The scales of justice often, in my head, are unbalanced. And so my job is to try to balance out those scales.

Every hard working New Yorker, regardless of their income, race, or gender deserves an equal shot at attaining retirement security.

Our schools should be sanctuaries of learning, not nightmares of cruel and racist behavior.

Only when we ensure that the mistakes of our past are not the vision for our future, will we truly have achieved justice.

To say that I could manipulate one of the men who has shown the most courage before the Cuban government, who gets beaten every day, who did a hunger strike that freed political prisoners... I think that's absurd.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

As it happens, Chicago is the nation's leader in municipal privatization efforts. That's right: The city that conservatives portray as the citadel of the power-grabbing, government-growing left has been selling itself off in pieces for years. It signed a 99-year lease for the Chicago Skyway, a toll road in the city's South Side, back in 2005.

I participated on debating teams and in student government, and served as senior class president.