John Fund

John H. Fund (born April 8, 1957) is an American political journalist. He is currently the national-affairs columnist for National Review Online and a senior editor at The American Spectator.

Life and career

Fund was born in Tucson, Arizona. He attended California State University, Sacramento where he studied Journalism and Economics. He worked for The Wall Street Journal for more than two decades, starting in 1984, and was a member of the Journal's editorial board from 1995 to 2001. He wrote a column named "On the Trail" for the Journal's opinion page from 2000 to 2011, and also contributed to the Journal's newsletter, Political Diary.

Fund has also written for Esquire, Reader's Digest, Reason, The New Republic, and National Review.

Fund cowrote a 1992 book, Cleaning House: America's Campaign for Term Limits (ISBN 0-89526-516-8) with James Coyne. He also collaborated with Rush Limbaugh on another 1992 book, The Way Things Ought to Be (ISBN 067175145X), transcribing it from tape and editing it.

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, and journalist. Hitchens later spent much of his career in the United States and became a US citizen in 2007.

He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on a range of subjects, including politics, literature, and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. Known for his contrarian stance on a number of issues, Hitchens criticized such public and generally popular figures as Mother Teresa; Bill Clinton; Henry Kissinger; Princess Diana; and Pope Benedict XVI. He was the elder brother of the conservative journalist and author Peter Hitchens.

Bill Maher

William "Bill" Maher (/ˈmɑːr/; born January 20, 1956) is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, media critic, and television host. As a television host, he is well known for the HBO political talk show Real Time with Bill Maher (2003–present). Maher previously hosted a similar late-night show called Politically Incorrect, originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC.

Maher is known for his sarcastic attitude,political satire and sociopolitical commentary. He targets many topics including religion, politics, bureaucracies, political correctness, and the mass media.

Maher supports the legalization of cannabis and same-sex marriage. His critical views of religion were the basis for the 2008 documentary film Religulous. He is a supporter of animal rights, having served on the board of PETA since 1997, and is an advisory board member of Project Reason. In 2005, Maher ranked at number 38 on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. He received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star on September 14, 2010.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American television personality and radio host, conservative political commentator, author, television network producer, filmmaker, and entrepreneur. He hosts the Glenn Beck Radio Program, a popular nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks and the Glenn Beck television program, which ran from January 2006 to October 2008 on HLN, from January 2009 to June 2011 on the Fox News Channel and currently airs on TheBlaze. 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.

Sarah Palin

Sarah Louise Palin (ⁱ/ˈpeɪlᵻn/; née Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, and author who served as the ninth Governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 Presidential election running with Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major political party and the first Republican woman nominated for the vice presidency. Her book Going Rogue has sold more than two million copies.

She was elected to the Wasilla City Council in 1992 and became Mayor of Wasilla in 1996. In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for Lieutenant Governor, she was appointed Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, responsible for overseeing the state's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency. The youngest person and first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska, Palin held the office from December 2006 until her resignation in July 2009.