Nat Hentoff: I went to a lecture of [Arthur Koestler ] once, I never m...

You have an electorate [in America] that wants to see people who are not tough on crime.

Nat Hentoff

want america people

The immigration bill - the new immigration bill - [Bill Clinton] has stripped the courts, which Congress can do under the leadership of the president, so that people who had a right to asylum or to petition - for asylum who were legal residents are now unable to go through because that part of the bill has been taken out.

Nat Hentoff

taken president people

Now that is dangerous, when the people don't know what's happening to their Constitution.

Nat Hentoff

constitution dangerous people

We disagree heavily on abortion [with Margot Hentoff].

Nat Hentoff

disagree abortion

[Margot Hentoff] thinks - first of all, she - this I hear from a lot of people beside her. She thinks that men have no business getting into this argument at all unless they're going to be pro-choice. But it turns out that a fair number of fetuses are male, and besides that, we are all one part of humankind, it seems to me.

Nat Hentoff

numbers men thinking

When the ACLU took my case and we got a ruling I think, for the first time, they could - the Congress could put out the report internally but they couldn't put it out at taxpayers' expense around the country. And I felt odd about that because I, in a way, I was interfering with free speech, but then, you can't always win.

Nat Hentoff

winning country thinking

Congressman [Richard ] Icord headed a House on American activities committee. It was called the House Internal Security Committee. And he put out a report, and he named a number of very destructive people who lectured at colleges and left arson in their wake and did other terrible things. And he mentioned me and he ascribed to me three organizations to which I'd never belonged, and I decided I would do something about this.

Nat Hentoff

organization college numbers

I met [my wife Margot] on Fire Island when I had a house there many years ago.

Nat Hentoff

fire islands years

I was co-editor of the magazine called The Jazz Review, which was a pioneering magazine because it was the only magazine, then or now, in which all the articles were written by musicians, by jazz men. They had been laboring for years under the stereotype that they weren't very articulate except when they picked up their horn.

Nat Hentoff

editors men years

That [race] is still part of what [Barack Obama] is riding on. Except that, too, is diminishing.

Nat Hentoff

riding barack race

In terms of the Patriot Act, and all the other things he has pledged he would do, such as transparency in government,[Barack] Obama has reneged on his promises.

Nat Hentoff

patriot government promise

However, I never thought that [George W.] Bush himself was, in any sense, "evil."

Nat Hentoff

evil

[Left] are very hesitant to criticize [Barack] Obama, but that is beginning to change.

Nat Hentoff

barack left criticize

I say this because the Left has taken what passes for their principles as an absolute religion. They don't think anymore. They just react. When they have somebody like [Barack] Obama whom they put into office, they believed in the religious sense and, of course, that is a large part of the reason for their silence on these issues.

Nat Hentoff

taken religious thinking

I am an atheist, although I very much admire and have been influenced by many traditionally religious people.

Nat Hentoff

atheist religious people

He has absolutely no judicial supervision of all of this [ invasions of privacy ]. So all in all, [Barack] Obama is a disaster.

Nat Hentoff

disaster invasion privacy

The NSA has the capacity to keep track of everything we do on the phone and on the internet.[Barack] Obama has done nothing about that.

Nat Hentoff

nsa track phones

The Fourth Amendment is on life support and the chief agent of that is the National Security Agency.

Nat Hentoff

agents agency support

In fact, we have never had more invasions of privacy than we have now [with Barack Obama].

Nat Hentoff

invasion privacy facts

The irony is that [Barack] Obama was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He would, most of all, know that what he is doing weakens the Constitution.

Nat Hentoff

irony chicago law

I went to a lecture of [Arthur Koestler ] once, I never met him.