And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.

I am leaving because I have to fight simultaneously a potential recurrence of cancer the Democratic leadership, a health care bill that's going to destroy this country, my opposition to it and a belief that my party has become what it became - what it campaigned against.

Look, half the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were either in debt or bankrupt. The remaining half, most of them lost all their possessions. The only reason Monticello didn't get burned to the ground was that the British patrol missed the road.

I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful.

It got to the point where I couldn't afford to borrow any more money to lose. Know what I mean? That was just before 'Frampton,' my fourth album. As we were recording it, I was very down and depressed.

Bulk collection of phone records didn't find or stop the Tsarnaev brothers from the massacre in Boston. In fact, one might argue that all of the money spent on bulk collection takes money away from human analysts that might have noticed the older brother's trip to become radicalized in Chechnya.

When my family first moved to Hempstead in the 1960s, they were one of the first black families. It used to be an all-white neighborhood, but there was white flight when the black people with money started moving in. When I was, like, 13 or 14, Hempstead had just become all black, and the poverty became worse and worse.

I would make far more money if every song were my own, but I don't write to fill up the album with my songs.