Name	WRKO
City	Boston, Massachusetts
Area	Boston, Massachusetts
Branding	AM 680 WRKO
Slogan	"Boston's Talk Station"
Airdate	1922 (as WNAC)
Frequency	680 kHz
Format	Talk radio
Power	50,000 watts
Class	B
Facility id	1902
Coordinates
Affiliations	NBC News (1981-1995) ABC News (1995-present)
Owner	Entercom
Sister stations	WMKK, WKAF, WAAF, WEEI
Webcast	Listen Live
Website	http://www.wrko.com/
Callsign meaning	RKO General (former owner)

WRKO (680 AM) is a radio station based in Boston, Massachusetts, currently owned by Entercom. Its transmitter is located in Burlington, Massachusetts, next to the Burlington Mall.

History

1920-1940

Settling on 1230 kilocycles (kilohertz) in 1922, WNAC was founded by John Shepard III, a Boston businessman whose father John Shepard Jr. had a department-store empire throughout New England and saw the potential of radio to publicize himself and his stores enough to finance his son's venture. The previous month WEAN (another Shepard-owned radio station) went on air in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1927, WNAC became one of the sixteen charter members of the CBS Radio Network, and remained a CBS affiliate for the next decade.

In July 1929, WNAC moved into new studios inside the basement of the Hotel Buckminster. Later that same year, using a 100-foot antenna connected by a clothesline to the building's roof, WNAC arranged the first network broadcast in radio history with station WEAF in New York City.

Shepard also launched a regional network to serve radio stations throughout New England; called "The Yankee Network", it was also a pioneer in radio news coverage. For many years, the Yankee Network was one of the best local/regional radio news operations in the country.

Shepard also purchased a second Boston station, WAAB, which became an affiliate of the Mutual Radio Network in 1935. He also launched a second regional network, "The Colonial Network", with WAAB as its flagship station. Outside of Boston, Yankee and Colonial programming were usually heard on the same station; additionally, Colonial carried Mutual programming to its affiliates.

1935 also saw the hiring of Fred B. Cole, a disc jockey who would spend more than 50 years on the air in Boston at various stations. Cole left WNAC for WHDH in 1946.

In 1937, WNAC became an NBC Red affiliate after losing CBS to WEEI. Four years later, WNAC's frequency changed to 1260 kilocycles (kHz). In 1942, to comply with FCC anti-duopoly regulations, WAAB was moved to Worcester. At the same time, WNAC lost NBC "Red" to WBZ and with WAAB having been moved, took over the Mutual affiliation.

1940-1981

By 1949, WNAC was sold to General Tire and Rubber. For a brief time in 1956 and 1957, WNAC - which moved to 680 kHz when General Tire bought 50,000 watt WLAW (based 25 miles north of Boston in Lawrence, Massachusetts) in the early 1950s - was affiliated with both Mutual and NBC. The station remained a Mutual affiliate until the network, of which General Tire was a part-owner, was sold in the late 1950s. WNAC lost NBC to WEZE (the station, ironically, that took over WNAC's original 1260 frequency) in 1957, and would lose Mutual as well.

After MOR music, a brief attempt at top-40, and a format featuring a variety of chat programs, major changes came to WNAC in March 1967. The station's call letters were changed to WRKO, the format to Top 40 rock and roll, and the Yankee Network ceased to exist.

The complete history of WRKO, complete with airchecks and official reproductions, may be found at http://wrko.org.

The move to a rock format in March 1967 was an enormous success. For the next decade, WRKO was one of Boston's top-rated radio stations, and absolutely dominant among its target audience of listeners under the age of 35. Known to its listeners as "The Big 68" and a Top 40 station of considerable influence, WRKO was home to such well-known personalities as longtime morning man Dale Dorman, Joel Cash, J. J. Wright, J. J. Jeffrey, Shadoe Stevens, Frank Kingston Smith (who was known as "Bobby Mitchell"), Steve Anthony and many others. Mel Phillips, who replaced Bob Henabery as program director, served in that position from 1967 to 1972 before being replaced by Scotty Brink. WRKO in 1967 even took a dig at market leader WBZ, a Westinghouse station that played pop music. In advance of WRKO's format change to top 40, WBZ tried to get in front of WRKO by adopting the slogan "Boss Radio" (used on famous RKO General top 40 station KHJ in Los Angeles). WRKO, in response, was rumored to have had their DJs reading a liner that said "WRKO, putting the Boss in the Restinghouse." WRKO did ultimately drive WBZ out of the top 40 format, but certainly didn't retire its competitor.

By the end of the 1970s, however, rock and top-40 radio had begun to migrate from AM to FM. In a three-year period from 1978 to 1981, WRKO lost much of its audience. The station tried to compete with the surge in FM listening, first with a short-lived focus on album cuts and later by switching to Adult Contemporary music, featuring a morning program with market legend Norm Nathan. A switch to a country music format was also reportedly briefly considered. In 1980, WRKO began having talk programming during evening hours. On September 27, 1981, the station switched to an all-talk format: at 6pm on that date Justin Clark played the last song, "American Pie" by Don McLean. WRKO has been a news and talk station ever since.

1981-Present

After switching to the talk radio format, the station ran a number of service-oriented and general chat programs during the day. Moving to more issue-oriented talk, the stations popularity surged, with some of the most prominent talk-program hosts in the country such as Gene Burns, Jerry Williams, Ted O'Brien and Paul Parent. The station was often the highest-rated station in Boston during the 1980s and early 1990s. But while WRKO was growing and changing formats, its parent company, General Tire and Rubber, later renamed Gencorp, was under multiple federal investigations and ultimately under an FCC investigation due to its "lack of candor" for failing to disclose unlawful operations by General Tire. In the midst of the investigation into its parent company's problems, RKO General found itself under investigation for reciprocal trace practices involving several of its properties, and later for double billing by a radio network it organized, the RKO Network. The FCC license hearings culminated in the loss of the company's license to operate WNAC-TV, Channel 7 in Boston.

Several years later, the FCC denied renewal of all RKO General's broadcast licenses (with the exception of WOR-TV in Secaucus, N.J. which gained a permanent license by agreeing to relocate to New Jersey from New York City) and assigned the licenses to designated competing applicants. Gencorp appealed, but rather than be stripped of the valuable licenses without compensation, the company's broadcasting subsidiary, RKO General, entered settlement agreements with the competing applicants that allowed the sale of its stations to third parties by making settlement payments to the applicants that had been awarded the licenses. At the time, Gencorp was strapped for cash as the result of a hostile takeover bid, during which time the management decided to buy back the company's own stock to fend off the takeover. As part of the settlements worked out in Boston, New York, Memphis, Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale, Los Angeles and San Francisco, WRKO and its FM sister station, WROR, were sold to a neophyte broadcaster, Atlantic Ventures Corp., which was operated by a former cable television executive.

After several mergers, Atlantic Ventures (renamed American Radio Systems) decided that owning broadcast and cellular telephone towers was its preferred business and merged with CBS, Inc. WRKO was spun off to Entercom since the merger brought CBS over FCC ownership limits.

In recent years, WRKO has featured such local talk hosts as John "Ozone" Osterlind, Scott Allen Miller, John DePetro, and Howie Carr, as well as nationally-syndicated hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage.

The station was the flagship radio station of the 16-time National Basketball Association champion Boston Celtics from 2005-2007. Entercom Communications in Boston (parent company for WRKO and its sister station, Sports Radio WEEI) assumed the broadcast rights in 2005 from WWZN and WRKO became the flagship station. Beginning in 2007, Entercom moved most of its Celtics coverage to WEEI.

WRKO was, from 1986 to 1994, the flagship station for the Boston Red Sox. In 2006, Entercom inked a 10-year deal to make WRKO co-flagship station for the Red Sox Radio Network along with incumbent WEEI. WRKO airs most night games, while WEEI generally carries day games plus any weeknight game on a specific day of the week. WEEI once again became the sole flagship station on August 26, 2009.

The station began streaming its broadcast online in April 2005.

On November 3, 2006, the station fired host John DePetro for his on-air description of gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross as a "fat lesbian". His 9am - noon time slot was taken by Todd Feinburg.

On January 11, 2007, former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Tom Finneran, was announced as the morning drive-time host on WRKO, replacing Scott Allen Miller.. Co-host Todd Feinburg joined Finneran on January 5, 2009, and the show time was shifted from 6-10 am to 5:30-9.

On December 19, 2007, Reese Hopkins took over the 10am - noon time slot from Todd Feinburg. Hopkins was let go on October 16, 2008 and the time slot was filled by Laura Ingraham's nationally syndicated talk show.[1]

Programming

Programs

The station's programming currently consists of primarily conservative syndicated programs found on most talk stations nationwide, including locally-based conservative talker Howie Carr. Morning drive is devoted to locally-produced programming by former Democratic state House of Representatives Speaker Tom Finneran and co-host Todd Feinburg . Late mornings are occupied by nationally syndicated conservative host Laura Ingraham. The current afternoon and evening lineup includes Howie Carr on afternoon drive, Michael Savage on evenings, the syndicated Jerry Doyle on nights, and the syndicated "Red Eye Radio" with Doug McIntyre overnight (weekends). WRKO reruns the Carr show overnights during the week. WRKO had aired the syndicated The Rush Limbaugh Show on early afternoons and "Coast to Coast AM" with George Noory for years but lost the rights to those shows as Clear Channel, whose Premiere division syndicated the show, pulled them both from WRKO, and put them on their own station, WXKS AM 1200. Local Republican political consultant Charley Manning will host a show in Limbaugh's former slot, weekdays from noon to 3 p.m., effective March 8.

Notable Saturday programming includes Doug Stephan's Talk Radio Countdown, the syndicated "Money Talk with Bob Brinker", the syndicated "ABC Perspectives", and the syndicated Jerry Doyle. Also featured: a two- hour locally-originated show hosted by Avi Nelson, and the two-hour Jennifer Brien Show. .

Notable Sunday programming includes "The Jim Zoppo Garden Show", the syndicated "Unconventional Wisdom", "Senior Financial Focus", "The Pat Whitley Restaurant Show", the syndicated "Money Talk with Bob Brinker", and "Pundit Review Radio" with Kevin Whalen. .

News

As of November 16, 2006, all of the on-air news anchors have been fired by station management. WGBH's Beat the Press reported that the news staff was aware of the situation, one by one, and they got their severance checks. As of November 2006, the hourly news updates (including traffic and weather) during the day is provided by Metro Networks. WRKO said in the announcement after the decision that the station's local news and issues would be driven by the talk show hosts, instead of the news anchors. Former News Director Rod Fritz, can now be heard on rival WBZ in Boston, after spending a year in New York at Fox News. Metro's Bruce Adams is now the lead anchor.

Skyway Patrol

The title "Skyway Patrol" was first used by the old WHDH radio in 1961 for their aerial traffic reports. After Entercom moved WEEI's call letters and programming to the old home of WHDH radio, WRKO inherited the rights to the name "Skyway Patrol". In November 2006, along with the layoffs of the news department, the "Skyway Patrol" was replaced with "WRKO News" as their signoff every 20 minutes. Traffic reports come from Metro Networks traffic desk.

"Skyway Patrol" reporters include Malcolm Alter, Bruce Adams, Joe Stapleton, Steve Hartman, Scott Pike, Mike Riley and Lisa Jackson.

Massachusetts state trooper Grant Moulison, who for 21 years reported to WRKO listeners on the morning and afternoon drivetime situations, left in April 2006 after retiring from the force with 32 years of service behind him. Matt Hillas reported for "Skyway Patrol" from May 1999 to June 2006.

References

External links

WRKO official website

The Big 68 Remembered - A retrospective of WRKO's history as the most popular Top 40 music station in Boston

RKO Category:News and talk radio stations in the United States Category:RKO General Category:Radio stations established in 1922

Name	Ron Paul
Image name	Ron Paul, official Congressional photo portrait, 2007.jpg|thumb|Paul's Congressional portrait
Imagesize	220px
Birth date	August 20, 1935
Birth place	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
State	Texas
District	14th
Term start	January 3, 1997
Preceded	Greg Laughlin
State2	Texas
District2	22nd
Term start2	January 3, 1979
Term end2	January 3, 1985
Preceded2	Robert Gammage
Succeeded2	Tom DeLay
Term start3	April 3, 1976
Term end3	January 3, 1977
Preceded3	Robert R. Casey
Succeeded3	Robert Gammage
Party	Republican (1976–1988) Libertarian (1988 Presidential Election) Republican (1988–present)
Spouse	Carolyn "Carol" Paul
Children	Ronald "Ronnie" Paul, Jr. Lori Paul Pyeatt Randal "Rand" Paul Robert Paul Joy Paul-LeBlanc
Alma mater	Gettysburg College (B.S.) Duke University School of Medicine (M.D.)
Profession	Physician, Politician
Residence	Lake Jackson, Texas
Religion	Baptist
Website	U.S. House of Representatives Office of Ron Paul
Signature	Ron Paul signature.svg
Branch	United States Air Force United States Air National Guard
Serviceyears	1962–1965 1965–1968

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American physician and Republican Congressman for the 14th congressional district of Texas. Paul serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Committee on Financial Services, where he has been an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policy. He has gained prominence for his libertarian positions on many political issues, often clashing with both Republican and Democratic Party leaders. He is the Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy. Paul has run for President of the United States twice, first in 1988 as the nominee of the Libertarian Party and again in 2008 as a candidate for the Republican nomination.

He is the founder of the advocacy group Campaign for Liberty and his ideas have been expressed in numerous published articles and books, including End The Fed (2009), and (2008). According to a 1998 study published in the American Journal of Political Science, Paul has the most conservative voting record of any member of Congress since 1937. His son Rand Paul was sworn in as a Senator for Kentucky in 2011, an event with made the elder Paul the first Representative in history to serve alongside a son or daughter in the Senate.

Personal life

Paul was born in Pittsburgh to Howard and Margaret (née Dumont) Paul. As a junior at Dormont High School, he was the 220-yard dash state champion. After earning an M.D. degree from the Duke University School of Medicine, he was a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon during the 1960s.

Paul has been married to Carol Wells since 1957. They have five children, who were baptized Episcopalian: Ronald, Lori, Rand, Robert, and Joy. Paul's son Rand is senator-elect of the state of Kentucky. They also have eighteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He has four brothers. Two of them, including David Paul, are ministers. Wayne Paul is a Certified Public Accountant.

Early congressional career

While still a medical resident in the 1960s, Paul was influenced by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which led him to read many works of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. He came to know economists Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard well, and credits to them his interest in the study of economics. He came to believe that what the Austrian school economists wrote was coming true on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon closed the "gold window" by implementing the U.S. dollar's complete departure from the gold standard. and welfare, Paul became a delegate to the Texas Republican convention and a Republican candidate for the United States Congress. In 1974, incumbent Robert R. Casey defeated him in the 22nd district. When President Gerald Ford appointed Casey to head the Federal Maritime Commission, Paul won an April 1976 special election to fill the empty seat. Paul lost some months later in the general election, to Democrat Robert Gammage, by fewer than 300 votes (0.2%), but defeated Gammage in a 1978 rematch, and was reelected in 1980 and 1982.

Paul was the first Republican representative from the area; he also led the Texas Reagan delegation at the national Republican convention. His successful campaign against Gammage surprised local Democrats, who had expected to retain the seat easily in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Gammage underestimated Paul's support among local mothers: "I had real difficulty down in Brazoria County, where he practiced, because he'd delivered half the babies in the county. There were only two obstetricians in the county, and the other one was his partner."

House of Representatives

Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, at first in the 1970s in the House where he also declined to attend junkets or register for a Congressional pension while serving four terms. His chief of staff (1978–1982) was Lew Rockwell. In 1980, when a majority of Republicans favored President Jimmy Carter's proposal to reinstate draft registration, Paul argued that their views were inconsistent, stating they were more interested in registering their children than they were their guns. Also in 1976, the foundation began publication of the first monthly newsletter connected with Paul, Dr. Ron Paul's Freedom Report (or Special Report). It also publishes monographs, books, radio spots, and (since 1997) a new series of the monthly newsletter, Ron Paul's Freedom Report, which promote the principles of limited government.

On the House Banking Committee, Paul blamed the Federal Reserve for inflation, it is now available from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, to which Paul is a distinguished counselor.

In 1984, Paul chose to run for the U.S. Senate instead of re-election to the House, but lost the Republican primary to Phil Gramm. He returned to full-time medical practice In his House farewell address, Paul said, "Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare. Vote trading is seen as good politics. The errand-boy mentality is ordinary, the defender of liberty is seen as bizarre. It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic."

1988 presidential campaign

In the 1988 presidential election, Paul defeated American Indian activist Russell Means to win the Libertarian Party nomination for president. Paul placed third in the popular vote with 432,179 votes (0.5%), Paul was kept off the ballot in Missouri, and received votes there only when written in, due to what the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called a "technicality".

As the "Libertarian standard bearer", Paul gained supporters who agreed with his positions on gun rights, fiscal conservatism, homeschooling, and abortion, and won approval from many who thought the federal government was misdirected. This nationwide support base encouraged and donated to his later campaigns.

According to Paul, his presidential run was about more than reaching office; he sought to spread his libertarian ideas, often to school and university groups regardless of vote eligibility. He said, "We're just as interested in the future generation as this election. These kids will vote eventually, and maybe, just maybe, they'll go home and talk to their parents."

After the election, Paul continued his medical practice until he returned to Congress. He also co-owned a coin dealership, Ron Paul Coins, for twelve years with Burt Blumert, who continued to operate it after Paul returned to office. He spoke multiple times at the American Numismatic Association's 1988 convention. In 1985 Ron Paul & Associates began publishing The Ron Paul Investment Letter and The Ron Paul Survival Report; it added the more controversial Ron Paul Political Report in 1987. Many articles lacked a byline, yet often invoked Paul's name or persona.

After his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988, Paul returned to private medical practice and continued to allow the newsletters to be published bearing his name. For 1992, RP&A; earned $940,000 and employed Paul's family as well as Lew Rockwell (its vice-president and seven other workers. Murray Rothbard and other libertarians believed Rockwell ghostwrote the newsletters for Paul; Rockwell later acknowledged involvement in writing subscription letters, but attributed the newsletters to "seven or eight freelancers".

Paul considered running for President in 1992, but instead chose to support Pat Buchanan that year, and served as an adviser to his Republican presidential campaign against incumbent President George H. W. Bush.

Later congressional career

Campaigns

1996 campaign

In 1996, Paul was re-elected to Congress after the toughest campaign race he had faced since the 1970s. As Republicans had taken over both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Paul entered the race hopeful that his Constitutionalist policies of tax cuts, closing federal agencies, and curbing the U.N. would have broader support than in the past. The Republican National Committee focused instead on encouraging Democrats to switch parties, as Paul's primary opponent, incumbent Greg Laughlin, had done in 1995. The party threw its full weight behind Laughlin, including support from House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Governor George W. Bush, and the National Rifle Association. Paul responded by running newspaper ads quoting Gingrich's harsh criticisms of Laughlin's Democratic voting record 14 months earlier. While Paul was able to paint Morris as a tool of trial lawyers and big labor, Morris ran numerous ads about Paul's advocacy of federal drug law repeal.

Morris also accused Paul of authoring questionable statements in past newsletters, Paul's congressional campaign countered the statements were taken out of context. and that voters might not understand the "tongue-in-cheek, academic" quotes out of context. Further, the campaign rejected Morris' demand to release all back issues.

Paul went on to win the election in a close margin. It became the third time Paul had been elected to Congress as a non-incumbent. In both campaigns, the national Democratic Party and major unions continued to spend heavily on targeting Paul. On December 11, 2001, he told the independent movement that he was encouraged by the fact that the petition had spread the message of Constitutionalism, but did not expect a White House win at that time. Further prompting in early 2007 led him to enter the 2008 race.

Unlike many political candidates, Paul receives the overwhelming majority of his campaign contributions from individuals (97 percent in the 2006 cycle), and receives much less from political action committees (PAC's) than others, ranging from two percent (2002) to six percent (1998). The group Clean Up Washington, analyzing from 2000 to mid-2006, listed Paul as seventh-lowest in PAC receipts of all House members; one of the lowest in lobbyist receipts; and fourth-highest in small-donor receipts. He had the lowest PAC receipts percentage of all the 2008 Republican presidential candidates.

Paul was re-elected to his tenth term in Congress in November 2006. In the March 4, 2008, Republican primary for his Congressional seat, he defeated Friendswood city councilman Chris Peden, obtaining over 70 percent of the vote. On the 2008 ballot, Paul won his eleventh term in Congress running unopposed. In the 2010 Republican primary for his Congressional seat, Paul defeated three opponents with 80 percent of the vote.

Relationship with district

, which is larger than Massachusetts.]] After 2003 Texas redistricting, Paul's district is larger than Massachusetts, with of Gulf of Mexico coastline between Houston and Rockport, Texas, covering some 22 counties. Even so, Paul opposes programs like federally funded flood insurance (typically supported by coastal and rural representatives) because it requires those outside flood zones to subsidize those within, but prohibits those within from choosing their own insurers. In an overwhelmingly rural region known for ranching and rice farms, Despite his voting against heavily supported legislation like farm bills, Paul's devotion to reducing government resonates with 14th district voters:

Paul adds his own earmarks, such as for Texas shrimp promotion, but he routinely votes against most spending bills returned by committee. Earmarks permit members of Congress, rather than executive branch civil servants, to designate spending priorities for previously authorized funds directed otherwise. In , Paul states his views on earmarks this way: "The real problem, and one that was unfortunately not addressed in the 2007's earmark dispute, is the size of the federal government and the amount of money we are spending in these appropriations bills. Cutting even a million dollars from an appropriations bill that spends hundreds of billions will make no appreciable difference in the size of government, which is doubtless why politicians and the media are so eager to have us waste our time on [earmarks]."

Paul also spends extra time in the district to compensate for "violat[ing] almost every rule of political survival you can think of,"

In March 2001, Paul introduced a bill to repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR) and reinstate the process of formal declaration of war by Congress. Later in 2001, Paul voted to authorize the president, pursuant to WPR, to respond to those responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks. He also introduced Sunlight Rule legislation, which requires lawmakers to take enough time to read bills before voting on them, after the Patriot Act was passed within 24 hours of its introduction. Paul was one of six Republicans to vote against the Iraq War Resolution, and (with Oregon representative Peter DeFazio) sponsored a resolution to repeal the war authorization in February 2003. Paul's speech, 35 "Questions That Won't Be Asked About Iraq", was translated and published in German, French, Russian, Italian, and Swiss periodicals before the Iraq War began. After a 2005 bill was touted as "slashing" government waste, Paul wrote that it decreased spending by a fraction of one percent and that "Congress couldn't slash spending if the members' lives depended on it." He said that in three years he had voted against more than 700 bills intended to expand government.

Paul has introduced several bills to apply tax credits toward education, including credits for parental spending on public, private, or homeschool students (Family Education Freedom Act); for salaries for all K–12 teachers, librarians, counselors, and other school personnel; and for donations to scholarships or to benefit academics (Education Improvement Tax Cut Act). In accord with his political positions, he has also introduced the Sanctity of Life Act, the We the People Act, and the American Freedom Agenda Act.

List of bills sponsored and cosponsored

The following tables link to the Congressional Record hosted by the Library of Congress. All the specifics and actions taken for each individual bill Ron Paul has either sponsored or cosponsored can be reviewed further there. "Original bills" and "Original amendments" indicate instances where Ron Paul had pledged to support the legislation at the time the bill was initially introduced rather than at some other point during the legislative process of the bill. {| class="wikitable sortable" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto; font-size:90%; border:0; text-align:left; line-height:150%;" |+ Rep. Ron Paul – U.S. House of Representatives – [R-TX-14] |- !Years Covered !All bills sponsored !All amendments sponsored !All bills cosponsored !All amendments cosponsored !Original bills cosponsored !Original amendments cosponsored !Bill support withdrawn !Amendment support withdrawn |- |1997-98 |32 |7 |223 |0 |76 |0 |0 |0 |- |1999-00 |51 |8 |316 |0 |119 |0 |0 |0 |- |2001-02 |64 |4 |323 |0 |104 |0 |1 |0 |- |2003-04 |68 |8 |354 |0 |150 |0 |0 |0 |- |2005-06 |71 |8 |393 |0 |141 |0 |0 |0 |- |2007-08 |70 |0 |443 |0 |160 |0 |0 |0 |- |2009-10 |41 |0 |120 |0 |69 |0 |0 |0 |}

Note: The numbers for the current session of Congress may no longer reflect the actual numbers as they are still actively in session.

Affiliations

Paul serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (having been on the Western Hemisphere and the Asia and Pacific subcommittees); the Joint Economic Committee; and the Committee on Financial Services (as Ranking Member of the Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology subcommittee, and Vice-Chair of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee).

Paul was honorary chair of, and is a current member of, the Republican Liberty Caucus, a political action committee which describes its goal as electing "liberty-minded, limited-government individuals". Paul also hosts a luncheon every Thursday as chair of the Liberty Caucus, composed of 20 members of Congress. Washington DC area radio personality Johnny "Cakes" Auville gave Paul the idea for the Liberty Caucus and is a regular contributing member. He remains on good terms with the Libertarian Party and addressed its 2004 convention. He also was endorsed by the Constitution Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka.

Paul was on a bipartisan coalition of 17 members of Congress that sued President Bill Clinton in 1999 over his conduct of the Kosovo war. They accused Clinton of failing to inform Congress of the action's status within 48 hours as required by the War Powers Resolution, and of failing to obtain Congressional declaration of war. Congress had voted 427–2 against a declaration of war with Yugoslavia, and had voted to deny support for the air campaign in Kosovo. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that since Congress had voted for funding after Clinton had actively engaged troops in the war with Kosovo, legislators had sent a confusing message about whether they approved of the war. Paul said that the judge's decision attempted to circumvent the Constitution and to authorize the president to conduct a war without approval from Congress.

Committee assignments

Rep. Paul serves on the following committee and subcommittees.

*Committee on Financial Services

*Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology

*Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade

*Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

Committee on Foreign Affairs

*Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight

*Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere

Joint Economic Committee

2008 presidential campaign

Liberty Forum.]] in Manchester.]]

Republican primary campaign

Paul formally declared his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination on March 12, 2007, on C-SPAN. His campaign had intense grassroots support—his supporters were said to "always show up"—and he had dozens of wins in GOP straw polls.

Paul's campaign showed "surprisingly strong" fundraising with several record-breaking events. He had the highest rate of military contribution for 2008, and donations coming from individuals, aided significantly by an online presence and very active campaigning by supporters, who organized moneybomb fundraisers netting millions over several months. Such fundraising earned Paul the status of having raised more than any other Republican candidate in 2007's fourth-quarter. Paul's name was a number-one web search term as ranked by Technorati, beginning around May 2007. He has led other candidates in YouTube subscriptions since May 20, 2007.

Paul was largely ignored by traditional media, including at least one incident where FOX News did not invite him to a GOP debate featuring all other presidential candidates at the time. One exception was Glenn Beck's program on Headline News, where Beck interviewed Paul for the full hour of his show.

Though projections of 2008 Republican delegate counts varied widely, Paul's count was consistently third among the three candidates remaining after Super Tuesday. According to CNN and the New York Times, by Super Tuesday Paul had received five delegates in North Dakota, and was projected to receive two in Iowa, four in Nevada, and five in Alaska based on caucus results, totaling 16 delegates. However, Paul's campaign projected 42 delegates based on the same results, including delegates from Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota.

In the January Louisiana caucus, Paul placed second behind John McCain, but uncommitted delegates outnumbered both candidates' pledged delegates, since a registration deadline had been extended to January 12. Paul said he had the greatest number of pledged Louisiana delegates who had registered by the original January 10 deadline, and formally challenged the deadline extension and the Louisiana GOP's exclusion of voters due to an outdated list; he projected three Louisiana delegates. The Super Tuesday West Virginia caucus was won by Mike Huckabee, whose state campaign coordinators reportedly arranged to give three Huckabee delegates to Paul in exchange for votes from Paul's supporters. Huckabee has not confirmed this delegate pledge.

Paul's preference votes in primaries and caucuses began at 10 percent in Iowa (winning Jefferson County) and eight percent in New Hampshire, where he had the support of state sovereignty champion, State Representative Dan Itse; on Super Tuesday they ranged from 25 percent in Montana and 21 percent in North Dakota caucuses, where he won several counties, to three percent in several state primaries, averaging under 10 percent in primaries overall. After sweeping four states on March 4, McCain was widely projected to have a majority of delegates pledged to vote for him in the September party convention. Paul obliquely acknowledged McCain on March 6: "Though victory in the political sense [is] not available, many victories have been achieved due to hard work and enthusiasm." He continued to contest the remaining primaries, having added, "McCain has the nominal number ... but if you're in a campaign for only gaining power, that is one thing; if you're in a campaign to influence ideas and the future of the country, it's never over." Paul's recent book, , became a New York Times and Amazon.com bestseller immediately upon release. His newest book, End the Fed, has been released.

On June 12, 2008, Paul withdrew his bid for the Republican nomination, citing his resources could be better spent on improving America. Some of the $4 million remaining campaign contributions was invested into the new political action and advocacy group called Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty. Paul told the newsmagazine NOW on PBS the goal of the Campaign for Liberty is to "spread the message of the Constitution and limited government, while at the same time organizing at the grassroots level and teaching pro-liberty activists how to run effective campaigns and win elections at every level of government."

Newsletter controversy

Controversial claims made in Ron Paul's newsletters, written in the first person, included statements such as "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day." Along with "even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." Another notable statement that garnered controversy was "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be" An issue from 1992 refers to carjacking as the "hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos." In an article title "The Pink House" the newsletter wrote that " "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."

Shortly afterwards, The New Republic released many previously unpublicized quotations attributed to Paul in James Kirchick's "Angry White Man" article. Kirchick accused Paul of having made racist, sexist, and derogatory comments geared towards African Americans, women, and the LGBT community. Kircheck also accused Paul of possessing "an obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry." CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer that the writing "Didn't sound like the Ron Paul I've come to know." Later, Nelson Linder, president of the Austin chapter of the NAACP, also defended Paul.

Reason republished Paul's 1996 defense of the newsletters, and later reported evidence from "a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists" that Lew Rockwell had been the chief ghostwriter.

Paul had given his own account of the newsletters in March 2001, stating the documents were authored by ghostwriters, and that while he did not author the challenged passages, he bore "some moral responsibility" for their publication.

Support for third party candidates

On September 5, 2008, the Constitution Party of Montana removed Chuck Baldwin from their presidential ticket, replacing him with Ron Paul for president and Michael Peroutka for vice president. Paul made an announcement stating that he "was aware that the party planned to do this, and has said that as long as he can remain passive and silent about the development, and as long as he need not sign any declaration of candidacy, that he does not object." stating that that he did not "seek nor consent" to the Montana Constitution Party's nomination. stating that the request was sent to them too late. On September 4, 2008, a list of electors in Louisiana using the label "Louisiana Taxpayers Party" filed papers and paid $500 with the Secretary of State's Office. The congressman had reportedly invited presidential candidates Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader to the press conference, leading some to speculate that they would endorse Paul running for president on the ticket of either the Constitution, Libertarian or other third party.

On September 10, 2008, Paul confirmed his "open endorsement" (CNN) for the four candidates at a press conference in Washington D.C. He also revealed that he had rejected a request for an endorsement of John McCain. He later appeared on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer with Nader where they presented and briefly laid out the four principles that all the independent candidates had agreed on as the most important key issues of the presidential race. On September 22, 2008, in response to a written statement by Bob Barr, Paul abandoned his former neutral stance and announced his support of Chuck Baldwin in the 2008 presidential election.

In the 2008 general election, Paul still received 41,905 votes despite not actively running for the seat. He was listed on the ballot in Montana on the Constitution Party label, and in Louisiana on the "Louisiana Taxpayers Party" ticket, and received write-in votes in California (17,006), Pennsylvania (3,527), New Hampshire (1,092), and other states. (Not all U.S. jurisdictions require the counting or reporting of write-in votes.)

Post presidential campaign activities

On February 26, 2009, Ron Paul was a key speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., speaking for 20 minutes on topics including monetary theory and policy in the United States, in addition to the War in Iraq, and international foreign policy. Paul's Campaign for Liberty sent 140 volunteers to CPAC 2009 to distribute materials, and significantly increased that number the following year.

In the 2009 CPAC Presidential Preference straw poll for the 2012 election, Paul tied 2008 GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin for third place with 13% of the vote, behind fellow former candidate Mitt Romney and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. However, in the 2010 CPAC straw poll, he came out on top, decisively winning with 31%, followed distantly by Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, among others. In the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll, Paul finished second place with 24% of the vote (438 votes), behind only Mitt Romney (with 439 votes). An April 2010 Rasmussen poll found that Ron Paul and President Obama were nearly tied for the 2012 presidential election among likely voters, although later polls showed him trailing significantly. He also trails in polls for the Republican presidential nomination, typically behind Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich.

Speculated 2012 presidential run

There is speculation among pundits and journalists regarding the prospect of Paul running for president again in 2012. When Paul's wife, Carol, was asked if he would run in 2012 her response was "If you would ask him now he would probably say 'no', but he did say...things are happening so quickly and fast in our country, if we're at a crisis period and they need someone...with the knowledge he has...then he would do it."

Jesse Benton, Senior VP of Campaign for Liberty, has said of the prospective run: "If the decision had to be made today, it would be 'no', but he is considering it very strongly and there is a decent likelihood that he will. A lot of it depends on things going on in his personal life and also what's going on in the country."

As part of an effort to encourage Ron Paul to run for president in 2012, a Tea Party moneybomb has been set up with the aim of repeating the 2007 Ron Paul Tea Party moneybomb, which gave Paul's 2008 presidential campaign over $6 million in one day. The goal of The Ron Paul Tea Party is to have 100,000 people donate $100 each on December 16, 2010 to kick off Paul's 2012 presidential run, should he decide to run.

Political positions

Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, June 15, 2007.]]

Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian. reflects both his medical degree and his insistence that he will "never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution." One scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science found Paul the most conservative of all 3,320 members of Congress from 1937 to 2002. Paul's foreign policy of nonintervention made him the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. He advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty. He supports free trade, rejecting membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization as "managed trade". He supports tighter border security and opposes welfare for illegal aliens, birthright citizenship and amnesty; he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. He voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, but suggested war alternatives such as authorizing the president to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal targeting specific terrorists.

Paul adheres deeply to Austrian school economics; he has authored six books on the subject, and displays pictures of Austrian school economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises (as well as of Grover Cleveland) he cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period. and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit. Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels; financing government operations would primarily come through the corporate income tax, excise taxes and tariffs. He supports eliminating most federal government agencies, calling them unnecessary bureaucracies. Paul also believes the longterm erosion of the U.S. dollar's purchasing power through inflation is attributable to its lack of any commodity backing. However, Paul does not support a complete return to a gold standard, instead preferring to legitimize gold and silver as legal tender and to remove the sales tax on them. He also advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System.

Paul supports constitutional rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms, and habeas corpus for political detainees. He opposes the Patriot Act, federal use of torture, presidential autonomy, a national ID card, domestic surveillance, and the draft. Citing the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, Paul advocates states' rights to decide how to regulate social matters not directly found in the Constitution. Paul calls himself "strongly pro-life", "an unshakable foe of abortion", and believes regulation or ban on medical decisions about maternal or fetal health is "best handled at the state level". He says his years as an obstetrician led him to believe life begins at conception; his abortion-related legislation, like the Sanctity of Life Act, is intended to negate Roe v. Wade and to get "the federal government completely out of the business of regulating state matters." Paul also believes that the notion of the separation of church and state is currently misused by the court system: "In case after case, the Supreme Court has used the infamous 'separation of church and state' metaphor to uphold court decisions that allow the federal government to intrude upon and deprive citizens of their religious liberty."

He opposes federal regulation of the death penalty, of education, and of marriage, and supports revising the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy to focus on disruptive sexual behavior (whether heterosexual or homosexual). As a free-market environmentalist, he asserts private property rights in relation to environmental protection and pollution prevention. He also opposes the federal War on Drugs, and thinks the states should decide whether to regulate or deregulate drugs such as medical marijuana. Paul pushes to eliminate federal involvement in and management of health care, which he argues would allow prices to drop due to the fundamental dynamics of a free market. He is an outspoken proponent for increased ballot access for 3rd party candidates and numerous election law reforms which he believes would allow more voter control. Ron Paul has also stated that “The government shouldn't be in the medical business." He is also opposed to government flu inoculation programs.

Paul takes a critical view of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguing that it was unconstitutional and did not improve race relations.

Books authored

Other contributions

References

External links

Ron Paul's Personal Website, books, articles, links to political sites connected with Ron Paul

RonPaul.com speeches, essays, interviews, photos and videos

Ron Paul Library articles and speeches by Ron Paul

Ron Paul Forums

;Congress

U.S. House of Representatives Office of Ron Paul

Congressional campaign website

;Organizations Founded

Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty

Ron Paul's Liberty PAC

Ron Paul's F.R.E.E. Foundation – The Foundation for Rational Economics and Education

;Presidential campaign

NOW on PBS "Ron Paul and Internet Politics". Also, a September 2008 NOW on PBS interview with Ron Paul

PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer — Vote 2008: Ron Paul

Category:1935 births Category:Living people Category:American anti-Iraq War activists Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American libertarians Category:American physicians Category:American political writers Category:American writers of German descent Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Classical liberals Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Drug policy reform activists Category:Duke University alumni Category:Gettysburg College alumni Category:Internet memes Category:Libertarian Party (United States) presidential nominees Category:Libertarian theorists Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Texas Category:Military physicians Category:People from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Category:People from Brazoria County, Texas Category:Physicians from Texas Category:Politicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Texas Republicans Category:Texas Libertarians Category:United States Air Force officers Category:United States presidential candidates, 1988 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:University of Pittsburgh people

Name	Howie Carr
Imagesize	200px
Birthname	Howard Louis Carr, Jr.
Birth date	January 17, 1952
Birth place	Portland, Maine
Style
Country	United States
Web	HowieCarr.com

Howard Louis "Howie" Carr, Jr. (born January 17, 1952) is an American journalist, author, and conservative radio talk-show host based in Boston with a listening audience rooted in New England.

Career

Radio

Howie Carr has presented a weekday radio talk-show on Boston's WRKO since 1994. The show, titled The Howie Carr Show, can be heard throughout northern and central New England but is available to a worldwide audience via live streaming on Carr's official website.

The day after President Clinton's testimony in the Supreme Court Case Clinton v. Jones, C-SPAN broadcast Carr's radio program in its entirety without commercial interruption.

On July 8, 2007, it was reported that Carr had reached an agreement to move his show to Boston's WTKK, starting on October 1, 2007. Greater Media, owner of WTKK, was said to have signed him for a five-year deal, though Entercom denies this had happened. Carr would move to morning drive-time radio, airing from 5:30 to 9 a.m. But legal decisions prevented Carr from making the jump and on November 15, 2007, Entercom announced that Carr would return to their airwaves on Friday November 16, in his current 3 to 7 pm time slot. Carr's current contract expires in 2012.

WRKO suspended Carr for a week beginning April 16, 2010 for repeated on-air criticism of station management.

Journalism

Carr is a columnist for the Boston Herald, but in early 2006, Carr also became a book author with the publication of his New York Times-rated best-selling book, The Brothers Bulger, about Billy Bulger and James "Whitey" Bulger. Carr's second book, also involving the Bulgers, titled Hitman, will be released in April 2011. A third book, a novel, is expected to be released thereafter.

As well as being heard on WRKO (AM 680), he is syndicated throughout New England and streamed on-line through his Web site. He has interviewed numerous politicians, authors, and celebrities. He has also worked as a reporter and commentator for Boston television stations WGBH and WLVI.

From 1980 to 1981, Carr was the 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 (now WHDH) in 1982, his coverage of then-mayor Kevin White was so relentless that after the mayor announced he wasn't running again, he told the Boston Globe that one of the things he enjoyed most about his impending retirement was not having Carr chase him around the city.

In 1985, Carr 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. Carr played a radio show host in the 1998 John Travolta film, A Civil Action.

For years Carr has had a feud with former Boston Globe and Herald guest columnist Mike Barnicle, calling him a "hack" and saying he (Carr) wanted to be the Herald's "nonfiction columnist" (Barnicle resigned from the Boston Globe over allegations of plagiarism and fabrication of stories.)

A Boston Globe column by Steve Bailey stated that Carr gave out Barnicle's home phone number, an allegation Carr denies. Barnicle called Carr "a pathetic figure", and asked "Can you imagine being as consumed with envy and jealousy toward me for as long as it has consumed him?"

In 1998, Don Imus said that Mrs. Carr was having an affair with boxer Riddick Bowe. Mrs. Carr retained professor Alan Dershowitz as her lawyer. The parties reached an undisclosed settlement. In a 2007 column, Carr alleged that Imus' statements were incited by Barnicle. According to Carr, Barnicle told Imus that Carr had said Imus "would die before his kid got out of high school". Carr denies having said this.

In 2002, the Boston Herald and Carr were the subjects of a lawsuit by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy. The newspaper reported that Murphy had said of a fourteen-year-old rape victim: "She can't go through life as a victim. She's 14. She got raped. Tell her to get over it." He was also alleged to have said of a 79-year-old robbery victim: "I don't care if she's 109." Carr, in a front-page column on February 20, 2002, criticized Murphy as handing down lenient sentences in bail decisions in rape cases and included references to his daughters, wondering what Murphy would do if it was one of his offspring that had been the victim. Murphy denied all of the allegations and claimed the newspaper libeled him, ruining his physical and emotional health and damaging his career and reputation as a good man. Ultimately, Murphy won the suit, proving the libel, and was awarded a $2.09 million payment. During the trial, when asked what his reaction was to the Carr column, Murphy had said he "wanted to kill him".

Following the lawsuit, the Boston Herald reported Murphy's letter and a demand for $3.26 million (the court award, plus pre- and post-judgment interest) in its headlines because it was written on official court stationery. The libel case was based on his actions as a judge and therefore the Bar Association, when contacted by the media, stated that since it was his actions as a public official that were at the heart of the libel, it was appropriate for him to use the stationery.Judge Murphy's libel case

Personal life

Carr was born at the Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary (now Holt Hall) in Portland, Maine, to Frances Stokes Sutton and Howard Louis Carr, Sr. Carr was raised by an aunt in Portland. Howard Louis Carr, Sr. died on October 1, 2008 at the age of 103.

Howie Carr graduated from Deerfield Academy, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Carr has been married twice. His first marriage produced two daughters. After his divorce, he met and married his second wife, Kathy. He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and their three daughters.

In March 2007, Carr had a melanoma removed from his forehead.

In June 2009, Carr filled in for Dennis Miller on The Dennis Miller Show.

On July 10, 2009, Carr underwent hip replacement surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Although Carr was supposed to be off the air for several weeks, he was able to "call in" and begin the show as if he were in the studio, although he was actually still in bed at Mass General.

"License Plate lottery"

, on March 4, 2006.]] In Massachusetts, a low-digit license plate was often seen as a status symbol. Politicians and those connected to them were the only people, seemingly, able to obtain these plates with four, three or sometimes even only two digits. The plates are often handed down from generation to generation, making it nearly impossible for someone that has no connections to get one. Carr, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles attends drawings for Massachusetts residents to "win" the plates. Carr was the "winner" of the plate #9823 in 2004.

Awards and recognition

Placed 50th on trade journal Talkers Magazine's list of the 2007 "Heavy Hundred". The list ranks whom the magazine considers the most popular, influential, or entertaining talk-show hosts from around the country. Carr currently ranks 56th as of 2009. 2008 National Radio Hall of Fame inductee.

Received a Legislative Sentiment from the Maine Legislature in 2006, sponsored by State Representative Chris Greeley. This was presented to him during an appearance in Bangor, Maine.

Bibliography

Non-fiction

The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century, New York: Warner Books, 2006 (ISBN 0-446-57651-4).

Filmography

A Civil Action (1998): The film is based on the real-life case of Anderson v. Cryovac that took place in Woburn, Massachusetts in the 1980s. Howie played a radio talk show host.

References

External links

Howie Carr's official website

Boston Herald: Howie Carr Columns

The Brothers Bulger Official Site

Howie Carr's Ted Kennedy Website

Howie Carr's John Kerry Website

Howie Carr's Boston Mayor Website

Whitey World

Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:American essayists Category:American non-fiction crime writers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:People from Portland, Maine Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni Category:Deerfield Academy alumni Category:American journalists

Name	Richard S. Lindzen
Birth date	February 08, 1940
Birth place	Webster, Massachusetts
Fields	Atmospheric physics
Workplaces	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alma mater	Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Richard M. Goody
Notable students	Siu-shung Hong, John Boyd, Edwin K. Schneider, Jeffrey M. Forbes, Ka-Kit Tung, Daniel Kirk-Davidoff, Christopher Snyder, Gerard Roe
Known for	Dynamic Meteorology, Atmospheric tides, Ozone photochemistry, quasi-biennial oscillation, Iris hypothesis
Awards	NCAR Outstanding Publication Award, Member of the NAS, AMS Meisinger Award, AMS Charney Award, AGU Macelwane Award, Leo Prize of the Wallin Foundation

Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books. He was a lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,' of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He is a well known skeptic of global warming and critic of what he states are political pressures on climate scientists to conform to what he has called climate alarmism.

Education

Lindzen attended the Bronx High School of Science (winning Regents' and National Merit Scholarships,) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Harvard University. From Harvard, he received an A.B. in Physics in 1960, followed by an S.M. in Applied Mathematics in 1961 and then a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1964. His doctoral thesis, entitled Radiative and photochemical processes in strato- and mesospheric dynamics, concerned the interactions of ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer and dynamics in the middle atmosphere.

Career

Lindzen has published papers on Hadley circulation, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres, hydrodynamic instability, mid-latitude weather, global heat transport, the water cycle, ice ages, seasonal atmospheric effects. His main contribution to the academic literature on anthropogenic climate change is his proposal of the iris hypothesis in 2001, with co-authors Ming-Dah Chou and Arthur Y. Hou. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Science, Health, and Economic Advisory Council at the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy. Educated at Harvard University (Ph.D., '64, S.M., '61, A.B., '60), he moved to MIT in 1983, prior to which he held positions at the University of Washington (1964–1965), Institute for Theoretical Meteorology, University of Oslo (1965–1966), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) (1966–1967), University of Chicago (1968–1972) and Harvard University (1972–1983). He also briefly held a position of Visiting Lecturer at UCLA in 1967. As of January 2010, his publications list included 230 papers and articles published between 1965 and 2008, with five in process for 2009. He is the author of a standard textbook on atmospheric dynamics, and co-authored the monograph Atmospheric Tides with Sydney Chapman.

Early work (1964-1972)

Lindzen's early work was concerned with ozone photochemistry, the aerodynamics of the middle atmosphere, the theory of atmospheric tides, and planetary waves. His work in these areas led him to a number of fundamental mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the discovery of negative equivalent depths in classical tidal theory, explanations for both the quasi-biennial oscillation of the Earth's stratosphere and the four day period of the superrotation of the Venus atmosphere above the cloud top.

Ozone photochemistry

His Ph.D. thesis of 1964 concerned the interactions of ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer and the dynamics of the middle atmosphere. This formed the basis of his seminal Radiative and Photochemical Processes in Mesospheric Dynamics that was published in four parts in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences between 1965 and 1966. The first of these, Part I: Models for Radiative and Photochemical Processes, was co-authored with his Harvard colleague and former Ph.D. thesis advisor, Richard M. Goody, who is well-known for his 1964 textbook Atmospheric Radiation. The Lindzen and Goody (1965) study has been widely cited as foundational in the exact modeling of middle atmosphere ozone photochemistry. This work was extended in 1973 to include the effects of nitrogen and hydrogen reactions with his former Ph.D. student, Donna Blake, in Effect of photochemical models on calculated equilibria and cooling rates in the stratosphere.

Lindzen's work on ozone photochemistry has been important in studies that look at the effects that anthropogenic ozone depletion will have on climate.

Atmospheric tides

Since the time of Laplace (1799), scientists had been puzzled as to why pressure variations measured at the Earth's surface associated with the semi-diurnal solar tide dominate those of the diurnal tide in amplitude, when intuitively one would expect the diurnal (daily) passage of the sun to dominate. Lord Kelvin (1882) had proposed the so-called "resonance" theory, wherein the semi-diurnal tide would be "selected" over the diurnal oscillation if the atmosphere was somehow able to oscillate freely at a period of very close to 12 hours, in the same way that overtones are selected on a vibrating string. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, observations had failed to confirm this hypothesis, and an alternative hypothesis was proposed that something must instead suppress the diurnal tide. In 1961, Manfred Siebert suggested that absorption of solar insolation by tropospheric water vapour might account for the reduction of the diurnal tide. However, he failed to include a role for stratospheric ozone. This was rectified in 1963 by the Australian physicist Stuart Thomas Butler and his student K.A. Small who showed that stratospheric ozone absorbs an even greater part of the solar insolation.

Nevertheless, the predictions of classical tidal theory still did not agree with observations. It was Lindzen, in his 1966 paper, On the theory of the diurnal tide, who showed that the solution set of Hough functions given by Bernard Haurwitz to Laplace's tidal equation was incomplete: modes with negative equivalent depths had been omitted. Lindzen went on to calculate the thermal response of the diurnal tide to ozone and water vapor absorption in detail and showed that when his theoretical developments were included, the surface pressure oscillation was predicted with approximately the magnitude and phase observed, as were most of the features of the diurnal wind oscillations in the mesosphere. In 1967, along with his NCAR colleague, Douglas D. McKenzie, Lindzen extended the theory to include a term for Newtonian cooling due to emission of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide in the stratosphere along with ozone photochemical processes, and then in 1968 he showed that the theory also predicted that the semi-diurnal oscillation would be insensitive to variations in the temperature profile, which is why it is observed so much more strongly and regularly at the surface.

While holding the position of Research Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, Lindzen was noticed and befriended by Professor Sydney Chapman, who had contributed to the theory of atmospheric tides in a number of papers from the 1920s through to the 1940s. This led to their joint publication in 1969 of a 186 page monograph (republished in 1970 as a book) Atmospheric Tides.

Quasi-biennial oscillation

Although it wasn't realized at the time, the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) was observed during the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, when the ash from the volcano was transported around the globe from east to west by stratospheric winds in about two weeks. These winds became known as the "Krakatoa easterlies". It was observed again in 1908, by the German meteorologist Arthur Berson, who saw that winds blow from the west at altitude in tropical Africa from his balloon experiments. These became known as the "Berson westerlies." However, it was not until the early 1960s that the ~ 26 month cycle of the QBO was first described, independently by Richard J. Reed in 1960 and Veryhard and Ebdon in 1961.

Lindzen recalls his discovery of the mechanism underlying the QBO in the semi-autobiographical review article, On the development of the theory of the QBO. His interest in the phenomenon began in 1961 when his Ph.D. advisor, Richard M. Goody, speculated that the 26 month relaxation time for stratospheric ozone at in the tropics might somehow be related to the 26 month period of the QBO, and suggested investigation of this idea as a thesis topic. In fact, Lindzen's, Radiative and photochemical processes in mesospheric dynamics, Part II: Vertical propagation of long period disturbances at the equator, documented the failure of this attempt to explain the QBO.

Lindzen's work on atmospheric tides led him to the study of planetary waves and the general circulation of atmospheres. By 1967, he had contributed a number papers on the theory of waves in the middle atmosphere. In Planetary waves on beta planes, he developed a beta plane approximation for simplifying the equations of classical tidal theory, whilst at the same time developing planetary wave relations. He noticed from his equations that eastward-traveling waves (known as Rossby waves since their discovery in 1939 by Carl-Gustav Rossby) and westward-traveling waves (which Lindzen himself helped in establishing as "atmospheric Kelvin waves") with periods less than five days were "vertically trapped." At the same time, an important paper by Booker and Bretherton (1967) appeared, which Lindzen read with great interest. Booker and Bretherton showed that vertically propagating gravity waves were completely absorbed at a critical level.

In his 1968 paper with James R. Holton, A theory of the quasi-biennial oscillation, Lindzen presented his theory of the QBO after testing it in a two-dimensional (2-D) numerical model that had been developed by Holton and John M. Wallace. They showed that the QBO could be driven by vertically propagating gravity waves with phase speeds in both westward and eastward directions and that the oscillation arose through a mechanism involving a two-way feedback between the waves and the mean flow. It was a bold conjecture, given that there was very little observational evidence available to either confirm or confute the hypothesis. In particular, there was still no observational evidence of the westward-traveling "Kelvin" waves; Lindzen postulated their existence theoretically.

In the years following the publication of Lindzen and Holton (1968), more observational evidence became available, and Lindzen's fundamental insight into the mechanism driving the QBO was confirmed. However, the theory of interaction via critical level absorption was found to be incorrect and was replaced by attenuation due to radiative cooling. The revised theory was published in the Holton and Lindzen (1972) paper, An updated theory for the quasibiennial cycle of the tropical stratosphere.

Superrotation of Venus

Since the 1960s a puzzling phenomenon has been observed in the atmosphere of Venus whereat the atmosphere above the cloud base is seen to travel around the planet about 50 times faster than the rotation of the planet surface, or in only four to five Earth-days. In 1974 a theory was proposed by Stephen B. Fels and Lindzen to explain this so-called "superrotation" which held that the rotation is driven by the thermal atmospheric tide. An alternative theory was proposed by Peter J. Gierasch in the following year which held instead that the meridional (Hadley) circulation may transport the momentum by eddy-mixing. The actual cause of this phenomenon continues to be debated in the literature, with GCM experiments suggesting that both the Fels/Lindzen and Gierasch mechanisms are involved.

Middle period (1972-1990)

Recent work (1990-present)

Climate sensitivity

Lindzen hypothesized that the Earth may act like an infrared iris. A sea surface temperature increase in the tropics would result in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth's atmosphere. This hypothesis suggests a negative feedback which would counter the effects of warming by lowering the climate sensitivity. Satellite data from CERES has led researchers investigating Lindzen's theory to conclude that the Iris effect would instead warm the atmosphere. Lindzen has expressed his concern over the validity of computer models used to predict future climate change. Lindzen said that predicted warming may be overestimated because of inadequate handling of the climate system's water vapor feedback. The feedback due to water vapor is a major factor in determining how much warming would be expected to occur with increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Lindzen said that the water vapor feedback could act to nullify future warming. Contrary to the IPCC's assessment, Lindzen said that climate models are inadequate. Despite accepted errors in their models, e.g., treatment of clouds, modelers still thought their climate predictions were valid. Lindzen has stated that due to the non-linear effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, CO₂ levels are now around 30% higher than pre-industrial levels but temperatures have responded by about 75% of the expected value for a doubling of CO₂. The IPCC (2007) estimates that the expected rise in temperature due to a doubling of CO₂ to be about . Lindzen gave an estimate of the Earth's climate sensitivity of less than 1 degree Celsius. Lindzen based this estimate on how the climate had responded to volcanic eruptions. James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, estimated a climate sensitivity of 3–4 degrees Celsius based on evidence from ice cores. The panel's report, entitled Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, has been widely cited. Lindzen subsequently publicly criticized the report summary for leaving out doubts about the weight that could be placed on 20 years of temperature records.

IPCC activities

Lindzen worked on Chapter 7 of 2001 IPCC Working Group 1, which considers the physical processes that are active in real world climate. He had previously been a contributor to Chapter 4 of the 1995 "IPCC Second Assessment." He described the full 2001 IPCC report as "an admirable description of research activities in climate science" although he criticized the Summary for Policymakers. Lindzen stated in May 2001 that it did not truly summarize the IPCC report but had been amended to state more definite conclusions. He also emphasized the fact that the summary had not been written by scientists alone. The NAS panel on which Lindzen served says that the summary was the result of dialogue between scientists and policymakers.

Kyoto Accord

Of the Kyoto Accord, he has said that it is widely agreed that the Kyoto Protocol, by itself, will do "almost nothing" to stabilize atmospheric CO₂ levels. He was vocal in advocating to the Bush Administration not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol as he believed it would increase the cost of electricity for no gain and put signatory states at a competitive disadvantage.

Views on climate change

In a 2007 interview on the Larry King Show, Lindzen said:

In a 2009 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Lindzen points out that the earth was just emerging from the "Little Ice Age" in the 19th century and concludes that it is "not surprising" to see warming after that. He goes on to state that the IPCC claims were

Third-party characterizations of Lindzen

The New York Times article included the comments of several other experts. Jerry Mahlman, director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, did not accept Lindzen's assessment of the science, and said that Lindzen had "sacrificed his luminosity by taking a stand that most of us feel is scientifically unsound." Mahlman did, however, admit that Lindzen was a "formidable opponent." William Gray of Colorado State University basically agreed with Lindzen, describing him as "courageous." He said, "A lot of my older colleagues are very skeptical on the global warming thing." He added that whilst he regarded some of Lindzen's views as flawed, he said that, "across the board he's generally very good." John Wallace of the University of Washington agreed with Lindzen that progress in climate change science had been exaggerated, but said there are "relatively few scientists who are as skeptical of the whole thing as Dick [Lindzen] is." James Annan, a scientist involved in climate prediction, contacted Lindzen to arrange a bet. Annan and Lindzen exchanged proposals for bets, but were unable to agree. Lindzen's final proposal was a bet that if the temperature change were less than , he would win. If the temperature change were between and the bet would be off, and if the temperature change were or greater, Annan would win. He would take 2 to 1 odds.

Lindzen has been characterized as a contrarian, in relation to climate change and other issues. Lindzen's graduate students describe him as "fiercely intelligent, with a deep contrarian streak."

Awards and honors

Lindzen is a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Meisinger and Charney Awards, American Geophysical Union's Macelwane Medal, and the Leo Prize from the Wallin Foundation in Goteborg, Sweden. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and was named Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, and a member of the United States National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He was a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Lindzen is an ISI highly cited researcher, and his biography has been included in American Men and Women of Science.

See also

Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

References

External links

Richard Lindzen's Home page at MIT

A List of Publications

Profile at Physics World

Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen Before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works 2001

Profile on Source Watch

Category:American physicists Category:Environmental skepticism Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Category:American meteorologists Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Category:American climatologists Category:ISI highly cited researchers Category:Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters