Michelle D. Bernard (born July 30, 1963, Washington, D.C.) is an American journalist, political analyst, author, and President and CEO of the conservative Bernard Center. She was formerly President and CEO of Independent Women's Forum and Independent Women's Voice.

Bernard graduated from Howard University with a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy. She has a J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, and was a partner at the lobbyist and law firm Patton Boggs. In 2000, she was a member of the Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee. She was the chair for the District of Columbia's Redevelopment Land Agency.

Bernard is a political and legal analyst for MSNBC, and is frequently a panelist on the The McLaughlin Group. In 2007, Bernard authored Women’s Progress: How Women Are Wealthier, Healthier, and More Independent Than Ever Before. She is also a Sunday columnist for The Washington Examiner.

Her family heritage is Jamaican American, saying in an interview with Bill Steigerwald, "My parents are American citizens, but they come from Jamaica. I was raised with very American and Jamaican values. In our culture, we have a very strong sense of pride and of family honor and of self-reliance."

Cecile Richards (born 1958) is^[update] a Democratic Party activist and has been the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America since early 2006. In 2010, Richards was elected to the Ford Foundation board of trustees.

Richards previously founded and served as president of America Votes, a coalition of national Democratic Party-affiliated organizations. Before that, she was deputy chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. She has also worked at the Turner Foundation.

In 1996, she founded the Texas Freedom Network, a Texas organization formed to counter the Christian Right.

Richards is the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards. She graduated from Brown University in 1980, is married to Kirk Adams, a labor organizer with the Service Employees International Union, and has three children. She currently^[update] lives in New York City.

Lilly Ledbetter (born Lilly McDaniel April 1938) was the plaintiff in the American employment discrimination case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. She has since become a women's equality activist.

Goodyear paid her significantly less than her male counterparts. The lawsuit she filed against them eventually reached the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denied her claim because she waited six years before filing suit from the time of discovery, thereby greatly exceeding the statute of limitations of 180 days. Subsequently, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to loosen the timeliness requirements for the filing of a discrimination suit so long as any act of discrimination continues within the 180 day period of limitations.

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated:

Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of those years, she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Initially, Ledbetter’s salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236. This pay disparity led to further inequity in her "overtime pay, contributory retirement, 401(k), and social security."

Connie Schultz (born July 21, 1957), of Avon, Ohio, has been a nationally syndicated columnist based at The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and had been finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing.

Schultz was raised in Ashtabula, Ohio and received a journalism degree from Kent State University in 1979. For two years, she attended Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University where she met her first husband, law professor Stephen Gard.

Schultz is married to Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. Because of his U.S. Senate campaign, Schultz took a leave of absence from The Plain Dealer to campaign for his election. She returned to The Plain Dealer in January 2007.[1] On September 19, 2011, Schultz again resigned from The Plain Dealer, having written in a note to colleagues that "in recent weeks, it has become painfully clear that my independence, professionally and personally, is possible only if I’m no longer writing for the newspaper that covers my husband’s senate race on a daily basis".[2]

Matt Welch is an American blogger, journalist, and libertarian political pundit. Since 2008, he has been the editor-in-chief at the monthly libertarian journal, Reason. From 2006 to 2007, he was an editorial page editor for the Los Angeles Times. In the late 1990s, he wrote for Tabloid.Net, along with Tim Blair and Ken Layne, who now edits Wonkette.

He has written a portrayal of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, from a libertarian perspective. In McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, Welch argues that a McCain presidency would advance a statist agenda. Through a FOIA request, Welch obtained a copy of McCain's War College thesis which, based on his experience as a POW, argued for the teaching of US foreign policy to military recruits."

He has also researched the effects of UN sanctions against Iraq, often criticizing the reporting of others. Commentator Mike Rosen praised his research as "yeoman's work." Welch earned the award for "Best Entertainment Review/Criticism/Column" in the 53rd Annual Southern California Journalism Awards, hosted by the Los Angles Press Club, for his work, "Bailing Out Big Brother: Media criticism goes from rebelling against media oligarchs to handing them a lifeline."