You can put a person in jail for 5 years, for 10 years, or 20 years, for the same crime. We're deciding on 10 years to 20 years, when 5 years would be enough. Okay. The deterrent value, the additional amount of leverage that you get over a criminal to keep them from breaking the law in the first place, associated with making the sentences longer, is de minimous; it's essentially nothing.

You can put a person in jail for 5 years, for 10 years, or 20 years, for the same crime. We're deciding on 10 years to 20 years, when 5 years would be enough. Okay. The deterrent value, the additional amount of leverage that you get over a criminal to keep them from breaking the law in the first place, associated with making the sentences longer, is de minimous; it's essentially nothing.

My mouth is no prayer book, but my view is, I'd view addiction to these substances as a medical problem and I would treat it accordingly. What little I know about the history of drug control policy in the United States leaves me thinking that a hugely important moment came when the lawyers win out over the doctors on this matter.

My sermon for us Americans would be to construct the kind of institutions of mutuality and social cooperation that don't leave 15 or 20 percent of our people falling through the cracks. We can do it. It's not like we don't know what to do. It's not like there aren't models there. It's not like this isn't being done elsewhere. It's not like we can't afford to do it. It's a question of political will and it's about our definition as a people.

America is the only advanced industrial democracy where people can get sick and languish because they can't afford care. Or where people are blocked in access to the system because they don't have access to insurance, which is only available through certain narrow portals and under certain very restricted conditions. We're the only society that hasn't embraced this idea that no one should go without access to these services, regardless of their financial condition. And no one should be saddled with a lifetime of debt because they have the misfortune of falling ill.

If you have a system that says everybody who needs healthcare gets it and we're going to make sure that it gets paid for by raising your taxes and providing the requirements on individuals where they have the ability to pay, such as we determine as appropriate, then the insurance issue doesn't come up.

I'm left. Okay. And sometimes radically, and sometimes I even shock myself with the degree of radicalness in my own - that I'm allowing to come out in my old age.