About the time I met my hero. — April 3, 1993 (22 years ago today) was a pretty exciting day in my life. As a 13-year-old baseball fanatic, still convinced a MLB career lurked in my future, I got to be a bat boy during a spring training game between the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox, in…

The icon didn’t live to see his vision for racial justice achieved, despite what cynical politicians want us to believe — Many lovely and important tributes have been shared in the days since the passing of Rep. John Lewis (here is one, here is another). And rightfully so. He was a bonafide hero and selfless public servant. …

Two stories about my first boss — The two most well-documented idiosyncrasies of Senator Harry Reid were his shockingly dry sense of humor, and his abrupt endings to every phone call he’s ever been on. The stories from Reid World are legion. I’ll share just two. One day in 2005, a fruit basket was delivered to his…

More regular humans being regular, please! — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were inaugurated and sworn in to office yesterday. That was sure nice. People sang songs. Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief. Amanda Gorman recited a beautiful poem that was rightfully considered by virtually everyone watching to be the highlight of the…

Either way, he doesn’t care — Judging from yesterday’s exchange during his unconventional (?) press conference, Donald Trump doesn’t know what the Congressional Black Caucus is. And apparently, Donald Trump sycophant Jeffery Lord, thinks the CBC is a problem akin to KKK leader David Duke launching a Congressional White Caucus, Lord stated: I used to think…

Words matter. They’re critical tools for debate, inspiration, and understanding. We take them seriously at Medium. We know you take them seriously, too — 200 million words were published in January, Medium’s biggest month in history. Driving that growth are people well-known and unknown, sharing their insight into what’s happening…

The last few weeks — give or take — 1. Senator Cory Booker shares his norm-breaking testimony against the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. Senator Amy Klobuchar also expresses her opposition to Sessions. The Transition Team for President-elect Trump paints a different picture of Senator Sessions’ background and qualifications. 2. Pete Souza revisits his favorite photographs…

The last two weeks in politics — 1.Rep. Tulsi Gabbard shares the details of her unexpected meeting with President-elect Donald Trump. 2.After Fidel Castro’s passing, Senator Jeff Flake calls for a continued policy of engagement — not isolation — that will accelerate change in Cuba. 3. Rep. Keith Ellison makes his case for what he would do…

Old Bill Shakespeare could have written this one himself, and we’d unanimously laud it as the zenith of his genius and the pinnacle of all his tragedies. Consider one Donald J. Trump. The most hollow-minded, self-deluded, nausea-inducing narcissist to ever receive a major party’s nomination for president. So ill-equipped for…