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# Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
Contributing Editors # BarbinMD (Barbara Morrill)
Chief Technical Officer# Darksyde # DavidNYC # DemFromCT (Greg Dworkin) # Devilstower (Mark Sumner) # DHinMI (Dana Houle) # Georgia10 (Georgia Logothetis) # Hunter (Michael Lazzaro) # Kagro X (David Waldman) # mcjoan (Joan McCarter) # Meteor Blades (Timothy Lange) # MissLaura (Laura Clawson) # Plutonium Page (Page van der Linden) # SusanG (Susan Gardner) # Trapper John (Jake McIntyre) # Jeremy Bingham
Featured WritersMarkos Moulitsas -- a.k.a. "kos" -- created Daily Kos on May 26, 2002, in those dark days when an oppressive and war-crazed administration suppressed all dissent as unpatriotic and treasonous. As a veteran, Moulitsas was offended that the freedoms he pledged his life for were so carelessly being tossed aside by the reckless and destructive Republican administration. Daily Kos has grown in those five years to the premier political community in the United States, with traffic of about 600,000 daily visits. (Click on the rainbow box at the bottom of the page for up-to-date stats.) Among luminaries posting diaries on the site are President Jimmy Carter, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and dozens of other senators, congressmen, and governors. But, even more exciting than that, tens of thousands of regular Americans have used Daily Kos to lend their voice to a political world once the domain of the rich, connected, and powerful.
Daily Kos is run by a staff of two -- Moulitsas and a programmer. In 2007, parent company Kos Media, LLC began a fellowship program to help fund a new generation of progressive activists. About a dozen contributing editors contribute content for the site, with 3-4 new editors being chosen from the Daily Kos community every year.
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
Markos Moulitsas was born on September 11, 1971, in Chicago, IL. The son of a Salvadoran mother and Greek father, Moulitsas spent his formative years in El Salvador (1976-1980), where he saw first-hand the ravages of civil war. His family fled threats on their lives by the communist guerillas and settled in the Chicago area. After high school, Moulitsas served in the U.S. Army (1989-92) as a 13P -- Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Fire Direction Specialist. He trained at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and served the remainder of his three-year enlistment in Bamberg, Germany. While he entered the Army as a Republican, he abandoned the GOP soon after his enlistment. Moulitsas earned two bachelor degrees at Northern Illinois University (1992-96), with majors in Philosophy, Journalism, and Political Science and a minor in German. He subsequently earned a J.D. at Boston University School of Law (1996-99) before deciding that it would be a cold day in hell before he ever worked as a lawyer. He headed West to the San Francisco Bay Area to make his dot.com millions but got nowhere. He worked as a project manager at a web development shop when, in 2002, he started Daily Kos. Moulitsas flirted with political consulting in 2003 before deciding that 1) he hated it, and 2) he didn't need to do it. Daily Kos was making enough revenues to allow him to blog full-time, which he still does today. In addition to running Kos Media, LLC, which publishes Daily Kos, Moulitsas is also founder of the SB Nation network of sports blogs, and co-founder of Vaster Books. He's an avid pianist and composer. He is co-author of the critically acclaimed book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. He is a contributing columnist to Newsweek Magazine. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the world by People en Español, clocked in at third in Forbe's Web Celeb 25 rankings, and was listed 26th in PC World's list of the "Most Important People on the Web". Moulitsas has been happily married since 2000. He has a wonderful boy, Aristotle, born in November 2003 and a is ridiculously in love with his daughter, Elisandra, born in April 2007.
As Barbara entered her 40's, she was a stay-at-home mother of two who spent her time helping with school projects and chauffeuring kids to soccer or lacrosse. Soon after the 2000 selection of George W. Bush as POTUS, she got her first computer, discovered the internets and a shared outrage. Now she's a stay-at-home mother of two who spends her time helping with school projects, chauffeuring kids to soccer or lacrosse, and writing about politics and the media for Daily Kos from her Maryland home. Stephen DarkSyde is a 40 something former stock and bond trader and one time moderate conservative. He grew up in the Southwest and has long been fascinated by science, particularly evolutionary biology, physics, and astronomy. As the scope of incompetence and malfeasance in the Bush Administration and the wider Neoconservative Republican Party became evident throughout 2003, Stephen began reading and writing on blogs. In short order, he rejected the existing incarnation of the GOP and joined forces with progressive bloggers. He still considers himself a political neophyte, and tends to write mostly about science and science policy, with only occasional forays into political commentary. Today, he lives in Florida near the Kennedy Space Center with his lovely wife Mrs. “DS,” a cat named Kali, and a dog named Darwin. DavidNYC, a lifelong New Yorker and Democrat, is an attorney working in New York City. David, born in 1977, was first tapped as a contributing editor in 2004. He is a die-hard Mets fan and publisher of the Swing State Project, a blog devoted to horserace politics.
Mark Sumner is the author of 32 novels, including one called "Devil's Tower" (and for the record, the book title and the screen name are from fond memories of visits to the national monument of that name. They do not show an inclination toward the "dark side."). He's a past winner of Writers of the Future, and has been nominated for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. In addition to the books, he's written over fifty short stories and hundreds of articles. One series of his books was the inspiration for the short-lived television show "The Chronicle." In his 48 years, he's been a newspaper photographer, a coal miner, a software designer, a geologist, and a perpetual student. He lives with his wife in a log cabin at the end of a long gravel road south of St. Louis and practices hard at becoming a grouchy old hermit. He's worked on campaigns for thirty years, and has never risen higher than knocker on doors and maker of annoying phone calls.
Along with DHinMI, Trapper John and Meteor Blades, Greg Dworkin, M.D., 52, is a member of the class of 2004, although he’s been active on the site since pre-Scoop days. Areas of special interest include polling data, Iraq and bird flu. Dr. Dworkin is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwikie.com) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum (www.newfluwiki2.com). Since its inception in June 2005, Flu Wiki has grown into an international clearinghouse of pandemic influenza information and links, presented in four languages and accessed from six continents. One measure of the success of the site is the 2 million visits and 10 million page views recorded since its inception, indicating a robust visit depth by its viewers. Flu Wiki has been cited for excellence by diverse sources such as Science magazine and the Harvard Business Review, and linked by local public health departments, NGOs and media sources. Dr. Dworkin has lectured on the topic of Flu Wiki and the internet at the UCLA School of Public Health and been invited to present at the Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Conference 2007 (jointly sponsored by the Infectious Disease Society of America and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) on Flu Wiki’s volunteer community projects. Dr. Dworkin is Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology and Medical Director of the Pediatric Inpatient Unit at Danbury Hospital in Danbury CT, where he has been in clinical practice for eighteen years. He serves on the Danbury city and school Pandemic Flu Task Forces. He holds academic appointments as Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York Medical College and Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Allied Health Science at Quinnipiac College. His clinical areas of expertise include respiratory illness in the pediatric population, and the implementation of asthma education programs for the public and for health professionals. He has also served on Connecticut’s statewide asthma task force and authored articles on various aspects of pediatric asthma care. He is the Course Director for the American Heart Association’s Pediatric Advanced Life Support course administered through the Danbury Hospital Community Training Center. Dr. Dworkin received his S.B. in Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his medical degree from Albany Medical College. His internship, residency, chief residency and pulmonary fellowship were completed at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
Dana Houle is a political professional now living in Washington, DC. He is the first in his family to graduate high school, to travel overseas without a rifle in his hand, and to work in politics, but he has maintained his family's devotion to organized labor as a force for positive political and social change. He became a contributing editor in 2003, before Daily Kos ran on the Scoop system and thus before user ID's, diaries and meta. In 2005 he teamed with other contributing editors Meteor Blades and Trapper John to found The Next Hurrah. He misses Tiger Stadium and rues the demise of the independent record store. At 42, he is technically a Baby Boomer, but he refuses to join any age cohort that would have him as a member.
Georgia Logothetis is a 24-year-old political junkie living in Chicago. She first became addicted to politics at the tender age of 22 when she stumbled across the DailyKos.com. In the fall of 2005, she was selected to become a Contributing Editor on DailyKos.com. In the spring of 2006, she was profiled in the Chicago Reader as "one of the most influential bloggers on the Internet." An avid writer and poet all her life, she was first published at the age of nine in An Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans. She is currently an attorney at a Chicago-based law firm.
As a Daily Kos contributing editor, Michael Lazzaro, 38, —a.k.a. ”Hunter”—has gained a reputation for passionate, explorative, and offbeat progressive writing. His wide-ranging essays and editorials are alternately probing and combative, provide stirring defenses of progressive and liberal ideals, and frequently explore the underlying dynamics of the progressive and liberal online communities themselves. An Internet consultant who currently makes his home in rural Northern California with his wife, child, and a varying assortment of animals, Michael helped design and build some of the very first e-commerce sites on the emerging World Wide Web.
A participant in online communities since the early 80s, David found Daily Kos some time back in mid-2003 and has stuck around ever since. A non-practicing attorney, a former Capitol Hill aide and Hotline staff writer (back when Chuck Todd was an intern), David now works in marketing so that he will not be eligible to answer telephone surveys. He has developed a particular interest in lending to the discussion the procedural knowledge he gained from C-SPAN immersion therapy during his days on the Hill, and as a result holds the world record for Longest Online Series on Parliamentary Maneuvers that Didn't Happen, namely, the Senate's "nuclear option." David is married to a moderate Democrat who once helped launch FOX News, and worked for the parent company of Eagle/Regnery Publishing, though in fairness, she was young and needed the money. The children are being raised as Democrats, so there is no need to call the authorities.
Born in 1963, and raised on the family cattle ranch in Corral, Idaho, Joan is the daughter of Joe McCarter, former state chair of the Idaho Democratic Party. Growing up in a political household, Joan's first political experience was going door-to-door with her mom, Mercedes, for Senator Frank Church (her one and only political hero to this day) when she was four. Winning that one was probably why she stuck with Democratic politics all these years. Joan has broad campaign experience and has been deeply involved in Democratic politics since childhood. She worked in both the district and Capitol Hill offices of then Congressman and now Senator Ron Wyden from 1987 until 1993. She then left politics to obtain a master’s degree in international studies from the University of Washington. After achieving the degree, she worked as a writer, editor, and instructional designer at the UW, before becoming a full-time writer and blogger as a fellow at Daily Kos.
Meteor Blades is the on-line moniker of Timothy Lange, born in 1946. He has been politically active since 1964 when he participated in voter registration in Mississippi with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in Freedom Summer. He was involved as an organizer in Students for a Democratic Society and, for 16 years, as a member of the American Indian Movement. He was incarcerated at the Industrial School for Boys in Golden, Colorado, for 23 months and spent 13 months at a federal prison camp for refusing the draft. He has remained active as a foot-soldier in the antiwar and anti-intervention movement ever since. His most serious political campaign work was in third-tier paid positions for Pat Schroeder and Tim Wirth during their first election efforts in 1972 and 1974, respectively. In 1973, together with 14 other women and men, he co-founded and served on the board of the Boulder Valley Clinic, the nation's first nonprofit abortion provider. He has been a reporter, editor and publisher for both alternative and mainstream publications, including Front Range Publishing, Westword, the Associated Press, Rocky Mountain News, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and Los Angeles Times Syndicate. He lives with his wife and stepdaughter in northeast Los Angeles.
Laura Clawson, born at the very end of 1976, is currently the Mellon Fellow in Sociology at Dartmouth College. She graduated from Wesleyan University and has a PhD in sociology from Princeton. She does not approve of academic PhD's being called "Dr." and in particular, "Dr. Laura" jokes will not go over well. Politics were always an important part of Laura's life - her early memories include a strike picket line, a gay pride march, and untold Democratic Socialists of America potluck dinners. She participated in the first AFL-CIO Union Summer and other political activities during college, but was not part of an active political community in 2003 when, with great relief, she discovered Daily Kos, which ultimately propelled her back into real-world political action.
Page was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico three years before George McGovern ran for president, which was her earliest political memory; her parents took her with to the polls, and she thought McGovern was actually going to be there, so she seriously pissed off the Nixon voters by talking about this rather loudly. Needless to say, she grew up in a true blue anti-war liberal family. She was a child of the Cold War, in a world where the Doomsday Clock was ticking closer and closer to midnight, where nuclear weapons were coming off the assembly line as fast as the US and USSR could order them. Her strong opposition to nuclear weapons endured throughout her college years; ironically, part of her undergraduate Bachelor of Sciences work in chemistry at Colorado State University was spent as an intern working with the nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State. Incidentally, this is where she earned the nickname "Plutonium Page". Many moons later, after a stint in research and development at a biotechnology company in Seattle, Washington, Page returned to her beloved New Mexico. She taught undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory classes, and was a research assistant in a physical inorganic research laboratory in the University of New Mexico Chemistry Department. She also became heavily involved in Howard Dean's campaign in 2003-2004, which meant she spent far too much time both offline and online with the campaign and not enough time studying. Fortunately, her online time paid off, because that's how she met her Dutch husband, Frank. Just for the hell of it, she and her three felines moved to Amsterdam (the one in the Netherlands) in 2005. Page is currently a volunteer blogger and activist for both Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace Netherlands offices. She is dedicated to saving whales, blogging about nuclear disarmament, climate change, and other environmental issues, and drinking fabulous Dutch beer.
Susan Gardner is a native Southern Californian, born in 1958. She attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and returned to California to work for the Riverside Press-Enterprise Company as editor and publisher of one of its large community weekly newspapers during the 1980’s. After taking a decade and a half off to raise a family, she returned to politics and writing via Daily Kos several years ago. She’s also been a freelance editor and writer, general manager of a special education curriculum company and the exhausted mother of four children. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Jake McIntyre, 31, was born and raised in Buffalo, City of No Illusions, where he attended the high school that beat Tim Russert's alma mater 17 straight times in football. During the course of a generally undistinguished undergrad career at Cornell, Jake worked a number of dead-end summer jobs, which brought him to the realization that the labor movement was the only buffer between contemporary American society and Dickensian England. After Cornell, Jake moved to Honolulu, where he discovered love and the law. In 2001, he relocated to DC (along with fiancee and law degree), where he today works for a midsized labor union. He has a lovely wife, no kids, and he believes that the Bills will win a Super Bowl in his lifetime.
Jeremy Bingham was born on January 21, 1977 and has lived in Olympia, Washington for the past twenty years, the more recent years being spent with his wife and three year old daughter. He handles the technical side of Daily Kos. Before coming to Daily Kos, he had been working as the computer guy at a local store, taking care of an extremely heterogeneous network of computers, while volunteering as a Scoop developer and Kuro5hin admin. After his daughter was born, he found that he had exhausted his possibilities at the store (despite liking working there), and was looking for more challenging and engaging work. A prospect for a state job had fallen through, so Rusty Foster, who was working with Markos Moulitsas in his consulting business, approached Bingham about working for them. Bingham accepted the position, and when the consulting business dissolved at the end of 2004, he continued working for Moulitsas on Daily Kos. In addition to his Daily Kos work, Jeremy Bingham is also a co-founder of the SB Nation network of sports blogs, overseeing the technical aspects of that venture. Beyond his interests in computers new and old, he is an avid amateur historian (particularly ancient Mesopotamian and classical history, WWI, and WWII, but will read up on any of it at least once) and enjoys old science fiction books. He also enjoys listening to punk, metal, and opera.
Adam Bonin, 35, is an attorney in private practice in his native Philadelphia. A participant in online communities since the mid-1980s, Adam represents this site in legal and regulatory matters, and in that capacity achieved a major victory before the Federal Election Commission in 2006, securing significant new rights for speakers on the Internet to engage in online political speech and advocacy. He contributes stories to the front page dealing with campaign finance matters and legal issues generally. Adam is a graduate of Amherst College and The University of Chicago Law School, where he took two seminars with the man he hopes will be the next President of the United States, and lives in Philadelphia with his wife Jennifer, daughter Lucy and rat terrier Wendell. Adam is a member of the board of directors of the Philadelphia Committee to END Homelessness, a nonprofit organization dedicated to placing homeless and at-risk families in stable housing they can call their own. In his spare time, he blogs about pop culture and miscellany at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, and believes that this is finally the year in which a Philadelphia sports team wins a championship again.
Bill Harnsberger, 43, was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, hometown of both the guy who wrote "Dixie" and the queeniest Hollywood Square ever, Paul Lynde. In 1975 he and his family fled the oppressive Ford regime by moving to Düsseldorf, Germany, where he spent his time stealing hood ornaments off of Mercedes. During his time in exile, two popes died in rapid succession. Harnsberger was not charged in the incidents but was forbidden from ever again throwing lawn darts on European soil. In 1980, sensing that Ronald Reagan was poised to make everything right with the world again, he moved back to Ohio, where he became an Eagle Scout and graduated Summa Cum Wanker from Otterbein College in Westerville. He then spent seven years announcing the time and weather for old people on "beautiful music" radio station WGER-FM in Saginaw, Michigan. He now lives with his partner of 15 years, Michael, in Portland, Maine, and recently became the only known person to have successfully auctioned off both of his kidneys on eBay (the secret: labeling them as "collectible figurines"). |
Contributing Editor
Contributing Editor
Contributing Editor