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Mike was a Lance Corporal in the Marines who served with an Artillery Unit during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Paul Rieckhoff is the executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the first and largest organization for veterans of the War on Terror. During his time in the Adamiyah section of central Baghdad, he led his light infantry platoon on hundreds of combat patrols with the 3rd Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions. He continues to serve his country as an Infantry Officer in the New York Army National Guard. Rieckhoff is a nationally-recognized authority on the war in Iraq and issues affecting our troops, military families, and veterans at home. He is a frequent TV and radio commentator and has appeared on ABC's *This Week with George Stephanopoulos*, Fox's *Hannity & Colmes*, NBC *Nightly News*, *60 Minutes II*, CNN's *Paula Zahn Now*, ABC's *World News Tonight*, *Hardball with Chris Matthews*, Air America's *Al Franken Show*, and NPR's *All Things Considered*, among many other programs. He and IAVA have also been featured across the country in numerous major national newspapers and magazines. He was named one of "America's Best and Brightest of 2004" by *Esquire*. Prior to his deployment to Iraq, Rieckhoff worked as a high school football coach and an investment banking analyst on Wall Street, and later spent several weeks contributing to the rescue effort at Ground Zero after 9/11. He is a graduate of Amherst College, where he studied political science. He lives in New York City's East Village.

Scott Allen Miller (also known as Scotto) is an American talk radio personality. He was most recently the morning drive host and program director at WROW in Albany, New York. Miller has been named one of America's top talk show hosts by Talkers Magazine. At 38 years of age, he is the youngest major market morning drive talk show host in the United States. Miller's calling cards are his knowledge of a wide variety of issues, his clever sense of humor, his personal engagement with his audience, and his fiercely independent points of view. The Boston Radio Hall of Fame website declares, "Miller is for the most part, a fair and balanced talk show host with a deeply developed thought process and a slight chip-on-the-shoulder attitude. [sic] ... Miller stands out on this landmark talk radio station." Politically, Miller leans libertarian but differs strongly with the Libertarian Party on matters of criminal justice, national defense, and immigration.

In addition to *Mother Jones* magazine Jay Harris is also chief executive officer of *Mother Jones'* non-profit parent, the Foundation for National Progress. During his tenure, the organization has built on its tradition of groundbreaking public interest reporting while growing circulation to unprecedented levels. Believing that *Mother Jones'* investigative content and its 28-year-old brand have importance and audience potential beyond print media, Jay has overseen the launch and development of MotherJones.com. Other media projects are pending. Jay is a frequent radio and television guest, appearing on "Talk of the Nation", C-Span and many other shows, and has been a featured speaker at conferences of the Social Venture Network, Greenfest, Bioneers and Businesses for Social Responsibility. He has taught magazine management at the University of California Graduate School of Journalism. His essay on the state of the news business "What's Missing from Your News?" was published in The Business of Journalism (New Press, 2000). Jay is vice chair of the Independent Press Association and on the steering committee of the Magazine Publishers of America Independent Magazine Advisory Group (IMAG). He recently joined the board of advisors of Free Speech TV.

David Chudnovsky is a mathematician. David Chudnovsky works closely with and assists his brother Gregory, who suffers from Myasthenia Gravis, a disorder of neuromuscular transmission leading to fluctuating weakness and fatigue. The Chudnovsky Brothers are mathematicians known for their wide-ranging mathematical abilities, their home-built supercomputers, and their close working relationship. The Chudnovsky Brothers have held records, at different times, for computing Pi to over two billion digits a feat accomplished in the early 1990s on a supercomputer they built in their Brooklyn apartment.

When Howie Carr turns the microphone off, he is an award-winning front-page columnist for the *Boston Herald*. Known for his scathing exposes of local politicians, he has raised lots of eyebrows and voices over the years. He's famous for pushing the envelope and not regretting that he went too far. His opinion is valued by the TV stations he's regularly featured on: *NBC Today*; *MSNBC*; *C-SPAN*; *Court TV*; *Geraldo*; *CNN*; *Larry King Live*; *The Fox News Network*; *CBS This Morning*. New England tunes in to Howie Carr. Besides being heard on his flagship station *WRKO 680* in Boston, he is syndicated across New England. He has worked as a reporter/commentator for Channels 2 and 56. In 1980-81, Carr was Boston City Hall bureau chief of *The Boston Herald American*, and he later worked as the paper's State House bureau chief. As a political reporter for *WNEV*, Channel 7, his coverage of then Mayor Kevin White was so relentless that after the mayor announced he wasn't running again, he told the Boston Sunday Globe that one of the things he enjoyed most about his impending retirement was not having Carr chase him around the city. In 1985, he won the National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, for Essays and Criticism. In television, he has been nominated for an Emmy Award.

Gregory Chudnovsky is a mathematician with an interest in number theory. Gregory works closely with his brother, David Chudnovsky, who is also a mathematician. The Chudnovsky Brothers are mathematicians known for their wide-ranging mathematical abilities, their home-built supercomputers, and their close working relationship. A 1992 article in The New Yorker quoted several mathematicians' opinions that Gregory Chudnovsky has one of the top mathematical minds alive today. David Chudnovsky works closely with and assists his brother Gregory, who suffers from Myasthenia Gravis, a disorder of neuromuscular transmission leading to fluctuating weakness and fatigue. The Chudnovsky Brothers have held records, at different times, for computing Pi to over two billion digits a feat accomplished in the early 1990s on a supercomputer they built in their Brooklyn apartment.

Martha Burk is a political psychologist and women's issues expert who is co-founder of the Center for Advancement of Public Policy, a research and policy analysis organization in Washington, D.C. She is currently Director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO). She also serves as the Money Editor for *Ms. Magazine*, and she is a syndicated newspaper columnist. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington. Her background includes experience as a university research director, management professor, and advisor to political campaigns and organizations. Dr. Burk has long been active in public debate and political analysis. She has provided briefing papers for presidential candidates, including Bill Bradley, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, and Bill Richardson, and has worked closely with members of the United States Congress on issues of importance to women. She is currently serving as a Senior Policy Adviser for Women's Issues to Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. Her latest book is *Your Money And Your Life: The High Stakes for Women Voters in '08 and Beyond*. Dr. Burk has served on the Commission for Responsive Democracy, the Advisory Committee of Americans for Workplace Fairness, the Sex Equity Caucus of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the board of directors of the National Committee on Pay Equity, where she headed the Legislative Task Force. She currently serves as an advisory board member to several other national organizations, including the Ford Foundation and Women for World Peace, a project of the Twenty First Century Foundation.

Gary Nash is professor emeritus of history at the University of California at Los Angeles and has been the director of the National Center for History in the Schools since 1994. As the director of the National Center for History in the Schools, Nash oversees the publication of over 60 teaching units on specific issues and dramatic events in US and world history, designed for grades 5 through 12. From 1992 to 1996, Professor Nash co-chaired the National History Standards Project, which landed him in the middle of ideological debates about how history should be taught to young people, whose history should be taught, and the merits of multiculturalism in the classroom. Some said the Standards were too multicultural; others said they were not multicultural enough. It is this type of eloquent and consistent defense of an expansive view of history and the teaching of history that characterizes the eleven books Nash has written during his career. His first book, *Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-1726*, published in 1968, won a prize from the American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, for best book in American history. His 1979 book, *The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution*, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history, and it won the Commonwealth Club of California's Silver Prize in literature. In 1988, his *Forging Freedom: the Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840*, won the prize for best book from the Society for the History of the Early American Republic. Other titles include *Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America* (1974; also published in Spanish); *The Private Side of American History: Readings in Everyday Life (1975); Race, Class, and Politics: Essays on American Colonial and Revolutionary Society* (1986); *American Odyssey: The United States in the Twentieth Century* (1991); and *First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory* (2001). Nash has co-authored or co-edited eight books and has written more than 20 book chapters, 35 articles, and over 80 reviews, article reviews, op-ed essays and commentaries. His latest book is *African American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom*.