Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad.

If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label.

I am the attorney general of the United States, but I am also a black man.

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.

Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen – even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land – is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

One of the things I learned is that you’ve got to deal with the underlying social problems if you want to have an impact on crime – that it’s not a coincidence that you see the greatest amount of violent crime where you see the greatest amount of social dysfunction.

It pains me whenever there’s the death of a law enforcement official.

Let’s deal with reality. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom.

I’m a hard headed lawyer.

I’m not going to let people who work in the United States Department of Justice have their characters be assailed without any basis.