Edwin "Ed" Meese, III (born December 2, 1931) is an attorney, law professor, and author who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Administration (1967–1974), the Reagan Presidential Transition Team (1980), and the Reagan White House (1981–1985), eventually rising to hold the position of the 75th Attorney General of the United States (1985–1988). He currently holds fellowships and chairmanships with several public policy councils and think tanks, including the Constitution Project and The Heritage Foundation. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

Meese was born in Oakland, California, and is the eldest of four sons born to Leone (née Feldman) and Edwin Meese, Jr. He was raised in a practicing Lutheran family of German descent. His father was an Oakland city government official, president of the Zion Lutheran Church, and served 24 years in the non-partisan office of Treasurer of Alameda County.

At age 10, Meese published along with his brothers a mimeographed neighborhood newspaper, the Weekly Herald, and used the proceeds to buy a War Bond. The young Meese also rode a bicycle on a paper route and worked in a drugstore. At Oakland High School, Meese was involved in the Junior State of America and led his high school debate team to statewide championships and was recognized as valedictorian, class of 1949. Two weeks prior to graduation, he was accepted to Yale University and granted a scholarship. Meese served as president of the Yale Political Union, chairman of the Conservative Party, and chairman of the Yale Debating Association. Meese made the dean's list, and graduated with a bachelor of arts of political science in 1953.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.

Peggy Noonan (born Margaret Ellen Noonan on September 7, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American author of seven books on politics, religion, and culture and a weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She was a primary speech writer and Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and in her political writings is considered a Republican.

She is a graduate of Rutherford High School in Rutherford, New Jersey, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Five of Noonan's books have been New York Times bestsellers. Noonan is a trustee of the Manhattan Institute. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from Miami University; St. John Fisher College; her alma mater, Fairleigh Dickinson University; Adelphi College; and Saint Francis College. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on America: A Tribute to Heroes. She has also been widely recognized for her regular appearances on ABC's This Week and NBC's Meet The Press.

In her political writings, Noonan frequently cites the political figures she admires, including Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, and Edmund Burke.