For instance, Clinton who was unquestionably the smartest of the bunch I talked to - both the ones who made it and didn't. He had a great interest in policy.

I've been with the paper for almost 30 years.

For example, I spent a lot of time with Reagan, both before he ran for governor and when he was running for president. As a print reporter without the cameras, I was able to really test the quality of their minds and their knowledge base.

I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.

I was a finalist for the Pulitzer as a reporter.

We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers.

I have broken a lot of stories.

And the big issue here, I think, is that the publisher took over the editorial pages, a guy named Jeff Johnson. He's an accountant from Chicago, doesn't know anything about what newspapers are supposed to be about, and he made a decision to get rid of the column.

That means presenting the issues in certain ways that will appeal to those people and then becoming a prisoner of your own language and thought process. That has always happened - it's just been intensified.

So this guy, Jeff Johnson, who is an accountant who cares nothing at all about a free press and cares nothing about journalism, he's a right winger who supported the war, you know, who two years ago told people he couldn't stand a word that I wrote.

Even with the best of intentions, even when they're very smart and knowledgeable - as opposed to George W., who is neither - it doesn't seem to matter.

And new people come in, and it doesn't go along with their politics, and they fire me, end the column, silence a voice in Los Angeles. They can't silence it nationally, but they are able to do it there.

The paper nominated me 12 or 13 times for the Pulitzer Prize.

I talked to Reagan for about six hours all told. and Reagan was willing to go along with it. He didn't look at his watch, and he didn't allow his campaign aides to cut it off.

The decision came from the publisher. It certainly was cleared by Chicago. And then they come out with these fine sounding words about relation to readers and their obligation. It has nothing to do with that.

The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative.

What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.

I was able to do something that people can't do these days, which is to have quality time with the guys who were trying to be president and a number of them who got the job.

It had run as a column - I had worked at the paper since 1976, but the column had been running for 13 years, and I think it was a strong column, criticizing the war when the paper was supporting it.

What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.

For instance, Clinton who was unquestionably the smartest of the bunch I talked to - both the ones who made it and didn't. He had a great interest in policy.

Well, what happened is that I had been the subject of vicious attacks by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

When Howard Dean started saying some honest things, they hung him.

The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

They know that the column resonates in the community. They know that people like it, and yet they don't have room for one column once week that consistently got it right.

Much of what candidates have to do is raise money and appeal to constituencies or interest groups that can provide that money.

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

Judaism has always been a strong interest of mine. My two sons speak Hebrew and are familiar with the scriptures and with rabbinic literature. This is the way we live.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

I don't have a strong interest in history.

I'm not up on today's television for children, because it's mostly cartoons that don't seem to interest me.

It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest.

I think that the quality of all bands is steadily improving and it is a pleasant thought to me that perhaps the efforts of Sousa's Band have quickened that interest and improved that quality.

Warren Beatty took an interest in my career at one point.

Neither these statesmen nor their constituents sought in any way to use the Government for the interest of themselves or their section, or for the injury of a single member of the Confederacy.

I had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes.

The government must do all it can to help reduce interest rates for business.

I went to the Academy and studied with Stuck who was then a big man. But didn't interest me. I didn't know that before me there was Kandinsky and Klee who had also studied with Stuck. He had a good name at that time.

I have no interest in sailing around the world. Not that there is any lack of requests for me to do so.

Pakistan has made no mention of ending our tests. We have a missile program, and it is in the national interest whatever we want to do.

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up.

However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises.

In precisely the same way money is often hired, and the hire paid for the use of it is called Interest.

I didn't have any interest in traditional art.

Yes, of course that's true but you know, the irony of all that is that before the accident, I'd pretty much lost interest in playing drums.

Having this interest here in the Redskins is the chief hobby of my life.