The lesson of 9/11 is that America is truly exceptional. We withstood the worst attack of our history, intended by our enemies to destroy us. Instead, it drew us closer and made us more united. Our love for freedom and one another has given us a strength that surprised even ourselves.

Now, people have a hard time understanding how taxes work.

Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

I always felt, and I still feel, that the media doesn't belong in a public official's private life. It's a very difficult balance, because if you are elected to public office, people have a right to know a great deal about you, and the press has an absolute obligation to report all of that. But the reality is that there are times in which the reporting is really happening for almost voyeuristic reasons, in the gossip columns. Maybe half of it is wrong, and half of it is correct, and a lot of it is exaggerated. You've just got to get used to that if you're in public life.

I certainly have the energy, and there's probably nobody that knows the Justice Department better than me.

It's a phony issue. To pretend the death penalty is going to end crime in the United States is to fool people, to promote public ignorance.

I was an assistant U.S. attorney. I was the associate attorney general of the United States, third-ranking official under Ronald Reagan.