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Obama promised a return to competence and confidence and asked the nation to believe again that the government could do big things well. In the end, he got his big thing, a once-in-a-generation revision to the basic social compact, a commitment of health coverage to nearly all Americans. He has yet to prove he can do it well.
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I'm sentimental about many things: the lumpy feel of a baby's unused feet, the metallic smell of the air before the first snow, the last scene in 'It's a Wonderful Life.' But Valentine's Day leaves me cold.
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Today's kids aren't taking up arms against their parents; they're too busy texting them.
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I don't think it's necessary to shout if you have a good story. But I also don't think you should shy away from being bold in the statement that you're making.
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I'm wondering how many elected figures any of us could find who do not, in the front or back of their minds, remember who does them favors, who doesn't.
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Whatever people thought the first time they held a portable phone the size of a shoe in their hands, it was nothing like where we are now, accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips.
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Back in the really olden days, dinner was seldom a ceremonial event for U.S. families. Only the very wealthy had a separate dining room. For most, meals were informal, a kind of rolling refueling; often only the men sat down.
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You can't hold up a blog; you can hold up a magazine.
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Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine.
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Rooting from the sidelines is the most democratic of sporting rites: no skyboxes, no tickets required, just an unabashed will to holler and wave.
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Pain is the most private experience, but its causes, whether natural or man-made, demand public accounting.
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It's hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many developed so close a relationship so quickly as we have with our phones.
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'Sesame Street's' genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things - death, divorce, danger - in terms that children understand and accept.
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Presidents make their hard decisions and then abide forever with their mistakes and regrets.
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Sure, we want to know what a president believes in... but that doesn't always mean he should tell us.
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We want laws to be applied predictably.
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When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak.
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A president can't go to every memorial service.
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Most of us were probably less than immaculately honest as teenagers; it's practically encoded into adolescence that you savor your secrets, dress in disguise, carve out some space for experiments and accidents and all the combustible lab work of becoming who you are.
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There are many things that matter much more than an editor's gender in shaping the direction of the leadership.
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When National Guardsmen shot four unarmed students at Kent State, virtually the entire system of higher education shuddered and stopped.
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What cultural DNA remains from those first Puritan forays onto American soil may be our love of a fresh start.
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A runner's stride is not perfectly efficient.
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The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political - and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone's deeply held beliefs.