The President must stop gambling with taxpayers' money and get the country back on the path of fiscal sanity.

The President must stop gambling with taxpayers' money and get the country back on the path of fiscal sanity.

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 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.

It is long past time to eliminate bigotry in the workplace and to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans. It is time to make clear that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are first class citizens. They are full and welcome members of our American family and they deserve the same civil rights protections as all other Americans. It is time for us to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Such discrimination is wrong and should not be tolerated.

When you dig down, people are pretty progressive, by and large. I guess, I've said it many times - that a lot of people say we're a conservative country, that people are conservative. And my response to that is, yes, that's true, and you know what the people want to conserve most? The progressive traditions of our country - freedom of speech, and of the press and of assembly. Freedom to dissent. The freedom to practice your own religion or not practice religion as you see fit. Yes, we're conservative! We want to conserve those.

It's been years, but I still say that I went out with the same progressive values and liberal ideals that I went in with. I made a couple of mistakes, I will honestly admit. In retrospect, there are a few votes I wish I could take back. But, through it all, I kept my support for organized labor, I kept my support for income equality, I kept my support for making sure that kids that come from poor families have access to education. So, yes, I still believe that you don't have to give up your ideals and go along. One person can still stand up and make a difference.