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The first political label I applied to myself was “moderate liberal.” That was when I was a college freshman.  What I really meant was, “I don’t want to appear ignorant or offend anyone, but I’m...

I remember my first day of college very clearly. I'll bet almost everyone does.  Mine took place on a Monday. I had an 8:00 a.m. class, to which I arrived absurdly early, just in case. When I...

That awkward moment at the beginning of each semester when you run into somebody you know and blank on the person's name. That awkward moment when you're waiting for the doctor in the exam room...

My admissions letters to Harvard's Law School and Kennedy School of Government were like tickets to Mount Olympus, delivered from the mists of legend. Once I received them, it was an awkward...

I first met Carter in a parking garage at the Burbank Airport. My parents had met my flight and walked me out of the terminal. When they came to an awkward stop in the garage, I got irritated and...

When I was 6 or 7 years old, my family spent a weekend at Big Bear Lake, about 120 miles from our home in suburban Los Angeles.  It was the middle of winter, and the trip was one of one of those...

Exactly 18 years ago this morning, I had no plans to be awake.  As a young lawyer in a busy firm, I needed all the sleep I could get, and this was a national holiday.  But before the sun began to...

The moment itself is no longer in my memory, but its marker persists.  Probably the ceremony took place at a party the night before the first of us left for college.  Four close friends, about to...

When I walked into my childhood home in Los Angeles late on a Tuesday night in October, what struck me first were the things that had not changed.  It had been more than six years since my last...

The first of them all was 'Little Hoffy.' I was 7 years old, and had been placed in a class full of older kids: 3rd and 4th graders, most of whom seemed world-wise and, relative to me,...