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.

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.

Andrew Ferguson is an American journalist and author.

He is senior editor of The Weekly Standard and a columnist for Bloomberg News based in Washington, D.C..

Before joining the Standard at its founding in 1995, he was senior editor at the Washingtonian magazine. He has been a columnist for Fortune, TV Guide, and Forbes FYI, and a contributing editor to Time magazine. He has also written for The New Yorker, New York, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other publications.

In 1992, he was a White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush.

A collection of his essays, Fools Names, Fools Faces, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1996, and Land of Lincoln was published released by Grove/Atlantic in 2007. His work has appeared in several anthologies.

Shelby Steele (born January 1, 1946) is an American author, columnist, documentary film maker, and a Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specialising in the study of race relations, multiculturalism and affirmative action. In 1990, he received the National Book Critics Circle Award in the general nonfiction category for his book The Content of Our Character.

Steele was born in Chicago to a black father and a white mother. His father, Shelby Sr., a truck driver, met his mother, Ruth, a social worker, while working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). His twin brother is dean of the School of Education at Stanford University, Claude Steele.

Shelby Steele received a B.A. in political science from Coe College, an M.A. in sociology from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah. Steele met his wife, Rita, during his junior year at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he was one of 18 black students in his class. Steele was active in SCOPE, a group linked to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and he met Rita at an activist meeting. In 1968, Steele graduated from Coe and went on to earn his master's degree in sociology from Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville. Steele attended the University of Utah, where he taught black literature and studied for his Ph.D. After earning a Ph.D. in English in 1974, Steele was offered a tenured position at the university but turned it down owing to hostility encountered as part of an interracial couple in Utah. Steele accepted a position at San Jose State University as a professor of English literature, teaching there from 1974 to 1991.

Marjorie Jones Dannenfelser is President and Chairman of the Board of the Susan B. Anthony List, an American political organization that seeks to advance pro-life women in politics. She was brought into the organization as its executive director in 1993, shortly after its founding.

Ardently pro-choice as a college student, she was the "pro-choice chair" of the Duke University College Republicans. While spending a summer interning with the Heritage Foundation, she roomed with several other interns. She became pro-life after a "bitter schism" in the house over an "inappropriate" video divided the libertarians and social conservatives in the house; Dannenfelser said "it made me choose sides", and she left the house with the social conservatives.

Prior to joining the Susan B. Anthony List, Dannenfelser was the staff director of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus and worked for U.S. House Representative Alan Mollohan (D-WV), whom the SBA List later worked to defeat in the 2010 Democratic primary. Mollohan was defeated in the primary by the pro-life Mike Oliverio.