I have criticisms of Ronald Reagan, but he lives in another universe from the kind of political theater that is represented by people, like Sarah Palin, who aren't really public servants.

It is only education and understanding of the past that teaches us not to repeat history.

There are people who are trying to advance themselves by wrapping themselves in Reagan.

We come out of Jewish-refugee, Holocaust stock, which means that our predecessors fled and we learned that systems of power are vulnerable to corruption and can treat the defenseless in a destructive fashion.

Ronald Reagan, whatever his pros and cons were, was a public servant in the end.

If we went back to the imprisonment rate we had in the early '70s, something like four out of five people employed in the prison industry would lose their jobs. That's what you're up against.

What was happening was the war on drugs. That was the primary culprit I could see that was getting in the way of black progress.