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Markos Moulitsas

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Early life and education

Moulitsas was born in Chicago to a Salvadoran mother and a Greek father. He moved with his family to El Salvador in 1976, but later returned to the Chicago area in 1980 after his family fled when threats were placed on their lives by communist insurgents during the Salvadoran Civil War. As an adult, he has recounted his memories of the civil war, including an incident that occurred when he was 8 years old, in which he saw communist guerrillas murdering students who had been accused of collaborating with the government.

After graduating from Schaumburg High School in Schaumburg, Illinois, he served in the U.S. Army from 1989 through 1992. He completed training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and fulfilled his three-year enlistment as a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Fire Direction Specialist while stationed in Bamberg, Bavaria, Germany.

By his own account, he "missed deploying to the Gulf War by a hair." Moulitsas has described the Army as "perhaps the ideal society – we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return."

Prior to enlisting in the Army, Moulitsas was a member of the Republican Party. During the 1988 presidential election, he served as a Republican precinct captain and assisted with the re-election campaign of Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde. However, during his time in the military Moulitsas began a transition in his political philosophy that would lead him to change his party affiliation from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party.

After leaving the army, he attended Northern Illinois University (NIU) and graduated in 1996 with two bachelor's degrees, majoring in philosophy, journalism, and political science. While attending, he wrote for the college newspaper, the Northern Star. Further illustrating the transition of his political philosophy, now a staunch supporter of gay rights, in 1993 while a freshman at NIU, he penned an opinion piece for the Northern Star denouncing efforts being made to lift the ban on homosexuals serving in the military. As a writer, he also questioned NIU's policy of spending student fee money on athletic programs, generating a negative response from school officials, and waged an unsuccessful campaign to save the school's journalism program. In 2007, he was inducted into the Northern Star Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed by the newspaper's alumni association.

Moulitsas attended the Boston University School of Law from 1996 to 1999, earning a J.D. degree. He then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he worked as a project manager at a web development shop.

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