently in the White House. There's not a better role model for American kids to watch Barack and Michelle Obama, so all of that is off-the-chart positive.

Many conservatives were openly angry with the Bush administration over enormous government spending and the chaos in Iraq. I don't see as much independent thinking on the left, where President Obama is rarely criticized by his acolytes.

I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made - along with a lot of other smart people - a fundamental mistake. The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses in widespread bankruptcies as what happened in 2008, the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit.

I'll tell you what. I've been in combat. I've seen it, I've been close to it... and if my unit is danger, and I've got a captured guy, and the guy knows where the enemy is, and I'm looking him in the eye, the guy better tell me. That's all I'm gonna tell you. The guy better tell me. If it's life or death, he's going first.

The one thing the police cannot protect us from is a politician like Bill de Blasio.

The Tea Party is simply a loose description of local activism driven by Americans who want smaller government and more self-reliance. That sounds like what the Founding Fathers had in mind, does it not?

America offers the most amount of people the best opportunity to pursue happiness on the planet. That's why millions of illegal immigrants have poured into the country - most of them poor. They believe they have a shot to improve themselves economically.