I did think Justice [Antony] Kennedy's opinion on Lawrence was critical to that because it really, what Lawrence in one sense was, of course, about consensual sex being something that the government can't regulate. But really in a more fundamental sense, what it was saying, "Look. Gay people are normal people, and they get to live normal lives. They're not criminals by virtue of the fact of being gay."

I think what happened is that everybody's impressions got formed in those first few minutes. And I felt like, by the latter part of it, I kind of clawed my way back into the discussion. But everybody's impressions were set at the beginning. And wholly apart from me and whether I was good or bad, you know, there were a lot of hostile questions.

Sometimes one of the justices, because they're, you know, they're brilliant lawyers themselves, can put the question in a particular way so that, even if you've prepared to talk about the topic, the question is put in such an excruciatingly difficult way that there's just no good way to handle it.

I did think Justice [Antony] Kennedy's opinion on Lawrence was critical to that because it really, what Lawrence in one sense was, of course, about consensual sex being something that the government can't regulate. But really in a more fundamental sense, what it was saying, "Look. Gay people are normal people, and they get to live normal lives. They're not criminals by virtue of the fact of being gay."

Quite often there's a great deal of disagreement within the executive branch about what we should do. Some cases are pretty straightforward, but a lot of them aren't.

After a couple of years, I realized that this was actually true, that his gave me the ability to go to a different place and, hopefully, have a stronger impact.

The fact that you have a policy of such consequence directly affecting millions of people and you have a legal question of great consequence about the scope of the president's authority to act in implementing the immigration laws in this way and you have a one-line decision from the court affirming by an equally-divided court, it's an inevitable consequence of where we are.