This attitude of how society views women as chattel - that's the biggest thing to overcome. When I first started a stake in the issue of relationship abuse, I got really beat up by the Christian right because I was interfering in what was a personal family affair. It's a "family matter." That's why I wish we'd drop the phrase "domestic violence." It sounds like a domesticated cat. It is the most vicious of all crimes - to be abused by someone you had a relationship with! Because then you blame yourself.

I believe health care is a basic right. If education - you're entitled to an education, why wouldn't you be entitled to adequate health care? Period.

I must express my protest against continually increasing the debt without taking positive steps to slow its growth.

I also acknowledge that prejudice runs very deep in our society. And, in the real world, discrimination rears its ugly head in the shadows, where it's very difficult to root it out.

I used to stand in front of the mirror in my bedroom. I shared a bedroom - like a lot of people in my era, in my neighborhood - with my two brothers and an uncle. And I'd stand there in front of the mirror over the dresser and I would practice: meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views of Cicero, Bacon and Baba.

I'm not running like Colonel [Bernie] Sanders. All reputations matter.

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.