The one thing that I do is take really complicated systems and subjects and make them accessible to regular people.

Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues.

I was a bit of a troubled kid growing up, let's put it that way. I didn't take pleasure in hard work.

Obviously, people who commit crimes should be punished. Even people who steal socks and 'Snow White' videos should probably do time if they have priors, especially serious priors. But the punishment has to fit the crime, and the standard has to be the same for everyone.

It's really interesting that we've had this great Tea Party movement that is all about restoring free market capitalist values, but what they completely fail to understand is that what we've got now is a situation where there is a small class of gigantic financial companies that have put themselves above capitalism.

You know, I used to live in Russia where you had officers in the military opening up the warehouses at night and taking weapons out and putting them into a truck and selling them to foreign powers. That type of stuff doesn't happen in the United States. We still have a very functioning and relatively civil society.

Contracting corruption has been around since the construction of the Appian Way.