Stephen F. Hayes (born 1974) is a columnist for The Weekly Standard, a prominent American conservative magazine. Hayes has been selected as the official biographer for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Before joining The Weekly Standard, Hayes was a senior writer for National Journal's Hotline. He also served for six years as Director of the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University. His work has appeared in the New York Post, Washington Times, Salon.com, National Review, and Reason. He has been a commentator on CNN, The McLaughlin Group, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, and C-SPAN.

A graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and DePauw University, Hayes was born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee County. He is a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He lives on the Chesapeake Bay with his wife and two children.

Hayes has "been a regular critic of the Bush administration" on issues such as overspending and North Korea. He is well known for his writings postulating an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. He wrote, for example, "there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans." Hayes authored a book on this subject entitled: The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America [ISBN 0-06-074673-4]. His major source was a leaked memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to the U.S. Congress on 27 October 2003.

The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neo-con bible". Since it was founded in 1995, the Weekly Standard has never been profitable, and has remained in business through subsidies from wealthy conservative benefactors such as former owner Rupert Murdoch. Many of the magazine's articles are written by members of conservative think tanks located in Washington, D.C.: the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Hudson Institute. Some individuals that have written for the magazine include Elliott Abrams, Peter Berkowitz, John R. Bolton, Ellen Bork, Ed Gillespie, Roger Kimball, Harvey Mansfield, Joe Queenan, Wesley J. Smith, David Brooks and John Yoo. The magazine's website blog, titled the "Daily Standard", is edited by John McCormack and Daniel Halper and produces daily articles and commentary.

Juan Williams (born April 10, 1954) is an American journalist and political analyst for Fox News Channel. He also writes for several newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and has been published in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Time. He was a senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR) from 1999 until October 2010. At The Washington Post for 23 years, Williams has worked as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist, White House correspondent and national correspondent.

Williams is the author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (1988), a companion to the documentary series of the same name about the African-American Civil Rights Movement;Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (2000), a biography of Thurgood Marshall, the first black American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States; and Enough (2006), which was inspired by Bill Cosby's speech at the NAACP gala, and deals with Williams' critique of black leaders in America, and as he puts it the "culture of failure." Williams has received an Emmy Award and critical praise for his television documentary work and he has won several awards for investigative journalism and his opinion columns.

Spencer Ackerman is an American national security reporter and blogger. He began his career at The New Republic and currently writes for Wired magazine's national security blog, Danger Room.

Ackerman graduated from Rutgers University where he was an editor for the Daily Targum student paper. In 2002, he moved to Washington D.C. to become an intern and later an associate editor at The New Republic magazine. He initially supported the Iraq War, but became disillusioned and in 2004 started a blog on The New Republic website called Iraq'd which chronicled the dilemma of pro-war liberals. He also wrote, with John B. Judis, an article that started the chain of events that led to the Plame affair.

In 2006 Ackerman was fired from TNR for "insubordination" (in TNR editor Franklin Foer's account) or "irreconciliable ideological differences" (in Ackerman's). He subsequently wrote for The American Prospect (which offered him a job within a day of his firing) and Talking Points Memo. Ackerman blogged and reported on national security issues at the Washington Independent from the paper's creation in 2008 until 2010, when he left for Wired.

Steve Hayes is an English businessman, and the current owner of both League One football club Wycombe Wanderers and Aviva Premiership rugby union side London Wasps.

Originally a double glazing salesman, Hayes also worked for his father-in-law selling secondary mortgages. In 1997 with David Cowham he founded loans.co.uk, a Watford headquartered finance broker. Hayes became Chief Executive, expanding the firm to become the UK's then leading finance broker, on an earnings package of £5.5million in 2004/2005. In June 2005, Cowham and Hayes sold loans.co.uk to MBNA for an undisclosed amount, reported to be worth £50million to each partner.

Hayes became a 25% shareholder through an initial £250,000 investment in Wycombe Wanderers in June 2004, when the football club became a plc, and later became managing director. Hayes bought an 11.6% stake in London Wasps Holdings Ltd in August 2007, and became chairman of Lawrence Dallaglio's benefit committee. In December 2008, Hayes bought Chrysalis Records founder Chris Wright's controlling interest and John O'Connell's shareholding in London Wasps to take complete control, and in July 2009, following a shareholders' meeting, he took full ownership of Wycombe Wanderers, in the process writing off £3m of the club's debt to him in exchange for shares.