Mary Katharine Ham

I grew up in a cross-town newspaper battle - one of the few left in a news climate where chains had bought most major dailies and many markets had become monopolies. I learned early that two newspapers fighting for scoops and readers meant that readers got better news coverage than they would have gotten if they were served by one paper.

I know Duke's magnolia-carpeted campus and gray, gothic towers.

When you come from the school of pat-on-the-head public policy for minorities - as Joe Biden does - I guess maybe it is astonishing that a black man could be outstripping you in your run for president.

Why is it always liberals who seem so genuinely, overtly surprised when black candidates are viable candidates, and in their surprise, evoke old, damaging stereotypes about them? If you'll excuse a Bushism, I think it's because much of their political philosophy and existence depends upon misunderestimating minorities.

I am a happy person, and I'm not prone to depression, and I've been thankful for that.

A practical thing is to get out of bed every day and go outside if you can. Get moving a little bit. That's really hard to do, especially if you actually become clinically depressed, but it can change your state of mind.

There's always going to be sadness, and that's O.K., but I didn't want it to take over.

My kids are awesome.

The way that social media is structured, you get a payout for high emotion, for clickability. And your 40-point tax plan is not emotional or clickable.

I'm a little bit obsessed with Halloween.

After college, I covered news for a couple of years. There were things I loved and hated about it. I loved hard deadlines, watching sports for a living, writing every day, learning all about a new town, meeting its people and learning its quirks.

I loved being just one of 11 newspaper majors at my college, immersing myself in the age-old art of news-gathering.

I loved newspapers. I loved the dusky marks on my fingers that proved I had spent the morning educating myself.

I know many good things about Durham. I also know that Durham is full of liberal white people who love to get yelled at by minorities and liberal minorities who are happy to oblige them.

You're not obligated to date and marry somebody who you fundamentally disagree with... but I do think opening yourself up to the idea that people who believe different things can enrich your life can make you better at communicating.

I grew up with all liberals, so I have a huge number of friends across the spectrum.

I always had overlapping social circles with different ideological groups and different activist groups.

I have a very serious contrarian streak.

The Prince of Egypt' was lauded for its voice acting, and with good reason. The cast is a bunch of A-listers in their prime in the '90s.

A lot of animated films aim to be entertaining for both adults and kids, tossing in sly jokes for the parents in the crowd. Pixar is famous for this. 'The Prince of Egypt' feels more like an animated film for adults that children will also enjoy.

Obviously, if you're looking for stories of suffering and sacrifice that end with the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises, start with the Bible.

I'll take any opportunity to make costumes for my daughters and me, and it makes Halloween a weeklong bonanza of multiple costumes, and my house an explosion of arts and crafts.

I have my share of criticisms of Trump and have been clear about them, but the gap between the coverage of what might be in the Mueller report and what actually appears to be in Mueller's conclusions after a two-year investigation is not just good news for Trump, but great news for the country.

I am a very social person, but not a planner.

Criticism of a government can, of course, come from those who also have racist intent. We should always be careful not to scapegoat people for the sins of their governments.

Sometimes, people don't believe me when I say the schools in much of the U.S. were closed for a year. If you didn't see it up close, it would seem absurd, even impossible.

With the spread of COVID-19, millions of moms and dads have started spending a lot more time with their kids, in new roles.

A one-size-fits-all approach to risk, and top-down encouragement to take as few risks as possible, may have been reasonable in 2020, before we properly understood how the coronavirus was transmitted and before we had vaccines.

Tolerating risk for my kids is tough, but vital, so I practice.

I had to relearn my bravery after my husband died.

I asked that my friends and family hold me accountable for living life unafraid. A traumatic loss meant that I was primed to see threats everywhere. But I knew that my big fears would make the lives of my children small if I couldn't control them. They deserved more from me than that.

There are plenty of things a White House can't control in the run-up to a midterm election. But they can control the way they talk to voters about the problems they're facing.

Letting our domestic sensitivities dictate our debate on China allows the CCP to avoid criticism where it richly deserves it, and it can have terrible consequences for free speech here.

U.S. politicians must be able to criticize a nation state without every criticism - even the heavy-handed ones made for one-minute ad buys - being deemed sinophobic.

Economic populism was, pre-Trump, a Midwestern Democrat's bread and butter.

It was a long-cultivated brand of school funding and alignment with teachers unions that earned Democrats' trust on the issue of education.

Ignoring parent concerns or pretending they're solely driven by prejudice and partisanship will not earn it back.

The high academic and social costs of remote learning and closed schools are now indisputable, but there was also a political cost. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia capitalized on it by appealing to frustrated parents in 2021.

The Constitution is quite straightforward about how to change the Constitution, but it takes a lot.

I love the Second Amendment's protections, and like many law-abiding citizens of the U.S., cherish the right it enshrines for my family to have a means to protect itself.

If the goal is to significantly curtail the number of guns - or even slow its growth, which is the purported goal of many activists - they must deal with the Constitution.

No matter how 'commonsense' you might consider some gun regulations, they have to pass constitutional muster to become a reality.

There is a lot of space between not liking what people said 10 years ago and demanding their jobs. We should embrace that space. It doesn't mean you endorse what they said just because you don't think they should be fired for their old, bad thoughts.

Tucker Carlson is guilty of the sin of saying bad things a long time ago, and for that a bunch of people want him to lose his job.

My personality is such that I just kind of go with the flow.

I want to be a straight shooter about what policies I think are good, what policies I think are bad. But I also think it's important to remember that not every crisis has to be an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I actually think I've adjusted to Trump's presidency better than a lot of people. I'd been living in weirdo land for a year before he won.

It is not some 'leftist' capitulation to say that saying a man cannot do his job because of his ethnicity is a problem.

When you go to a dinner party in Durham, you bring your moral outrage instead of wine.

Valentine's Day is a holiday of high emotions, mostly stress. The occasion has the unique ability to make both those who do participate in it and those who don't feel vaguely unfulfilled.