I knew A.J. Muste very well. I tried for a while to be like he was, and that is a total pacifist. But then Margot [my wife] hit me hard in the stomach one day to prove to me that I wasn't as perfect a pacifist as I thought I was.

Young people get very excited when they hear why they are Americans. It is not hard to do.

I really envy, in some respects, some of the people of faith I've known - A.J.[Muste], for example.

The book that really, really shaped my politics and has forever is Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," which is a novel based on terrible fact about what it was like in Russia during Stalin's time when people actually believed that to get to the point where the Proletariat would triumph, anything that was necessary to be done should be done; the means didn't count.

Here is a guy who's supposed to be the Genghis Khan of the church, the pro-choice people hate him, and I don't know about his labor background so I figured there must be more to him, and there is. I wrote a book about [John Cardinal O'Connor].

Under the British healthcare system, there is a commission that decides whether or not, based on your age and physical condition, the government should continue to pay for your health.

My - mine is based on the fact that Bill Clinton has done - and I'm - this sounds like hyperbole, but he has done more harm to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than any president since John Adams.