John Cornyn III (born February 2, 1952) is the junior United States Senator for Texas, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. He was elected Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 111th U.S. Congress.

John Cornyn was voted one of the "most conservative congressman" by the National Journal in 2010.

Cornyn was born in Houston, the son of Atholene Gale Cornyn (née Danley) and John Cornyn II, a colonel in the U.S.A.F. He graduated from Trinity University in 1973, where he majored in journalism and was a member of Chi Delta Tau. He earned a J.D. from St. Mary's University School of Law in 1977 and an LL.M. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1995.

He served in San Antonio for six years as a district judge before being elected as a Republican in 1990 to the Texas Supreme Court, on which he served for seven years.

In 1998, Cornyn decided to run to become Texas Attorney General. In the March primary, Barry Williamson, Railroad Commissioner, placed first with 38% of the vote but failed to get the 50% threshold necessary to win the Republican nomination. Cornyn, then-State Supreme Court Justice, got second place with 32% and Tom Pauken, former Chairman of the Texas Republican party, got third place with 30%. In the April run-off election, Cornyn defeated Williamson 58% to 42%. In the general election, Cornyn defeated Jim Mattox, former U.S. Congressman and Attorney General (1983–1991), with 54% of the vote. Cornyn became only the second Republican to have held the position.

Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. (born January 21, 1951) is the 82nd and current Attorney General of the United States and the first black American to hold the position, serving under President Barack Obama.

Holder previously served as a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and a United States Attorney. In that office he prosecuted Congressman Dan Rostenkowski (Democrat, Illinois) for corruption charges related to his role in the Congressional Post Office scandal. Later, he was Deputy Attorney General of the United States and worked at the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. He was senior legal advisor to then-Senator Barack Obama during Obama's presidential campaign and one of three members of Obama's vice-presidential selection committee.

Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. was born in the Bronx, New York, to parents with roots in Barbados.^{[dead link]} Holder's father, Eric Himpton Holder, Sr. (1905–1970) was born in Saint Joseph, Barbados and arrived in the United States at the age of 11. He later became a real estate broker. His mother, Miriam, was born in New Jersey, while his maternal grandparents were immigrants from Saint Philip, Barbados. Holder grew up in East Elmhurst, Queens, and attended public school until the age of 10. When entering the 4th grade he was selected to participate in a program for intellectually gifted students. In 1969, he graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and attended Columbia University, where he played freshman basketball and was co-captain of his team. He earned a A.B. degree in American history in 1973. Holder received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating in 1976. He worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund during his first summer and the United States Attorney during his second summer.

Glenn Edward Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. He formerly hosted the Glenn Beck television program, which ran from January 2006 to October 2008 on HLN and from January 2009 to June 2011 on the Fox News Channel. Beck has authored six New York Times–bestselling books. Beck is the founder and CEO of Mercury Radio Arts, a multimedia production company through which he produces content for radio, television, publishing, the stage, and the Internet. It was announced on April 6, 2011, that Beck would "transition off of his daily program" on Fox News later in the year but would team with Fox to "produce a slate of projects for FOX News Channel and FOX News' digital properties". Beck's last daily show on the network was June 30, 2011. In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter named Beck on its Digital Power Fifty list.

Steve Stockman (born November 14, 1956) is a Republican politician who represented Texas's 9th Congressional District between 1995 and 1997.

Stockman was born in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, near Detroit. He graduated from Dondero High School.

In 1992, Stockman ran as a Republican for the House of Representatives against Jack Brooks. He was unsuccessful in this attempt, though he unseated the 42-year incumbent and then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in 1994.

During Stockman's time in Congress, the district represented Chambers, Galveston, Jefferson, and part of Harris counties, including part of metropolitan Houston.

A conservative, he was a faculty member who conducted training for the non-partisan Leadership Institute based in Arlington, Virginia. He worked for the Leadership Institute as the Campus Leadership Program Director. He has also been involved with the Young Conservatives of Texas, and has represented Republicans at International Democrat Union meetings.

Stockman, as a one term incumbent, was defeated by Democrat Nick Lampson, in 1996.

Aaron Swartz (born November 8, 1986) is an American programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. He is best known in programming circles for co-authoring the RSS 1.0 specification. He received mainstream media attention after his federal indictment and arrest on 19 July 2011, for allegedly harvesting academic journal articles from JSTOR.

Swartz is the co-founder of Demand Progress and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Swartz was active in discussions of Internet standards from an early age, and co-authored the specification for RSS by the time he was 14.^{[citation needed]} Since then he has been a member of the W3C's RDF Core Working Group, co-designed the formatting language Markdown with John Gruber, and worked on many other projects.

Swartz attended Stanford University for a year, leaving to start the software company Infogami, a startup that was funded by Y Combinator's first Summer Founders Program. Infogami was built around a wiki backend, a subject of interest for Swartz since his early effort to develop theinfo, a wiki-based encyclopedia, in 2000.