“These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis.”

For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.

It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party, People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.

Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn’t have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.

I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.

Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can’t do anything because they’re tied up in knots.

Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.

The fact that theyre a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that its National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.

I should have voted for the first Iraq war. George Bush did that one very well. I had been skeptical. I was afraid that George Bush was going to treat the first Iraq war the way his son treated the second.

Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they’ve done the terrible things.

[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.

There is a correlation between people who attack same-sex marriage and have difficulty maintaining their own.

What’s troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process.

The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it’s that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.

We don’t get ourselves dry cleaned.

Enhances a person’s ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making

It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade.

History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism.

The number one problem in today’s generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets.

Derivatives have permitted the unbundling of financial risks.

Market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years.