Dc Talk Quotes

If one man or woman is willing to obey God, it can change the destiny of millions.

Talks like a lady, acts like a thug.

You obviously haven’t lived in D.C. very long if you think two and a half minutes is too soon to talk politics.

Even now, to this day, I think you were the love of my life. You were always talking about your dreams, back in college. Harvard this and DC that. Well, you want to know what my dream was? You. A real best friend.” My eyes burned. Caro’s voice softened. “I would have done anything for you.

... if history is told correctly, no man has caused the worldwide stir that Jesus Christ did 2000 years ago... Jesus was the non-conformist of all time. He took the conventions of religion, tradition, and love and turned them upside down. He faced the political and religious leaders of His day and spoke truths they had never heard before. He walked in our world as the human voice of God.

Heroes. Brave men and women who lay down their lives for someone else... Our culture understands heroism. But we don’t understand martyrs.

He keeps waking up in DC, and Henry keeps waking up in London, and the whole world keeps waking up to talk about the two of them in love with other people.

Same first name as a president and an obscure comic book character. Half-Jewish. Excellent grammar. Easily nauseated. Likes Reese's and Oreos (i.e. not an idiot). Divorced parents. Big brother to a fetus. Dad lives in Savannah. Dad's an English teacher. Mom's an epidemiologist. The problem is, I'm beginning to realize I hardly know anything about anyone. I mean I generally know who's a virgin. But I don't have a clue whether most people's parents are divorced, or what their parents do for a living. I mean, Nick's parents are doctors. But I don't know what Leah's mom does, and I don't even know what the deal is with her dad, because Leah never talks about him. I have no idea why Abby's dad and brother still live in DC. And these are my best friends. I've always thought of myself as nosy, but I guess I'm just nosy about stupid stuff. It's actually really terrible, now that I think about it.

It has been said that a man with an argument is no match for a man with an experience.

That's something you'll have to learn about humans. We love talking about what we'd do in another person's shoes.

Every inch of you belongs to me,” Afron whispered. “From your ears” -- he nibbled delicately at one -- “to your lips” -- another nibble -- “to your chest” -- a swipe of his tongue met Makara’s flesh -- “to your belly” -- a lingering tickle of the tip of Afron’s tongue in Makara’s belly button -- “to your marvelous, thick cock.

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked. She looked nervously down at the papers in her hand even though I knew for a fact she had memorized every word. “When I was eleven I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when the recruiters came to see me. They showed me brochures and told me they were impressed by my test scores and asked if I was ready to be challenged. And I said yes. Because that was what a Gallagher Girl was to me then, a student at the toughest school in the world.” She took a deep breath and talked on. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked again. “When I was thirteen I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when Dr. Fibs allowed me to start doing my own experiments in the lab. I could go anywhere—make anything. Do anything my mind could dream up. Because I was a Gallagher Girl. And, to me, that meant I was the future.” Liz took another deep breath. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” This time, when Liz asked it, her voice cracked. “When I was seventeen I stood on a dark street in Washington, D.C., and watched one Gallagher Girl literally jump in front of a bullet to save the life of another. I saw a group of women gather around a girl whom they had never met, telling the world that if any harm was to come to their sister, it had to go through them first.” Liz straightened. She no longer had to look down at her paper as she said, “What is a Gallagher Girl? I’m eighteen now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t really know the answer to that question. Maybe she is destined to be our first international graduate and take her rightful place among Her Majesty’s Secret Service with MI6.” I glanced to my right and, call me crazy, but I could have sworn Rebecca Baxter was crying. “Maybe she is someone who chooses to give back, to serve her life protecting others just as someone once protected her.” Macey smirked but didn’t cry. I got the feeling that Macey McHenry might never cry again. “Who knows?” Liz asked. “Maybe she’s an undercover journalist.” I glanced at Tina Walters. “An FBI agent.” Eva Alvarez beamed. “A code breaker.” Kim Lee smiled. “A queen.” I thought of little Amirah and knew somehow that she’d be okay. “Maybe she’s even a college student.” Liz looked right at me. “Or maybe she’s so much more.” Then Liz went quiet for a moment. She too looked up at the place where the mansion used to stand. “You know, there was a time when I thought that the Gallagher Academy was made of stone and wood, Grand Halls and high-tech labs. When I thought it was bulletproof, hack-proof, and…yes…fireproof. And I stand before you today happy for the reminder that none of those things are true. Yes, I really am. Because I know now that a Gallagher Girl is not someone who draws her power from that building. I know now with scientific certainty that it is the other way around.” A hushed awe descended over the already quiet crowd as she said this. Maybe it was the gravity of her words and what they meant, but for me personally, I like to think it was Gilly looking down, smiling at us all. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked one final time. “She’s a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: A Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.” Thunderous, raucous applause filled the student section. Liz smiled and wiped her eyes. She leaned close to the microphone. “And, most of all, she is my sister.

We must put our selfish ways to death and march to a different beat. Then the world will see Jesus.

- Which State Department, exactly, are we talking about? - The one in Washington, D.C.

If you were trying to talk a passenger through landing a DC-10, you’d stop walking. Likewise, if you were walking across a gorge on a rope bridge, you’d likely stop talking.

If Death-Cast hit me up last night, they would've knocked me out of that dream I was having where I was losing a marathon to some little kids on tricycles. If Death-Cast hit me up one week ago, I wouldn't have been up late reading all the notes Aimee wrote me when we were still a thing. If Death-Cast called two weeks ago, they would've interrupted that argument I was having with Malcolm and Tagoe about how Marvel heroes are better than DC heroes. If Death-Cast called one month ago, they would've killed the dead silence that came with me not wanting to talk with anyone after Aimee left.

Those rose-tinted glasses look good on you, Sunshine.” Sunshine? I was sure he meant that mockingly, but the butterflies in my stomach stirred to life anyway, fanning away my anger. Traitors. “Thanks. You can borrow them. You need them more than I do,” I said pointedly. A low chuckle slipped from his throat, and I almost fell to the floor in shock. Tonight was turning out to be a night of firsts. Alex’s hand trailed up my spine until it rested on the back of my neck, leaving a cascade of tingles in their wake. “I feel it dripping all over me.” He did not—what? An inferno consumed my body. “You’re—you—no, I’m not!” I sputtered, pushing him away and scrambling off him. My core pulsed. Oh my God, what if I was? I couldn’t look, afraid I’d see a telltale wet spot on his jeans. I’d have to move to Antarctica. Build myself an ice cave and learn to speak penguin because I could never show my face in Hazelburg, D.C., or any city where I could run into Alex Volkov again. His chuckle blossomed into a full-blown laugh. The effect of his real smile was so devastating, even amid my mortification, that all I could do was stare at the way his face lit up and the sparkle that transformed his eyes from beautiful to downright breathtaking. Holy crap. Perhaps I should be grateful he never smiled, because if that was what he looked like while doing it…womankind didn’t stand a chance. “I’m talking about your bleeding heart,” he drawled. “What did you think I was talking about?” “I—you—” Forget Antarctica. I had to move to Mars. Alex’s laughter subsided, but the twinkle in his eyes remained.

Washington's all abstraction. It's about access to power and nothing else. I mean, I'm sure it's fun if you're living next door to Seinfeld, or To Wolfe, or Mike Bloomberg, but living next door to them isn't what New York is about, In Washington people literally talk about how many feet away from John Kerry's house their own house is. The neighborhoods are all so blah, the only thing that turns people on is proximity to power. It's a total fetish culture. People get this kind of orgasmic shiver when they tell you they sat next to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference or got invited to Grover Norquist's breakfast.

I still can’t believe it.” Daniel ran a hand through his locs. “Yeah. Right.” She caught the thin wedge of anger in his voice. “Well. I can’t.” “He couldn’t, either. Whereas I—we—all his friends—can believe it, no problem. Who does that? Go help some White girl. In a park. In Northwest DC. At night.” He shook his head and dropped another book into the box. “What else could he have done?” Daniel straightened. “Girl, he should have sped up, kept on running right to a well-lit road, and called some White folk to help her. He just didn’t know how he needed to be if he was going to live in this country.” He sighed. “We tried. Gave him ‘the talk,’ like our parents did when we were little kids.” He shook his head. “He thought he knew about cops. But the cops he knew in England, ninety percent of them weren’t carrying guns. No, make that a hundred percent, the bougie ’hoods where he came up. Art historian, Lord Fauntleroy accent, Yale and Georgetown—none of it was ever going to keep him safe. Like I said, we tried to warn him. But seems like it never sank in.

Everyone in America understands ObamaCare is destroying jobs. It is driving up health care costs. It is killing health benefits. It is shattering the economy. All across the country in all 50 States--it doesn't matter what State you go to, you can go to any State in the Union, it doesn't matter if you are talking to Republicans or Democrats or Independents or Libertarians--Americans understand this thing is not working.   Yet Washington is pretending not to know. Washington is pretending to have no awareness. Instead we have politicians giving speeches about how wonderful ObamaCare is. At the same time they go to the President and ask for an exemption from ObamaCare for Members of Congress.   If ObamaCare is so wonderful, why is it that its loudest advocates don't want to be subject to it? I will confess that is a very difficult one to figure out.   DC

the fact is, our relationships to these corporations are not unambiguous. some memebers of negativland genuinely liked pepsi products. mca grew up loving star wars and didn't mind having his work sent all over the united states to all the "cool, underground magazines" they were marketing to--why would he? sam gould had a spiritual moment in the shower listening to a cd created, according to sophie wong, so that he would talk about tylenol with his independent artist friends--and he did. many of my friends' daughters will be getting american girl dolls and books as gifts well into the foreseeable future. some skateboarders in washington, dc, were asked to create an ad campaign for the east coast summer tour, and they all love minor threat--why not use its famous album cover? how about shilling for converse? i would have been happy to ten years ago. so what's really changed? the answer is that two important things have changed: who is ultimately accountable for veiled corporate campaigns that occasionally strive to obsfucate their sponsorship and who is requesting our participation in such campaigns. behind converse and nike sb is nike, a company that uses shit-poor labor policies and predatory marketing that effectively glosses over their shit-poor labor policies, even to an audience that used to know better. behind team ouch! was an underground-savvy brainreservist on the payroll of big pharma; behind the recent wave of street art in hip urban areas near you was omd worldwide on behalf of sony; behind your cool hand-stenciled vader shirt was lucasfilm; and behind a recent cool crafting event was toyota. no matter how you participated in these events, whether as a contributor, cultural producer, viewer, or even critic, these are the companies that profited from your attention.

He's so intense, but I stand my ground. "Your people will... "I am not only talking about my people now," he snaps. "I am talking about me." The words feel like a slap. I stare at him, suddenly breathless "You think I betrayed you." He says nothing. And the worst part is, he's not wrong either. I was acting on emotion. I wasn't thinking about how anyone would perceive my actions. I spent months thinking Grey was dead, and after seeing what Rhen was willing to do in the courtyard, I wasn't going to wait around for him to up the ante. My throat tightens. I turn to look out over the courtyard again, hoping the breeze will drag my tears away. "He was trapped with you for ... ever," I say. "Forever, Rhen. "How could you do that to him?" Rhen is quiet for a moment. "He was your friend, too, my lady. I was not the only one he ran from." I remember a moment, in the courtyard, when Rhen was still a monster. When Lilith was going to kill me, and Grey got on his knees and offered himself to spare me. I remember a moment in Washington, DC, when Grey was near death because Rhen had attacked him, and he came to me for help. Not anyone in Emberfall. To me. He could have told me his secret. I would have helped him. He chose not to. To protect me? Or to protect himself? Both? We once spoke of my duty to bleed so he does not. Oh, Grey.

In 1977, I was barely twenty-five. The law office of Joseph Rauth, Washington, D.C. Two men, a father and son, arrived in Joseph’s office. The son, David Lavoix, was holding an article from the New York Times, and the father seemed…troubled, absent. David Lavoix held out the clipping, which talked about Project MK-Ultra. Just so you know, the Times had sent the first shot across the bow two years earlier, in 1975, by revealing that in the fifties and sixties the CIA had conducted mind-control experiments on American citizens, mostly without their knowledge or consent. Investigative hearings were held and the American people were officially informed about the existence of this top secret project.

Hey! Can you hear me? I’m talking to the American asshole who just told my daughter she was going to die. She says you put something inside her head, some sort of explosive. If that’s true, you better hope that thing doesn’t go off because if it does, you might as well kill yourself. I know what you’re thinking. There’s a good chance Moscow will do the same thing and kill me. There’s always a possibility the Chinese or Koreans will kill me, but I wouldn’t bet on that. You see, I’m not the easiest person to be with. I can be a bit of a dick sometimes, just ask my daughter. My point is if people keep me around, it’s not because of my charming personality, it’s because I have legs that bend the wrong way, and that’s kind of useful if you also happen to have Themis. So on the off chance that I make it through this, I want you to listen to me very carefully. I don’t give a shit who this robot belongs to an hour from now. I will fucking kill you. I will mow down whatever place you work at and the house you live in. I will kill everyone you’ve ever known, your high-school teacher, people you play softball with. I will march down Washington Avenue and turn DC into a fucking sandbox. I will end you and everything you hold dear. There. Will. Be. No United States when I’m done with you, and there is nothing, not a goddamn thing, you can do to stop me. Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME, MOTHERFUCKER? ANSWER ME!

Riley: I have to ask you something. Heroine: Shoot… Riley: Bear with me. I can’t believe that we haven’t discussed this yet so I’m a little nervous. Heroine: Now I’m nervous. Riley: You have nothing to worry about. Your life will continue just fine. It’s mine that might come crashing down here. Riley: How do you feel about comics and superheroes? Heroine: DC or Marvel? Heroine: Nevermind, that’s a terrible question. I’d never want to choose. I love the ensembles. The Avengers, the X-Men, the Justice League. Heroine: But I haven’t read any in 20 years. I’ve caught up with the movies as they’ve been released, though. Most of them have been really good. Heroine: Are you still with me? Riley: Yes. Sorry. I just spontaneously orgasmed. Heroine: What? Riley: Nothing. But I’ll talk to you later. Something just popped up.

Marina blinked tears away, jutted her jaw, and lit a cigarette. Taking long drags on it she said very fiercely, We can talk now, if you have something to say, say it now. … You are the person I want, I said softly. That has never not been true. There are all these ways in which I was scared and shut off and hedging bets all through our time together. In my own ways I am a - wounded - person, and some of the things I did, and many of the things I didn’t do, are because of that. I’ve not be able to be honest, let someone in, tell the truth of my feelings. But I’m trying now. You are the person I want. If you don’t want me back I’ll understand. But I know I’ll regret it all my life if I don’t tell you this. You are what I want. If you were to come with me to D.C. - I would want that more than anything. I would be happy.

When high expectations are communicated to members, the unchurched are attracted to these churches that have meaningful membership. One such church among the churches we have received information on is Carron Baptist Church, an African-American church in Washington, D.C. They actually require their members to agree to a church covenant that mandates the following: To read the Bible daily. To pray with and for members of your family daily. To attend all worship services unless hindered by health or circumstances beyond your control. To abstain from gossip, backbiting, murmuring, or negative talk. To respond to conflict and disagreement according to biblical precepts. To share your faith regularly; to invite people to church. To participate in Bible study/ Sunday school To be in agreement with the church’s doctrine. To be involved in at least one ministry in the church. To tithe. To abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs. To be sexually pure. The unchurched that visit Carron Baptist Church quickly discern that it is a high-expectation church. Yet they keep returning, keep joining, and the church continues to grow.

Christina wipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara. “I don’t know if I ever told you this story,” she says. “It’s about your mother. It was a long time ago, when I was in college. I was driving back home from Vassar for Thanksgiving break, and there was a hitchhiker on the side of the road on the Taconic Parkway. He was a Black man, and he had a bum leg. He was literally walking on crutches. So I pulled over and asked if he needed a ride. I took him all the way to Penn Station, so that he could get on a train to visit his family in D.C.” She folds her coat more tightly around her. “When I got home, and Lou came into my room to help me unpack, I told her what I’d done. I thought she’d be proud of me, being a Good Samaritan and all. Instead, she got so angry, Ruth! I swear, I’d never seen her like that. She grabbed my arms and shook me; she couldn’t even speak at first. Don’t you ever, ever do that again, she told me, and I was so shocked I promised I wouldn’t.” Christina looks at me. “Today I sat in that courtroom and I listened to that detective talk about how he busted in your door in the middle of the night and pushed you down and held back Edison and I kept hearing Lou’s voice in my head, after I told her about the Black hitchhiker. I knew your mama reacted that way to me because she was scared. But all these years, I thought she was trying to keep me safe. Now, I know she was trying to keep him safe.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. C. S. Lewis

What happened to the troubled young reporter who almost brought this magazine down The last time I talked to Stephen Glass, he was pleading with me on the phone to protect him from Charles Lane. Chuck, as we called him, was the editor of The New Republic and Steve was my colleague and very good friend, maybe something like a little brother, though we are only two years apart in age. Steve had a way of inspiring loyalty, not jealousy, in his fellow young writers, which was remarkable given how spectacularly successful he’d been in such a short time. While the rest of us were still scratching our way out of the intern pit, he was becoming a franchise, turning out bizarre and amazing stories week after week for The New Republic, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone— each one a home run. I didn’t know when he called me that he’d made up nearly all of the bizarre and amazing stories, that he was the perpetrator of probably the most elaborate fraud in journalistic history, that he would soon become famous on a whole new scale. I didn’t even know he had a dark side. It was the spring of 1998 and he was still just my hapless friend Steve, who padded into my office ten times a day in white socks and was more interested in alphabetizing beer than drinking it. When he called, I was in New York and I said I would come back to D.C. right away. I probably said something about Chuck like: “Fuck him. He can’t fire you. He can’t possibly think you would do that.” I was wrong, and Chuck, ever-resistant to Steve’s charms, was as right as he’d been in his life. The story was front-page news all over the world. The staff (me included) spent several weeks re-reporting all of Steve’s articles. It turned out that Steve had been making up characters, scenes, events, whole stories from first word to last. He made up some funny stuff—a convention of Monica Lewinsky memorabilia—and also some really awful stuff: racist cab drivers, sexist Republicans, desperate poor people calling in to a psychic hotline, career-damaging quotes about politicians. In fact, we eventually figured out that very few of his stories were completely true. Not only that, but he went to extreme lengths to hide his fabrications, filling notebooks with fake interview notes and creating fake business cards and fake voicemails. (Remember, this was before most people used Google. Plus, Steve had been the head of The New Republic ’s fact-checking department.) Once we knew what he’d done, I tried to call Steve, but he never called back. He just went missing, like the kids on the milk cartons. It was weird. People often ask me if I felt “betrayed,” but really I was deeply unsettled, like I’d woken up in the wrong room. I wondered whether Steve had lied to me about personal things, too. I wondered how, even after he’d been caught, he could bring himself to recruit me to defend him, knowing I’d be risking my job to do so. I wondered how I could spend more time with a person during the week than I spent with my husband and not suspect a thing. (And I didn’t. It came as a total surprise). And I wondered what else I didn’t know about people. Could my brother be a drug addict? Did my best friend actually hate me? Jon Chait, now a political writer for New York and back then the smart young wonk in our trio, was in Paris when the scandal broke. Overnight, Steve went from “being one of my best friends to someone I read about in The International Herald Tribune, ” Chait recalled. The transition was so abrupt that, for months, Jon dreamed that he’d run into him or that Steve wanted to talk to him. Then, after a while, the dreams stopped. The Monica Lewinsky scandal petered out, George W. Bush became president, we all got cell phones, laptops, spouses, children. Over the years, Steve Glass got mixed up in our minds with the fictionalized Stephen Glass from his own 2003 roman à clef, The Fabulist, or Steve Glass as played by Hayden Christiansen in the 2003

Ask yourself: What would the self-talk of a champion be like as he prepared for competition?   How would that champion be moving his body around as he prepared?   And how would that champion be breathing as he prepared to enter the competition and face his opponent?   Then do it.  Bring it all together for several minutes prior to your time, and allow yourself to enter into this totally prepared and empowered state before you compete.  Get out of your own way.  Let your training take over.

Meanwhile, angered by white violence in the South and inspired by the gigantic June 23 march in Detroit, grassroots people on the streets all over the country had begun talking about marching on Washington. “It scared the white power structure in Washington, D.C. to death,” as Malcolm put it in his “Message to the Grassroots” and in his Autobiography.6 So the White House called in the Big Six national Negro leaders and arranged for them to be given the money to control the march. The result was what Malcolm called the “Farce on Washington” on August 28, 1963. John Lewis, then chairman of SNCC and fresh from the battlefields of Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama where hundreds of blacks and their white student allies were being beaten and murdered simply for trying to register blacks to vote, was forced to delete references to the revolution and power from his speech and, specifically, to take out the sentence, “We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside of any national structure, that could and would assure us a victory.” Marchers were instructed to carry only official signs and to sing only one song, “We Shall Overcome.” As a result, many rank-and-file SNCC militants refused to participate.7 Meanwhile, conscious of the tensions that were developing around preparations for the march on Washington and in order to provide a national rallying point for the independent black movement, Conrad Lynn and William Worthy, veterans in the struggle and old friends of ours, issued a call on the day of the march for an all-black Freedom Now Party. Lynn, a militant civil rights and civil liberties lawyer, had participated in the first Freedom Ride from Richmond, Virginia, to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1947 and was one of Robert Williams’s attorneys.8 Worthy, a Baltimore Afro-American reporter and a 1936–37 Nieman Fellow, had distinguished himself by his courageous actions in defense of freedom of the press, including spending forty-one days in the Peoples Republic of China in 1957 in defiance of the U.S. travel ban (for which his passport was lifted) and traveling to Cuba without a passport following the Bay of Pigs invasion in order to help produce a documentary. The prospect of a black independent party terrified the Democratic Party. Following the call for the Freedom Now Party, Kennedy twice told the press that a political division between whites and blacks would be “fatal.

I think mentoring is simply an inborn passion and not something you can learn in a classroom. It can only be mastered by observation and practice. I also realized that most mentees select you, and not the other way round. The mentor’s role is to create a sense of comfort so that people can approach you and hierarchy has no role to play in that situation. The mentee has to believe that when they share anything, they are sharing as an equal and that their professional well-being is protected, that they won’t be ridiculed or their confidentiality breached. As a mentor you have to create that comfort zone. It is somewhat like being a doctor or a psychiatrist, but mentoring does not necessarily have to take place only in the office. For example, if I was travelling I would often take along a junior colleague to meet a client. I made sure they had a chance to speak and then afterwards I would give them feedback and say, ‘You could have done this or that’. Similarly, if I observed somebody when they were giving a pitch or a talk, I would meet them afterwards or send them an e-mail to say ‘well done’ or coach them about how they could have done better. This trait of consciously looking for the bright spark amongst the crowd has paid me rich dividends. I spotted N. Chandrasekaran (Chandra), TCS’s current Chief Executive, when he was working on a project in Washington, DC in the early 1990s; the client said good things about him so I asked him to come and meet me. We took it from there. Similarly urging Maha and Paddy to move out of their comfort zones and take up challenging corporate roles was a successful move. From a leadership perspective I believe it is important to have experienced a wide range of functions within an organization. If a person hasn’t done a stint in HR, finance or operations, or in a particular geography or more than one vertical, they stand limited in your learning. A general manager needs to know about all functions. You don’t have to do a deep dive—a few months exploring a function is enough so long as you have an aptitude to learn and the ability to probe. This experience is very necessary today even from a governance perspective.

My head is full of voices: Everyone up there is talking, yelling. No one thinks I am dealing with Betty correctly. I hear the voice of a writer in Washington, D.C., telling me that my relationship with Betty is “codependent.” Friends in Manhattan yammer in the corners of my brain about my destroying my career by staying in Missouri. My relatives plead for Betty’s entry into assisted living. My father and Mammy join in the fray. In my head, the dead are pushy, opinionated, and easily offended. At Starbucks, they scream into my cerebellum about the price of venti lattes and the calorie content of chocolate graham crackers. Suddenly,

Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness and The Healing Heart, divides the human race into “positive” and “negative” people: The positive people work miracles, accounting for the evolution of human performance. I add another division, productive and nonproductive people: those who can do things and those who only talk about things (especially talk about why they can’t do things). As far back as I can remember, I was determined to contribute something, to be productive, and I’ve always questioned those who—though they may know much—go through life without making a mental contribution to the species: “If I live, I ought to speak my mind.” Productive people have a love affair with time, with all of love’s ups and downs. They get more from time than others, seem to know how to use time much better than nonproductive people—so much so that they can waste immense quantities of time and still be enormously creative and productive. One of my favorite examples is John Peabody Harrington, the great anthropologist of the American Southwest. At the time of his death, Harrington’s field notes filled a basement of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and several rented warehouses in the Washington suburbs were needed for the overflow. Yet Carobeth Laird, his wife and Harrington’s biographer, called him one of the greatest wasters of time she’d ever known—and said he felt the same way about himself.

Politics is all about dividing up the power. Washington D.C. likes to talk about spreading the wealth, but never spreading the power.

We were taking a DC-10 all the way across the country, from the east coast to the west. Together we flew into the Red Centre, the interior of the continent and the location of Ayers Rock--one of Australia’s most recognizable icons. “Have a look at it,” Steve said when we arrived. “It’s the heart of Australia.” I could see why. A huge red mountain rose up out of the flat, sandy landscape. The rock appeared out of place in the great expanse of the desert. The Aborigines knew it as Uluru, and they preferred that tourists did not clamber over their sacred site. We respectfully filmed only the areas we were allowed to access with the local Aborigines’ blessing. As we approached the rock, Steve saw a lizard nearby. He turned to the camera to talk about it. I was concentrating on Steve, Steve was concentrating on the lizard, and John was filming. Bindi was with us, and she could barely take two steps on her own at this point, so I knew I could afford to watch Steve. But after John called out, “Got it,” and we turned back to Bindi, we were amazed at what we saw. Bindi was leaning against the base of Ayer’s Rock. She had placed both her palms against the smooth stone, gently put her cheek up to the rock, and stood there, mesmerized. “She’s listening,” Steve whispered. It was an eerie moment. The whole crew stopped and stared. Then Bindi suddenly seemed to come out of her trance. She plopped down and started stuffing the red sand of Uluru into her mouth like it was delicious.

We were taking a DC-10 all the way across the country, from the east coast to the west. Together we flew into the Red Centre, the interior of the continent and the location of Ayers Rock--one of Australia’s most recognizable icons. “Have a look at it,” Steve said when we arrived. “It’s the heart of Australia.” I could see why. A huge red mountain rose up out of the flat, sandy landscape. The rock appeared out of place in the great expanse of the desert. The Aborigines knew it as Uluru, and they preferred that tourists did not clamber over their sacred site. We respectfully filmed only the areas we were allowed to access with the local Aborigines’ blessing. As we approached the rock, Steve saw a lizard nearby. He turned to the camera to talk about it. I was concentrating on Steve, Steve was concentrating on the lizard, and John was filming. Bindi was with us, and she could barely take two steps on her own at this point, so I knew I could afford to watch Steve. But after John called out, “Got it,” and we turned back to Bindi, we were amazed at what we saw. Bindi was leaning against the base of Ayer’s Rock. She had placed both her palms against the smooth stone, gently put her cheek up to the rock, and stood there, mesmerized. “She’s listening,” Steve whispered. It was an eerie moment. The whole crew stopped and stared. Then Bindi suddenly seemed to come out of her trance. She plopped down and started stuffing the red sand of Uluru into her mouth like it was delicious. We also filmed a thorny devil busily licking up ants from the sandy soil. The one-of-a-kind lizard is covered with big, lumpy, bumpy scales and spikes. “When it rains,” Steve told the camera, “the water droplets run along its body and end up channeling over its face, so that if there is any rain at all, the thorny devil can get a drink without having to look for water!” It’s a pity she won’t remember any of it, I thought, watching Bindi crouch down to examine the thorny devil’s tongue as it madly ate ants. But we had the photos and the footage. What a lucky little girl, I thought. We’ll have all these special experiences recorded for her to take out and enjoy anytime she wants to remember.

in Canada, Hawaii, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., police are unable to point to a single instance of gun registration aiding the investigation of a violent crime. In a 2013 deposition, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said that the department could not “recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime.”1 The idea behind a registry is that guns left at a crime scene can be used to trace back to the criminals. Unfortunately, guns are very rarely left at the scene of the crime. Those that are left behind are virtually never registered—criminals are not stupid enough to leave behind guns registered to them. In the few cases where registered guns were left at the scene, the criminal had usually been killed or seriously injured. Canada keeps some of the most thorough data on gun registration. From 2003 to 2009, a weapon was identified in fewer than a third of the country’s 1,314 firearm homicides. Of these identified weapons, only about a quarter were registered. Roughly half of these registered guns were registered to someone other than the person accused of the homicide. In just sixty-two cases—4.7 percent of all firearm homicides—was the gun identified as being registered to the accused. Since most Canadian homicides are not committed with a gun, these sixty-two cases correspond to only about 1 percent of all homicides. From 2003 to 2009, there were only sixty-two cases—just nine a year—where registration made any conceivable difference. But apparently, the registry was not important even in those cases. Despite a handgun registry in effect since 1934, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police have not yet provided a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a case. No more successful was the long-gun registry that started in 1997 and cost Canadians $2.7 billion before being scrapped. In February 2000, I testified before the Hawaii State Senate joint hearing between the Judiciary and Transportation committees on changes that were being proposed to the state gun registration laws.2 I suggested two questions to the state senators: (1) how many crimes had been solved by their current registration and licensing system, and (2) how much time did it currently take police to register guns? The Honolulu police chief was notified in advance about those questions to give him time to research them. He told the committee that he could not point to any crimes that had been solved by registration, and he estimated that his officers spent over 50,000 hours each year on registering guns. But those aren’t the only failings of gun registration. Ballistic fingerprinting was all the rage fifteen years ago. This process requires keeping a database of the markings that a particular gun makes on a bullet—its unique fingerprint, so to speak. Maryland led the way in ballistic investigation, and New York soon followed. The days of criminal gun use were supposedly numbered. It didn’t work.3 Registering guns’ ballistic fingerprints never solved a single crime. New York scrapped its program in 2012.4 In November 2015, Maryland announced it would be doing the same.5 But the programs were costly. Between 2000 and 2004, Maryland spent at least $2.5 million setting up and operating its computer database.6 In New York, the total cost of the program was about $40 million.7 Whether one is talking about D.C., Canada, or these other jurisdictions, think of all the other police activities that this money could have funded. How many more police officers could have been hired? How many more crimes could have been solved? A 2005 Maryland State Police report labeled the operation “ineffective and expensive.”8 These programs didn’t work.

Once Trump had won, a panicked punditburo swung into action, insisting in a crescendo of consensus that trade had little to do with the country’s deindustrialization; that it was pretty much all due to technological factors; that what happened to manufacturing workers was therefore unavoidable. After the dust had settled, many commentators changed their mind on this question, quietly acknowledging the disastrous consequences of ill-crafted trade deals. But what matters for our purposes is the initial reaction, which was virtually unanimous and unfolded along the same lines as in 1896: the rationality of working-class grievances had to be denied.12 The outcome of the 2016 election, the same punditburo insisted, could not and must not be explained by reference to economic factors or to long-term, class-related trends. Yes, lots of Trump voters said they were motivated by economic concerns; yes, Trump talked about economic issues all the time; and yes, the economic stagnation of Trump-voting areas is obvious to anyone who has gone there. And also: every time our post-partisan liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were attributable to their poor education … every time they did this and then thought to themselves, “They have nowhere else to go” … they made the Trump disaster a little more likely. But to acknowledge those plain facts was to come dangerously close to voicing the intolerable heresy that the D.C. opinion cartel dubbed the “economic anxiety” thesis—the idea that people voted for Trump out of understandable worries about wages or opioids or unemployment or deindustrialization. The reason this was intolerable, one suspects, is because it suggested that there was a rational element to certain groups’ support for Trump and also that there was something less than A+ about the professional-class Camelot over which the Democrats presided for eight years.

For Katelyn it was really more than getting out of town. If she hadn’t gone to D.C., she would never have met Donna, who is also a recovering victim of narcissism.” A victim of narcissism? Angela frowned. “Did you say Katelyn?” Willow nodded. “That surprises you?” “Very much. Katelyn seems so rock solid. So together.” “She is now. But her ex had really done a number on her—that’s what narcissists do. In the end, the victims need help as much or more than the abusers. Donna spent time talking with Katelyn, helping her understand. She gave her hope.

Joker Tattoos: Who Gets The Last Laugh? Every few years, interest in DC’s iconic character ‘Joker’ resurfaces. Sometimes it’s a new movie or comic that finds its way into the public sphere, shedding new light upon the twisted psyche of a character that has terrified Gotham and fans alike. Most recently, Joaquin Phoenix’s take on the role has gotten people talking – a lot! Other times, it might just be a guy in a clown suit terrorizing local towns, causing media outlets to run wild with theories on whether The Joker is a bad influence on the youth.

Only once did Wilson talk in public about the pain of his depression. On May 7 [less than two weeks before he killed himself] he scrapped a prepared text on children and violence, and instead began revealing his own illness to a group of psychiatrists and other professionals at a meeting of the D.C. Mental Health Association. “We can talk about me being a politician, but we can also talk about me as a person who deals with depression, a very painful, very difficult disease … [that] leads to a great feeling of being lost, of a hole in your body,” he said. He told them the disease was particularly deadly in the black community, where people played “Russian roulette” with their lives, and said, “I believe that more people are dying of depression than are dying of AIDS, heart trouble, high blood pressure, anything else, simply because I believe depression brings on all of those diseases.” The audience was stunned, but according to association director Anita Sheldon, none of the people who came up to Wilson afterward talked to him about his illness.

When I boarded the plane, I found to my surprise that Tatum had decided to return to Norman with the team rather than go to Maryland. .... When I saw Tatum on board, I had momentary regret that I had abandoned [my other flight]. I had no desire to spend several hours on the flight with him; I had learned from past encounters that he could talk endlessly, with exhausting intensity. Hoping to avoid him, I walked to the front end of the DC-4 and took a seat on the right side next to the window; but I had scarcely sat down when Tatum plumped down beside me. He spent the first few minutes telling me how unethical he thought I had been to offer one of his assistant coaches the head coaching job at OU before he resigned and only hours before his team was to compete in a bowl game. He was offended and hurt, he said, by such treatment. I listened patiently, with the unhappy thought that there would be several hours of such conversation before I could find relief at the journey's end. However, shortly after takeoff we ran into turbulent air. The plane rose over a series of updrafts and dropped violently between them. Tatum, who was not a good air traveler, soon began to feel the effects. When he stopped talking for a moment, I glanced at him and noticed that he had begun to turn a little pale. The paleness soon turned to a greenish cast, and I had a feeling that my problem might be solved. Finally, when he became noticeably ill, I signaled for a hostess and suggested to my sick friend that we remove the armrest between the two seats so that he could lie down. I would find a seat elsewhere. He accepted the suggestion, and when I left him he was in a semireclining position with his head on a pillow, holding a sick sack. We soon got out of the rough air, and I enjoyed most of the rest of the trip, visiting with as many members of the squad as I could.

IT WOULD BE ANOTHER MONTH BEFORE I NOTICED it, though. It wasn’t Betsy, exactly. It was the whole town. But it affected Betsy and my relationship. People in DC, for reasons I couldn’t figure out, were harder to get to know. I first noticed it when I made a joke and the group I was talking to looked at each other to see if it was okay to laugh. One of them kind of chuckled and changed the subject as though to help me save face, even though I didn’t want to save face, or need to, for that matter. The whole thing reminded me of having grown up in a legalistic religious environment. It was more than just jokes. It was as though people only wanted to eat at restaurants that had been approved of, listen to music other people thought was popular, or understandably, express a political opinion that appealed to a broad demographic. And there was almost no self-expression. There was no art in the subways, no poetry sprawled on buses, no local art more risky than paintings of flowers. And everybody’s wardrobe seemed to have been stolen from the Reagan White House. I’d done a little work in DC a few years before, so I had a friend in town. Over lunch I asked why people in DC were timid to express themselves. My friend had worked in the White House and answered my question by tilting his head toward the window. I turned and saw the Capitol dome towering high across the lawn. “Think about it, Don,” he said. “Every day fifty thousand people climb out of these buildings and crawl into your neighborhood. And every one of them works for somebody who is never allowed to express themselves. This is a town in which you get ahead by staying on script. You become whoever it is people want you to be or you’re out of a job.” Suddenly DC made sense.

would be grieving, and I wanted to be there for them. I texted Patrice as I got onto the 9:00 Acela to DC. My body felt heavy and my spirit was dragging as I slumped into my seat feeling the defeat. As the train pulled out of New York City my phone rang. It was Robby Mook. “Madam Chair, I’m so sorry,” he said. I could hear the tears in his voice. “I’m so sorry.” “I know, Robby,” I said. “You did your best. You worked hard. We all did.” After we hung up, I turned off my phone. People would be calling me now as it was getting close to nine and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. We needed time to grieve. I had to muster courage to face the staff.

America isn’t the picture of barbecues, guns, freedom, and hot girls eating hamburgers you probably saw on TV. That’s the old America and one I’m not even sure ever existed. The glowies parade that picture around every time they want to put people at ease and push them back into place. DC is especially made of glowies. You can’t talk to anyone because maybe they’re gonna send you to the dungeon or maybe they know someone who can.

The dog account’s popularity spread beyond her family and friends to a few thousand people. But on a Monday night in December 2012, the account started gaining fans around the world. After Toffey posted three pictures of Tuna on the Instagram blog that night, the dog’s following grew from 8,500 to 15,000 within 30 minutes. Dasher pulled to refresh the page: 16,000. By the next morning, Tuna was at 32,000 followers. Dasher’s phone started ringing with media requests from around the world. Anderson Cooper’s talk show offered to fly her to DC; she appeared via webcast, thinking it wouldn’t be feasible to take a vacation day. But as requests for appearances continued to come in, her friends warned her about what was coming before she realized it: she would have to quit her job at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles and run her dog’s account full-time. It sounded ridiculous, so she took a month off to test the theory. Sure enough, BarkBox, which made a subscription box for pet items, was willing to sponsor Dasher and her friend on an eight-city tour with Tuna. People in various cities came up to her, crying, telling her they were struggling with depression or anxiety and that Tuna was bringing them joy. “That was the first time that I realized how much weight these posts had for people,” Dasher later recalled. “And that’s also when I realized I wanted to do this full-time.” Her life became about managing Tuna’s fame. Berkley, part of Penguin Random House, signed her up to write a book titled Tuna Melts My Heart: The Underdog with the Overbite. That led to more brand deals, plus merchandising to put Tuna’s likeness on stuffed animals and mugs. In her book’s acknowledgments, she thanks Tuna most of all, but also Toffey for sharing the post that changed her life. The tastes of one Instagram employee directly affected her financial success, but also the habits of the two million people who now follow that dog—including Ariana Grande.

Yes, I know who he is.’ ‘He talked about it. I can’t remember the exact words but he said that it changes who you are, every time you encounter the worst things that people can do. You have to be aware of that, in yourself. You have to decide at some point how much you are prepared to take. And in one of his books he wrote that the very nature of the work erodes you.’ Smith considered it before saying, ‘Good choice of word.

The Loss of Freedom In the month of January 2021, when the MAGA Trump march in Washington, D.C. ended with a forced break-in at the U.S. Capitol, the media and talking heads of journalists interviewing so-called experts in political science began to express their real views, not just toward a few hundred instigators, but toward anyone and everyone who was conservative, and especially any Trump supporter. They made it clear that everyone, including all of the 75 million people who voted for Trump, needed to be forced to undergo “reprogramming” in a special government-sponsored camp. These same types of camps are used in China to “assist” (actually force) a person in changing their beliefs. In this case, these camps could be used to establish conservative ideology as wrong. One person suggested organizing special camps to force “these people” to undergo evaluations. One progressive publicly said it would be acceptable to separate parents from their children if need be. The radical left began saying that those in the House and Senate who believed there was voter fraud should resign, or at least be put on a no-fly list, which is a penalty for anyone being labeled a possible domestic terrorist. This is pure Marxist-style harassment.

From the start, EIG would marry a well-crafted political strategy with white papers, data, talking points, and graphics, the tools most often wielded by agile DC think tanks.

Dear Diary, THERE WAS STILL ANOTHER DAY of the conference, so we stayed in DC. While Dad attended panels and lectures, George, Bess, and I finally took in the sights. It was hard to keep up with George at the National Air and Space Museum. She raced from one exhibit to the next. Bess led us more calmly through the National Portrait Gallery, giving us time to appreciate the paintings. When it was my turn, I picked visiting the Supreme Court. With all our talk about justice the night before, I wanted to see the highest court in the land—the place where nine people get to decide exactly what the law means. Walking up the marble steps gave me goose bumps. I’d heard the building referred to as the Temple of Justice before, and now I understand why. But then I remembered Walker was still behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, and the goose bumps faded.

Opportunity. In 1988 Bill Pattis joined Charles Z. Wick, Director of the U.S. Information Agency, and participated in the first U.S.-U.S.S.R. Bilateral Information Talks in Moscow, involving leaders from American media and Soviet counterparts. As a result of this work, he was named Chairman of the American Delegation for print media in follow-up talks with the Soviets in February 1990 in Washington, DC, and

years. She, like Robie, operated at the highest level and had taken down people in situations that would have challenged Robie to the fullest. He’d never doubted that Reel was good. But he was a little surprised that she was that good. And she may have a spy on the inside telling her all she needs to know to get enough of an advantage to take me out before I get to her. Which means my own agency is a threat. Robie kept reading until he came to the hit on Doug Jacobs. Quick, clean, ingenious really. Nail the handler while he thinks you’re about to take out someone else. And a sniper’s nest had been found in the hotel in the Middle East. The gun muzzle had been placed perfectly so that when Jacobs did the satellite zoom Reel had suggested, he could see the gun barrel. But there had been no sniper. There was no evidence that Reel had been the shooter who had ended Jacobs’s life. But the email Robie had just received left no doubt that she was involved somehow. So the woman was supposed to be in the Middle East, but she might have been in D.C. drawing a bead on the man talking to her through a headset. Other things being equal, it probably was Reel who took the shot on Jacobs. If it were Robie, he would want to make sure the kill was done correctly. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else pulling the trigger. Which meant he had to go somewhere right

Champions keep it in perspective.  They are able to accept responsibility and recognize the situation as a temporary setback nothing more, nothing less.  Yes it hurts, so they look at it, learn from it, and then let it go.  I’ve lost myself, of course. In fact, that was how I met Leo-tai in the first place. I was a young martial artist competing in tournaments and I’d just lost a major international competition—worse still, one that I’d been really expecting to win. I was having a tough time with the loss. People kept telling me, “You still did great!” But runner-up wasn’t what I’d wanted to be.  As time went by, in response to my annoyance with myself, my training tailed off, my determination flagged, and everything seemed either too boring or too difficult to fuss about.  I was slacking off. I remember an older kid asking me once if I had ever heard of Coach Leo. “I don’t think so,” I said. “What does he teach?” “Mostly Shaolin—Chinese Kickboxing, but he teaches other things too.  He really helped me once with my training.” “So, how’d he help then?” I asked, interested. “Call him, here’s his number.  He only teaches small classes.  Tell him you know me.” I carried that sheet of paper around with me for about two weeks.  Finally I thought, “Well, what have I got to lose?”  I called him and told him about myself.  Coach Leo listened quietly on the phone, so much so that I began to wonder if he’d wandered off or hung up. “Come tomorrow,” he told me, and that ended our conversation. When the next day came, I almost didn’t go.  I kept asking myself, “Why did I call this coach?”  I was looking for a reason to miss our appointment.  But before I knew it, and despite my best efforts to talk myself out of it, I wound up knocking on his door and then there he was.  A medium-sized, elderly, rather stoic figure, his face calm and genuine.

In November 1912, shortly before his death, Gracie gave a talk at the University Club in Washington DC in which he went further, saying that if they had dared play that hymn they would have been forcibly restrained by the men on board who were trying to calm the women. “If the band had played that familiar hymn, panic would have resulted. Fixing the minds of the passengers on the possibility of their being nearer to God, and I say it seriously, would have been the last thing they wanted.

He called the women in the courtroom who’d hissed at him throughout the proceeding “scum.” He then switched into the third person in talking about himself, as if speaking for posterity. “Time will unfold the cold, white light of truth that D.C. Stephenson is not guilty of murder in any degree.

When I visited Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., (it is the only university in the world for deaf and hearing-impaired students) and talked about the “hearing impaired,” one of the deaf students signed, “Why don’t you look at yourself as sign impaired?”4 It was a very interesting turning of the tables, because there were hundreds of students all conversing in sign, and I was the mute one who could understand nothing and communicate nothing, except through an interpreter.

Remember:  Stay task-focused.  Interrupt negative self-talk and images the moment they arise, shut them down on the spot.  Replace them with positive self-talk and positive images.  Concentrate on showing your brain exactly what it is that you want to achieve, never dwell on what you do not want to happen.

Almost everything in Washington is big and gray and ugly. I'm talking about buildings here, but a good number of the residents would also fall into the same category. The architects decided to make everything look Roman and Greek, which might be all right if you were in Rome or Athens, but all it ended up doing in DC was making the main part of the city look like a bunch of poorly-decorated wedding cakes. They built the kinds of buildings which could be loved by the old and feared by the young, daring anyone idealistic to try and change a thing. Every day I saw the same congregation of tourists gawk and dawdle in front of those buildings as if they expected them to move, or change colors, or do

Jesus smiled, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Good! But better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.

P lanning a wedding can be murder. Planning weddings for a living is nothing short of suicide. “Is there a patron saint for wedding consultants? Because I think after this wedding, I just might meet the requirements.” I stood near the top of the wide marble staircase that swept down the middle of the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s central foyer. Below me, dozens of tuxedo-clad waiters scurried around the enormous hall filled end to end with tables and gold ladder-backed chairs. After having draped ivory chiffon into swags on all forty tables, I massaged the red indentations left on my fingers by the heavy pins. “Annabelle, darling, I may be a lapsed Catholic, but I’m pretty sure you have to be dead to qualify for sainthood.” Richard Gerard has been one of my closest friends since I arrived in Washington, D.C. three years ago and started “Wedding Belles.” At the time he’d been the only top caterer who’d bother talking to a new wedding planner. Now I worked with him almost exclusively. “The wedding isn’t over yet.”“At least your suffering hasn’t been in vain.” Richard motioned at the room below us. “It’s divine.” The museum’s enormous hall did look magical. The side railings of the staircase were draped with a floral garland, leading to a pair of enormous white rose topiaries flanking the bottom of the stairs. Amber light washed each of the three-story limestone columns bordering the room, and white organza hung from the ceiling, creating sheer curtains that were tied back at each column with clusters of ivory roses. “I just hope the MOB is happy.” My smile disappeared as I thought

the professional football team in Washington, D.C. (I remain a diehard fan of the burgundy and gold but REFUSE to say the team name.)

Clanton and, given the circumstances, seemed far too close to home. Stella was halfway through her sophomore year and eager to move on. She loved Hollins but longed for the anonymity of a big city. At college, everyone knew her and now knew about her father. She wanted strangers in her life, people who didn’t know or care where she was from. On the romantic front, there wasn’t much activity. Over the Thanksgiving break she’d met a boy in D.C. and they had gone dancing twice and to the movies once. He was a student at Georgetown, had a nice family and all, appeared to be well groomed and mannered, and he was writing her letters, but there was really no spark. She’d string him along for another month or so, then break his heart. Joel reported even more tepid progress. A few dates here and there but none worth talking about. He claimed he really wasn’t in the market, what with three years of law school on the horizon. He had always vowed to remain single until his thirtieth birthday.

With this in mind, I’d started a leadership and mentoring program at the White House, inviting twenty sophomore and junior girls from high schools around Greater D.C. to join us for monthly get-togethers that included informal chats, field trips, and sessions on things like financial literacy and choosing a career. We kept the program largely behind closed doors, rather than thrusting these girls into the media fray. We paired each teen with a female mentor who would foster a personal relationship with her, sharing her resources and her life story. Valerie was a mentor. Cris Comerford, the White House’s first female executive chef, was a mentor. Jill Biden was, too, as were a number of senior women from both the East and the West Wing staffs. The students were nominated by their principals or guidance counselors and would stay with us until they graduated. We had girls from military families, girls from immigrant families, a teen mom, a girl who’d lived in a homeless shelter. They were smart, curious young women, all of them. No different from me. No different from my daughters. I watched over time as the girls formed friendships, finding a rapport with one another and with the adults around them. I spent hours talking with them in a big circle, munching popcorn and trading our thoughts about college applications, body image, and boys. No topic was off-limits. We ended up laughing a lot. More than anything, I hoped this was what they’d carry forward into the future—the ease, the sense of community, the encouragement to speak and be heard. My wish for them was the same one I had for Sasha and Malia—that in learning to feel comfortable at the White House, they’d go on to feel comfortable and confident in any room, sitting at any table, raising their voices inside any group.

He’s a zombie until he’s had his coffee and read his paper. The kids don’t even talk to him. They act like he isn’t even there. Well, actually, he isn’t.” —Bridgette, Washington, DC

Washington, D.C., to see her family one last time before they are deported back to Senegal. Now we’re told she can’t see them because of paperwork.” The ICE boys looked at the three clerks. The first one said, “You know the rules. No visitors until they have been processed.” Gibson looked back at Mark and said, “Well, there you have it. Rules are rules.” “Can I see the supervisor?” Mark demanded. “You can stop yelling, that’s what you can do.” He took a step closer, eager for a physical confrontation. Two more agents ventured over to back up their buddies. “Just let me talk to the supervisor,” Mark said. “I don’t like your attitude,” Gibson said. “And I don’t like yours. Why is attitude important here? What’s wrong with allowing my client to see her family? Hell, they’re being deported. She may never see them again.” “If they’re being deported it’s because a judge said so.

Jazz musician Miles Davis once said, “If somebody told me I had only one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.” bell hooks, a black professor of English at City College of New York who spells her name in lower case, once wrote, “I am writing this essay sitting beside an anonymous white male that I long to murder.” Demond Washington, a star athlete at Tallassee High School in Tallassee, Alabama, got in trouble for saying over the school intercom, “I hate white people and I’m going to kill them all!” Later he said he did not mean it. Someone who probably did mean it was Maurice Heath, who heads the Philadelphia chapter of the New Black Panther party. He once told a crowd, “I hate white people—all of them! . . . You want freedom? You’re gonna have to kill some crackers! You’re gonna have to kill some of their babies!” Another one who probably meant it is Dr. Kamau Kambon, black activist and former visiting professor of Africana Studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. In 2005, Prof. Kambon told a panel at Howard University Law School that “white people want to kill us,” and that “we have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.” In 2005, James “Jimi” Izrael, a black editorial assistant for the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald- Leader, was on a radio program to talk about Prof. Kambon. Another guest mentioned other blacks who have written about the fantasy of killing whites, and Mr. Izrael began to laugh. “Listen,” he said, “I’m laughing because if I had a dollar for every time I heard a black person [talking about] killing somebody white I’d be a millionaire.” For some, killing whites is not fantasy. Although the press was quiet about this aspect of the story, the two snipers who terrorized the Washington, DC, area in 2002 had a racial motive. Lee Malvo testified that his confederate, John Muhammad, was driven by hatred of America because of its “slavery, hypocrisy and foreign policy.” His plan was to kill six whites every day for 30 days. For a 179-day period in 1973 and 1974, a group of Black Muslim “Death Angels” kept the city of San Francisco in a panic as they killed scores of randomly-chosen “blue-eyed devils.” Some 71 deaths were eventually attributed to them. Four of an estimated 14 Death Angels were convicted of first-degree murder. Most Americans have never heard of what became known as the Zebra Killings. A 2005 analysis of crime victim surveys found that 45 percent of the violent crimes blacks committed were against whites, 43 percent against blacks, and 10 percent against Hispanics. There was therefore slightly more black-on-white than black-on-black crime. When whites committed violence they chose black victims only 3 percent of the time. Violence by whites against blacks, such as the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd, is well reported, but racial murder by blacks is little publicized. For example, in Wilkinsburg, near Philadelphia, 39-year-old Ronald Taylor killed three men and wounded two others in a 2000 rampage, in which he targeted whites. At one point, he pushed a black woman out of his way, saying “Not you, sister. I’m not going to hurt any black people. I’m just out to kill all white people.

How can she still be alive? Any one of the tortures we have used today should have been enough to kill her. Yet we used everything and she still lives!

The word of Charlie,” Lanza said, “may give me the right-of-way.” Haffenden knew that recruiting the man who was believed to be the country’s top criminal to help the navy could never reach the light of day. None of his fellow officers would try something so audacious and risky, that could damage the reputation of the navy so badly. But his qualms about recruiting Luciano for the navy’s interests only went so far as whether or not Luciano could help him accomplish his mission. If it was going to succeed, nobody outside of MacFall, Howe, and the spymaster in DC could know about it. If the main branch of the navy heard about it, they’d be shut down and possibly reprimanded. Whatever information or contacts they developed would also have to be controlled, and sworn to secrecy, if that was even possible. Haffenden knew that bringing in Luciano would mean they were going to develop dangerous contacts that went way beyond fishing boat captains and low-level gangsters. These informants would represent the top echelon of Mafia leadership. “I’ll talk to anybody,” Haffenden said at the time. “A priest, a bank manager, a gangster, the devil himself, if I can get the information I need. This is a war.