[Barack Obama's ] only principle is his own aggrandizement. This is a very dangerous mindset for a president to have.

[My wife Margot] was the - I guess, the coordinator or the production manager [of The Jazz Review], and we got to know each other and we married.

The person who has the strong ownership of free speech is the one who owns the press.

[Cardinal John O'Connor] had [my wife] Margot and me over for drinks a couple of times. That was something I never could have envisioned back when I was a kid in Boston, that a cardinal and I would be, if not breaking bread, at least breaking Scotch.

I had written a book called "Boston Boy" some years ago, and that took me from the time I could speak, I guess, in Boston through the time when I finally left to come to New York. One was understanding and coping with anti-Semitism. Boston, at the time, was the most anti-Semitic city in the country. And I found out when I was an adolescent that you have to be crazy to go out after dark all by yourself; you'd get your head bashed in.

Throughout [Barack] Obama's career, he promised to limit the state secrets doctrine which the Bush-Cheney administration had abused enormously.

I write a syndicated column for The Washington Post that goes to about 200, 250 papers.