You [the Gallaudet students] have brought the deaf community together.... You are my heroes.

When I campaigned, I'd let them throw a punch, but by gosh, I'd throw two back. I always said, the first rule in politics is never defend, always attack. I still believe that.

When I first arrived to Congress in 1975, I would spend several hours every week with Republicans - having lunch, drinking a beer. But by the time I left last year, that was a rarity. Every moment of free time is eaten up by fundraising. And the advent of all these groups that can threaten passage of this or that with an avalanche of money or a primary opponent has poisoned our politics.

I don't know if there's any secret recipe. Just a lot of hard work. Pay attention to your constituents. I always had a great Iowa staff that did all my great constituent service work. And I found that people would forgive me for a lot of my "liberal sins" because I paid attention to the home front.

When those pictures of Abu Ghraib came out, I thought, my gosh, this is like the tiger cages for prisoners in Vietnam all over again. Only we were actually doing it ourselves, we weren't hiring another government to do it.

I am a Democrat and I love my party and I want them to have good policies and good candidates, so I hope to be supportive in some way, but I don't intend to be any kind of 'godfather' or something like that.

I've always been for immigration reform; in 2007 I just didn't feel it had enough protections.