The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Murray Rothbard, Ed Crane and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the second largest privately held company by revenue in the United States. It changed its name to the Cato Institute in July 1976.

The Institute's stated mission is "to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. The Institute will use the most effective means to originate, advocate, promote, and disseminate applicable policy proposals that create free, open, and civil societies in the United States and throughout the world."

Cato scholars were critical of George W. Bush's Republican administration (2001–2009) on several issues, including the Iraq War, civil liberties, education, agriculture, energy policy, and excessive government spending. On other issues, most notably health care,Social Security,global warming, tax policy, and immigration, they supported Bush administration initiatives. During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Cato scholars criticized both major-party candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama.

Massad F. Ayoob (born 20 July 1948) is an internationally-known firearms and self-defense instructor. He has taught police techniques and civilian self-defense to both law enforcement officers and private citizens in numerous venues since 1974. He was the director of the Lethal Force Institute (LFI) in Concord, New Hampshire from 1981 to 2009. He now directs the Massad Ayoob Group (MAG). Ayoob has appeared as an expert witness in several trials. He has served as a part-time police officer in New Hampshire since 1972 and holds the rank of Captain in the Grantham, New Hampshire police department.

Ayoob has authored several books and more than 1,000 articles on firearms, combat techniques, self-defense, and legal issues, and has served in an editorial capacity for Guns Magazine, American Handgunner, Gun Week, Guns & Ammo and Combat Handguns. Since 1995, he has written self-defense and firearms related articles for Backwoods Home Magazine. He also has a featured segment on the television show Personal Defense TV, which airs on the Sportsman Channel in the US.

David Alan Stockman (born November 10, 1946) is a former U.S. politician and businessman, serving as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan (1977–1981) and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1981–1985).

Stockman was born in Fort Hood, Texas, the son Allen Stockman, a fruit farmer, and Carol (née Bartz). He is of German descent and his family's surname was originally "Stockmann". He was raised in a conservative family and his maternal grandfather, William Bartz, was a Republican county treasurer for 30 years. Stockman was educated at public schools in Stevensville, Michigan. He graduated from Lakeshore High School during 1964 and received a B.A. from Michigan State University, East Lansing, during 1968. He performed graduate studies at Harvard University, 1968–1970 and 1974–1975. He attended Harvard Divinity School.

He served as special assistant to United States Representative and 1980 Presidential candidate John Anderson of Illinois, 1970–1972, and was executive director, United States House of Representatives Republican Conference, 1972–1975.

Václav Klaus (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslaf ˈklaus]; born 19 June 1941 in Prague) is the second President of the Czech Republic (since 2003) and a former Prime Minister (1992–1997).

An economist, Klaus was the principal co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic's largest center-right political party. Klaus is a eurosceptic, but he reluctantly endorsed the Lisbon treaty as President of his country. He has been called the "Margaret Thatcher of Central Europe".

Klaus was born in Prague during the Nazi occupation, and grew up in the large (up to 1948 middle-class) Vinohrady neighborhood. He studied what was then called "economics of foreign trade" and graduated from the University of Economics, Prague in 1963. He also spent some time at universities in Italy (1966) and at Cornell University in the United States in 1969.

He then pursued a postgraduate academic career at the State Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which he was forced to leave in 1970. However, he soon obtained a position in the Czechoslovak State Bank, where he held various staff positions from 1971 to 1986. It was reported that he obtained a limited permission to travel mainly to so-called socialist foreign countries. This might have been a small privilege at that time. In 1987, Klaus joined the Institute for Prognostics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

David Boaz (b. August 29, 1953, Mayfield, Kentucky) is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank. He played a key role in the Institute's development and the American libertarian movement.

He is the author of Libertarianism: A Primer, published in 1997 by the Free Press and described by the Los Angeles Times as "a well-researched manifesto of libertarian ideas," the editor of The Libertarian Reader, and co-editor of the Cato Handbook for Congress (2003) and the Cato Handbook on Policy (2005). He frequently discusses such topics as education choice, the growth of government, the ownership society, his support of drug legalization, and the rise of libertarianism on national television and radio shows.

Boaz's March 1988 New York Times article on the futility of the drug war generated much debate over the decriminalization of drugs. His articles have also published in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Slate. He also has appeared on ABC's Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, CNN's Crossfire, NPR's Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered, Fox News Channel, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other media. Boaz, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, is the former editor of New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981.