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David Keene

David Keene

keene123@washingtontimes.com

Editor at Large — David Keene, a trusted adviser to presidents, a longtime champion of personal liberty and one of conservatism’s most respected voices, is the former opinion editor of The Washington Times. An author, columnist and fixture on national television, Mr. Keene has championed conservative causes for more than five decades while offering advice to Republican presidents and countless candidates. He additionally served as chairman of the American Conservative Union and president of the National Rifle Association.
To read his obituary, please CLICK HERE

Columns by David Keene

Maduro in Flames Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Venezuela demonstrates why socialism leads to totalitarianism, not relief

The tragedy that is Venezuela, a case study in the suffering and lack of freedom woven into the very fabric of Marxist socialism doesn't receive the attention it deserves at a time when last week's Gallup poll shows that Democrats view socialism more favorably than capitalism.

August 14, 2018
Prison Reform Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Reforming the criminal justice system

On May 22, the House of Representatives managed to pass the First Step Act prison reform by a vote of 360 to 59, an unheard of margin in today's deeply divided Congress. The bill is a long-overdue attempt to at least begin to reform the way those caught up in the criminal justice system are treated while in prison and how they are prepared to live once they have paid their debt to society.

August 8, 2018
Carrying China's Water Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

How China uses Western greed to get Western business to do its bidding

Western business has lusted after the Chinese consumer market for hundreds of years. The dream of a billion or two Chinese consumers buying one's products is as intoxicating today as when British textile makers yearned for the Chinese to keep their mills humming forever, but until recently the Chinese consumer market existed more in their dreams than in reality.

August 7, 2018
Supreme Court Struggle Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Supporting Judge Kavanaugh

Once one buys into a conspiracy theory everything makes sense because everything can be explained in terms of the conspiracy.

July 23, 2018

How Russia and China intrude on their neighbors

That, however, was then. In today's world others are not as willing as they once were to tolerate the sort of overt aggression that took place during the days when Nazis and Communists were running amok, forcing aggressor nations to find subtler ways of taking over their neighbors.

July 17, 2018
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and lawmakers show support of "dreamers" as they mark the 6th anniversary of the announcement of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, June 15, 2018. Pelosi says the GOP immigration bill fails to provide a permanent legislative fix to protect dreamers and would codify President Trump's anti-immigrant agenda. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

With midterms approaching Democrats might note that caution is better than giddiness

The giddy optimism of late last year that had Democratic leaders salivating at what many saw as a coming midterm "blue wave" that would decimate their opponents, give them control of both the House and Senate, and leave Donald Trump a toothless lame duck who would be lucky to escape impeachment even before voters would have a chance to boot him out in 2020, has vanished.

June 19, 2018
Rep. Donna Edwards, Maryland Democrat, said the bill passed by the House Wednesday would punish federal employees, and amounts to union-busing.

Donna Edwards puts ambition before principle

When Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland retired two years ago, Rep. Donna Edwards gave up her safe Prince George's County congressional seat to take on her House colleague, Montgomery County's Chris Van Hollen, in the Democratic primary. Ms. Edwards lost by nearly 13 points, in part because a supportive outside group ran a negative and wildly inaccurate ad in the final weeks of the campaign that backfired on her.

May 21, 2018

How Democrats created a Don Blankenship ‘surge’ that never was

Democrats continue to insist in spite of a complete lack of evidence that the Russian government, Russian corporations or at least individual Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin colluded with the Trump campaign to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign, thereby denying their candidate the White House.

May 13, 2018

Senate Democrats are waging all-out war against nominees, Ronny Jackson paid the price

Adm. Ronny Jackson, President Trump's choice to head the Veteran's Administration, learned last week that in today's Washington, character assassination is the name of the game. Republican senators looked the other way as Democrats, led by Montana Sen. Jon Tester, leaked unsubstantiated charges from unnamed accusers claiming the decorated veteran as an incompetent pill pusher, bully and uncontrollable drunk. By week's end the admiral, knowing that he was never going to be confirmed anyway, removed himself from consideration.

May 1, 2018
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Samantha Mayor lights a candle during the Yom HaShoah candle lighting ceremony, Sunday, April 15, 2018, at the Downtown Jewish Center Chabad Education Center, in Fort Lauderdale as her parents Ellyn and Jesse help. The ceremony remembers victims of the holocaust and she also lit 17 candles for the victims of the Parkland school shooting. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

What led to the Broward County rampage

As the orchestrated outrage over the February shootings at Florida's Parkland high school dies down, it's time to look at what really led to the rampage during which Nikolas Cruz gunned down and killed 17 Margery Stoneman Douglas students.

April 23, 2018
Illustration on Scott Walker in Wisconsin by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Scott Walker faces a tough re-election

As the temperature in Washington edged up toward 80 over the weekend, Madison and most of the rest of Wisconsin was fighting one of the worst snowstorms that had hit the state in years. Motorists were warned to stay off the roads. Snow, wind and temperatures in the teens or lower made one question whether spring is, in fact, just around the corner.

April 17, 2018

Remembering Pat Korten

Pat Korten, who died after a stroke last week, was one of the unsung heroes of the early conservative movement. We were students together at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which in the mid-Sixties was morphing into an ideological battleground much like Berkeley in the West and Columbia in New York. The campus left, often encouraged by the university's left-wing faculty, was on the march and growing increasingly intolerant.

April 12, 2018
Qatar and the World Cup Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

A hotbed of tranquility

Standing on the flight line in the hot sun at Al Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. airbase outside the United States, contemplating the truly awesome firepower of a line of B-52 bombers, it is hard to give much credence to charges that Qatar is anything but a valued ally in the war on Mideastern terrorism.

April 3, 2018
Illustration on the positives of armed personnel protecting schools by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

Guns, youth and misguided marches

On Tuesday as Maryland's governor, legislators and educational professionals were condemning the very idea that armed security should play a role in protecting the state's students, an armed School Resource Officer at Great Mills High School in St. Mary's County confronted and took down a student shooter when he opened fire on fellow students.

March 21, 2018
Illustration on the legal and commercial rights of generic drug manufacturers by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

The CREATES Act is not a simple matter of liberal vs. conservative

It may be hard to believe, but some conservatives are arguing that any conservative who supports a measure before Congress called the CREATES Act that would allow generic drug makers under certain circumstances to go to court to get their competitors to play by the rules are ideological sellouts too willing to jump into bed with liberals and greedy trial lawyers.

March 18, 2018
Illinois Money Bag Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Fleeing Illinois

Illinois is many things, but no one in their right mind would move there and those unlucky enough to have been born there are moving out as fast as they can find jobs or move their businesses somewhere else. Some move as far away as Florida or Texas, but many others are content to simply haul their assets a few miles to Iowa, Wisconsin or Indiana.

March 13, 2018
Eric the Joker Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Eric Holder, Obama’s ‘wing man’

President Barack Obama's attorney general who once described himself as his president's "wing man" showed up on television over the weekend to brag that unlike Attorney General Jeff Sessions he had the pleasure of serving a president "I did not have to protect." The man is either suffering from early onset dementia or lying to rewrite history.

March 5, 2018