Laura Moser

Grit can't be measured on pop quizzes, but it can often predict long-term success more than mere intelligence.

A big reason I'd spent my career as a writer and not a public speaker is that I am a person who refines my worldview in a silent room, waiting for my thoughts to arrange themselves on the screen before me.

My grandfather arrived in Houston in 1942 as a refugee from Nazi Germany. He had lost everything - his profession, his language, his money - but the city welcomed him, as it has hundreds of thousands of immigrants over the years.

In my career as a writer, I preferred to avoid current events: I wrote young adult novels and book reviews and lifestyle journalism about health and parenting and other such evergreens.

Ohio has long been an embarrassment to charter-school supporters nationwide, with its trail of scandal and graft and abysmal student performance.

I believe that if Democrats - not any one Democrat, and certainly not just me - want to start winning races again, Lujan's statement that the DCCC would fund candidates who oppose abortion rights puts our country in danger and makes it all the more likely that the Republicans will continue to defeat us in election after election.

As President Trump quickly moved to limit immigration, civil rights, and environmental protections, I felt fear for my young children, and guilt, too - as if I'd somehow betrayed the unspoken contract all parents make to give our children a better life than ourselves.

Wishy-washy equivocations - and not just on abortion, but on immigration, on civil rights, on income inequality - weaken all of us.

New York City has an integration problem.

Calling representatives every single day, arranging local community meetings, and marching in the streets every Sunday. It's not the path to glory, but it's absolutely essential to maintaining a democracy under threat.

What role should religion play in the American public school classroom? My own knee-jerk response would be, 'none whatsoever,' but the Constitution isn't quite so direct on the subject.

Don't most of us agree that providing school meals to kids who need them is an overwhelmingly good thing? After all, nutrition is essential to proper cognitive development.