Speakers

Mitt Romney - Former Governor of Massachusetts

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has been widely recognized for his leadership and accomplishments as a public servant and in private enterprise.

Elected in 2002, Governor Romney presided over a dramatic reversal of state fortunes and a period of sustained economic expansion. Without raising taxes or increasing debt, Governor Romney balanced the budget every year of his administration, closing a $3 billion budget gap inherited when he took office. By eliminating waste, streamlining the government, and enacting comprehensive economic reforms to stimulate growth in Massachusetts, Romney got the economy moving again and transformed deficits into surpluses.

Victor Davis Hanson - renowned historian

Victor Davis Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University. He farmed full-time for five years before returning to academia in 1984 to initiate a Classics program at California State University, Fresno. Currently, he is Professor of Classics there and Coordinator of the Classical Studies Program.

Hanson has written articles, editorials, and reviews for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, American Heritage, City Journal, American Spectator, National Review, Policy Review, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, and Washington Times, and has been interviewed on numerous occasions on National Public Radio and the BBC, and appeared with David Gergen on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He writes a biweekly column about contemporary culture and military history for National Review Online.

He is also the author of some eighty scholarly articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history, and contemporary culture. He has written or edited eleven books, including The Western Way of War, The Soul of Battle, and Carnage and Culture. He lives and works with his wife and three children on their forty-acre tree and vine farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.

Bernard Lewis - expert on Islam

Bernard Lewis (born in London, England) is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West and is especially famous for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis is a widely-read expert on the Middle East. His advice is frequently sought by Republican policymakers, including the current Bush administration concerning the war in Iraq, for instance. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that, over a 60-year career, he has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East."

Mark Steyn - columnist and best-selling author

Mark Steyn is the author of America Alone: The End of The World As We Know It. Now a New York Times bestseller, America Alone grew from Steyn’s January 2006 New Criterion article entitled “It’s the Demography, Stupid.” Steyn is a columnist for National Review and The Chicago Sun-Times; his writing on politics, war, arts, and culture is syndicated around the world and is available on his website, www.steynonline.com.

Christopher Buckley - best-selling author

Christopher Buckley was born in New York City in 1952 and graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1976. He shipped out in the Merchant Marine and at age 24 became managing editor of Esquire magazine. At age 29, he became chief speechwriter to then Vice President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. He is founder and editor-in-chief of Forbes Life magazine.

He is the author of twelve books, most of them national bestsellers. They have been translated into sixteen foreign languages, including Russian, Korean and Indonesian. They include: The White House Mess, Wet Work, Thank You For Smoking, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, No Way To Treat a First Lady and Florence of Arabia. Thank You For Smoking has been made into a major motion picture. His novel Little Green Men is being made into a move starring John Malkovich.

Mr. Buckley has contributed over 60 comic essays to The New Yorker magazine. His journalism, satire and criticism has been widely published-in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Washington Monthly, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Esquire, and other publications. He is the recipient of the 2002 Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. In 2004 he was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

Jonah Goldberg - Liberal Fascism author

Jonah Goldberg is a contributing editor to National Review and was the founding editor of National Review Online. He is a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times and his syndicated column appears regularly in the Chicago Tribune, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle Kansas City Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Examiner, Miami Herald, Manchester Union Leader and scores of other newspapers.

Goldberg is currently a member of the Board of Contributors to USA Today. In the past he's served as a media critic for both Brill's Content and The American Enterprise and a Washington Columnist for the Times of London. He has written about politics and culture for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Slate, TheStreet.com, New York Post, Women's Quarterly and Food and Wine and other publications.

Goldberg was a regular political commentator on CNN and has served as a guest host on "Crossfire" and as a regular panelist on Wolf Blitzer's "Late Edition." He was a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C.

A former senior producer of the award-winning series "Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg" on PBS, he has written and produced several PBS documentaries and specials. He is the 2001 winner of the prestigious Lowell Thomas Award and has a new book, entitled Liberal Fascism, published by Random House (Doubleday).

Darcy Olsen - President and CEO, Goldwater Institute

Darcy Olsen serves as president and CEO of the Goldwater Institute, a groundbreaking state think tank and litigation center for conservative policy in the United States. Under Olsen’s leadership, the Goldwater Institute has acted as a policy architect for successful state level reforms, including several school choice laws, initiatives to protect private property, and tax cuts. The Goldwater Institute has been named Arizona's Best Capitol Watchdog by the Arizona Capitol Times.

An authority on state policy trends in education reform, economic policy, and government reform, Olsen has been a guest on National Public Radio, the O’Reilly Factor, and the Dennis Miller Show, and appears regularly on Arizona’s Horizon and Sunday Square-Off public policy television shows. Olsen’s opinions have been widely published in such outlets as USA Today and the National Review, and she has provided testimony before Congress.

In 2006, Olsen received the national Roe Award for noteworthy achievement in state public policy. She has been named as one of Phoenix’s 50 “Power People” by the Phoenix Business Journal, and has been recognized as one of Arizona’s top women in public policy by the Arizona Capitol Times.

Olsen serves on the board of directors for the Arizona School Choice Trust, a scholarship organization helping children from Arizona’s lowest-income families. She was previously the director of education policy at the Washington D.C.-based Cato Institute, and has served as a transitional house manager for the D.C. Coalition for the Homeless.

Olsen earned a B.A. at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and an M.A. in International Education at New York University. She is a native of the southwest from St. George, Utah.

Rev. Robert A. Sirico - Acton Institute, President

Rev. Robert A. Siricois is co-founder and president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a non-profit, non-partisan, free-market educational organization. Since its inception in 1990, the Acton Institute has been on the forefront of educating future religious leaders about the principles of the market economy as encapsulated in Pope John Paul II's 1991 social encyclical Centesimus Annus.

Father Sirico is a member of both the American Academy of Religion and the Philadelphia Society, and is on the board of advisors of the Civic Institute in Prague. He is a regular lecturer at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein, the University of Lublin, Poland, and the summer program of the Universitie d'Aix-en-Provence in France. Father Sirico also served a four-year term on the Michigan Civil Rights Commission from 1994 to 1998. He has worked with, written on, and advised faith-based charities for most of his professional life as a priest. In 1990, Fr. Sirico's work in public policy was recognized by his induction into the Mont Pèlerin Society. This international organization, founded in 1947 by Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek, works to study market-oriented economic systems and to facilitate an exchange of ideas between like-minded scholars in the hope of strengthening the principles and practice of a free society.

Over the years, Fr. Sirico has worked closely with several dicastries of the Roman Curia. As co-editor of The Social Agenda: A Collection of Magisterial Texts, an authoritative compendium of Catholic social doctrine, Fr. Sirico collaborated with the book's publisher, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. In 1996, the Acton Institute assisted the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in staging a conference to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Centesimus Annus. More recently, the Acton Institute acted as joint convenor of a conference on the theme of "Globalization, the Economy, and the Family," with the Pontifical Council for the Family. In January 2001, he acted as primary facilitator for a retreat conference of a group of the Mexican episcopate, including Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez.

Brent Bozell - media bias expert

Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Mr. Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America. Established in 1987, the MRC has made "media bias" a household term, tracking it daily and printing the compiled evidence biweekly in its well-known Notable Quotables, as well as the daily CyberAlert intelligence report on the Internet. His most recent book, Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media, was released in July of 2004.

Mr. Bozell founded the Culture and Media Institute (CMI), whose mission is to thwart the efforts of the liberal media to subvert America's culture, character, traditional moral values, and religious liberty. CMI complements the MRC's Business and Media Institute (BMI), founded in 1992 to bring balance to economic reporting and to promote fair portrayal of the business community in the media.

Founder of the Parents Television Council, Mr. Bozell leads the largest Hollywood-based organization dedicated to restoring responsibility to the entertainment industry. The PTC features the "Family Guide to Prime Time Television," which aids parents in making informed viewing decisions for their children.

Mr. Bozell is a nationally syndicated columnist whose work appears in publications such as Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The New York Post, The L.A. Times, Investors Business Daily and National Review. He is frequently invited to appear on Hannity & Colmes, The O'Reilly Factor, the Michael Reagan Show and the Rush Limbaugh Show.

Pat Toomey - Club for Growth leader

Pat Toomey, age 45, is the President, CEO and a Director of the Club for Growth, America’s leading limited-government, free-enterprise political advocacy group.

Before joining the Club for Growth, Mr. Toomey served as a member of the United States House of Representatives, from Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district, for three terms, from January 1999 through January 2005. Mr. Toomey distinguished himself as one of Congress’s leading advocates for limited government and personal freedom. He served on the Budget Committee, the Financial Services Committee and the Small Business Committee.

In 2005, Mr. Toomey co-founded Team Capital Bank, now operating in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. He co-chairs the Board of Directors.

Andy McCarthy - NRO writer/terrorism expert

Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor and a Contributor at National Review Online. From 1993 through 1996, while an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he led the prosecution against the jihad organization of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, in which a dozen Islamic militants were convicted of conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Mr. McCarthy also made major contributions to the prosecutions of the bombers of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the Millennium plot to attack Los Angeles International Airport.

Following the September 11 attacks, Mr. McCarthy supervised the U.S. Attorney's Anti-Terrorism Command Post in New York City, coordinating investigative and preventive efforts with numerous federal and state law enforcement and intelligence agencies. From 1999 through 2003, he was the Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District's satellite office, responsible for federal law enforcement in six counties north of New York City.

Mr. McCarthy is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Justice Department's highest honors: the Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award (1996) and Distinguished Service Award (1988). He has served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and as an Associate Independent Counsel in the investigation of a former cabinet official. He has also been an Adjunct Professor of Law both at the Fordham University School of Law and at New York Law School.

Deroy Murdock - syndicated columnist

Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service. His column, "This Opinion Just InŠ," frequently appears in the New York Post, Washington Times, and Orange County Register, among some 400 U.S. newspapers he reaches weekly.

He was a regular panelist on PBS's "Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered," a founding staff commentator on MSNBC, and an On-Air Investigator and substitute host with "Damn Right," a nightly public affairs TV program produced by Tele-Communications, Inc. Murdock has appeared on ABC's Nightline and Politically Incorrect, CNBC, CNN, C-Span, Fox News Channel, and NBC Nightly News, among other TV and radio programs.

In conjunction with the Manhattan Institute, Murdock collaborated with former New York congressman Herman Badillo on One Nation: One Standard (Sentinel, 2006). He has contributed to Economic Strategy and National Security (Westview Press/Council on Foreign Relations, 2000), The Race Card: White Guilt, Black Resentment and the Assault on Truth and Justice (Forum, 1997), Black and Right: The Bold New Voice of Black Conservatives in America (Praeger, 1997) and The Third Generation: Young Conservatives Look to the Future (Regnery-Gateway, 1987).

Byron York - NR White House Correspondent

Byron York is the White House correspondent for National Review magazine and National Review Online. Now covering the 2008 presidential campaign, he has written extensively about the Bush administration and its battles with Democrats in Congress over the war on terrorism, national security, and Supreme Court and appeals-court judicial nominations. He is also the author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, the first book to trace the new political movement created by activists like MoveOn.org, George Soros, and the liberal blogosphere.

A weekly columnist for The Hill newspaper, his work has been published in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, and Weekly Standard. A contributor to Fox News, he has appeared on Fox News Sunday, Special Report with Brit Hume, Meet the Press, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Daily Show, and other television programs, and has contributed occasional commentaries to National Public Radio. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama and the University of Chicago. He lives in Washington, DC.

Kathryn Lopez - NRO Editor

Kathryn Jean Lopez has been featured in Playboy* and praised for her "editorial daring."

An award-winning opinion journalist and editor, Lopez is the editor of National Review Online and an associate editor at National Review (a.k.a. National Review on Dead Tree).

She is a graduate of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she studied philosophy and politics. Before standing athwart history at National Review, she worked at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank on Capitol Hill. Besides National Review and NRO, her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, The Women's Quarterly, The National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, American Outlook, New York Press, and The Human Life Review, among other publications.

Lopez has appeared on CNN, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and Oxygen and is a frequent guest on radio and TV shows internationally. She speaks frequently, often to high-school and college groups.

Kate O'Beirne - NR Washington Editor

Kate O'Beirne is National Review's Washington Editor. She writes principally about Congress, politics, and domestic policy. She was a regular on CNN's Capital Gang for many years.

Before joining National Review in 1995, O'Beirne was vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, responsible for keeping Washington policymakers abreast of Heritage proposals and research findings in all areas of the Foundation's study, while serving as a contributing editor for National Review.

O'Beirne previously served as Heritage's deputy director of domestic-policy studies, where she supervised studies in the area of health care, welfare, education, and housing. From 1986 to 1988, she was deputy assistant secretary for legislation at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Ramesh Ponnuru - NR Senior Editor

Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor for National Review and a columnist for Time. Ponnuru grew up in Kansas City and graduated summa cum laude from Princeton's history department.

Ponnuru has published articles in numerous newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Newsday, and the New York Post. He has also written for First Things, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, Reason, and other publications. He has appeared on numerous television news programs. He is the author of The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life. He is also the author of the monograph The Mystery of Japanese Growth (American Enterprise Institute/Centre for Policy Studies). He has been a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London and a media fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Jay Nordlinger - NR Senior Editor

Jay Nordlinger is a Senior Editor of National Review. He is also a reporter, essayist, and critic. He is music critic for The New Criterion and the New York Sun, as well as for National Review. Before joining NR, he was an editor and writer at The Weekly Standard. In the last month and a half of the 2000 election, Nordlinger took a leave of absence from NR to work as a speechwriter for Candidate George W. Bush.

In 2001, Nordlinger received the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism. This is an annual award given by the News Corporation, in honor of its late editorial-page editor. Also in 2001, Nordlinger won the annual award of the Chan Foundation for Journalism and Culture. The award, and the foundation, were established in honor of Zhu Xi Chan, the Hong Kong newspaper owner whose pages exposed events in Mao’s China. The award is intended for a journalist “who uses his talents to work for freedom and democracy in China.”

John Miller - NR National Political Reporter

Author of three books: A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France (co-authored by Mark Molesky), and The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism Has Undermined the Assimilation Ethic.

In addition to writing for National Review, Miller contributes to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Criterion, and other publications. He is a contributing editor to Philanthropy and the author of a Philanthropy Roundtable monograph, Strategic Investment in Ideas: How Two Foundations Reshaped America.

The American Prospect has called Miller "one of the brightest young thinkers on the right" and the Washington Monthly has dubbed him a "rising star" among a "new generation of conservative thinkers and writers." But these are liberal magazines and not necessarily to be trusted.

Before joining National Review in 1998, Miller was vice president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which he helped found with Linda Chavez, and a Bradley Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to that, Miller was a reporter and researcher at The New Republic, where he worked with Fred Barnes.

...Additional Speakers To Be Announced...

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