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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

Illustration of David and Charles Koch The Washington Times **FILE**

KEENE: Villainizing the Koch brothers

Back in the late '70s, Alan Baron, a liberal, labor union-loving McGovernite; Ken Bode, then of the New Republic; and I hosted a biweekly poker game that regularly included three Republicans, three Democrats and one journalist.

April 7, 2014
Illustration by LInas Garsys/The Washington Times

KEENE: Schumer media shield law is license to censor

When President Obama and New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer join forces to ostensibly protect freedom of speech and the press, it's time for believers in the First Amendment to take to the battlements.

March 31, 2014
Illustration by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

KEENE: Obama needs foreign policy from Jimmy Carter

Most Americans still believe the nation is in recession, massive numbers say the United States is on what pollsters call "the wrong track," and President Obama's signature health care program is in what in polite company might be referred to as "disarray," but compared to his foreign policy, he's doing a smashingly good job here at home.

March 24, 2014
Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

KEENE: How CPAC has grown over 4 decades

The first Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, convened in Washington 41 years ago drawing a little more than 100 conservative activists from around the country who found themselves enthralled by a keynote address delivered by California's Republican governor, Ronald Reagan.

March 3, 2014
Martin Plissner

KEENE: CBS News’ Marty Plissner was a pioneer in exit polls

Marty was the man who invented modern political coverage and developed a formula using sample precincts, and later, he created sophisticated exit polls to "call" elections even before the votes were counted and, more controversially, sometimes before the polls had even closed.

February 12, 2014
Illustration by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

KEENE: The deja vu of the lame duck

Presidential confidant David Axelrod last week suggested that many Democratic candidates running this year will want to distance themselves from President Obama.

February 10, 2014
French President Francois Hollande listens to the French National Anthem before reviewing an honour guard, after his arrival for a one-day summit with Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, not pictured, at the RAF Brize Norton airbase in Brize Norton, England, Friday, Jan. 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Andrew Winning, Pool)

KEENE: Driving jobs, investment to greener pastures

Last week, it was announced that the Argentine peso has collapsed, that Beretta is expanding (not in Maryland, but is moving much of its operation to Tennessee), and that foreign investment in France has fallen some 77 percent since that nation's socialist government declared war on the country's rich and successful.

February 4, 2014
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union speech on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 28, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)

KEENE: Obama turns authoritarian, rather than working with Congress

Not long ago, reporters asked White House spokesman Jay Carney to react to Iran's new "moderate" president Hassan Rouhani's tweet that as a result of his negotiations with the United States, "world powers surrendered to Iran's national will." Mr. Carney, speaking for the Obama administration, had an answer, "It doesn't matter what they say. It matters what they do."

January 28, 2014
In this Dec. 17, 2013 file photo, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a longtime deficit hawk, outlines his annual "Wastebook" which points a critical finger at billions of dollars in questionable government spending during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. On March 28, 2020, Mr. Coburn's family released a statement noting the former senator has passed away. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

KEENE: Sen. Tom Coburn, a tireless foe of wasteful spending

As the bipartisan omnibus budget bill was being signed into law last week, Oklahoma's Sen. Tom Coburn announced that he will retire without finishing his term. Mr. Coburn's decision had nothing to do with the bill, but its authors — those who stuffed it with goodies, and senators and congressmen who will have to defend it to the press and their constituents — probably wish he was already winging his way back to Oklahoma.

January 20, 2014
President Barack Obama speaks about unemployment benefits, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014, during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington. The president applauded a Senate vote advancing legislation to renew jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed as an important step. The Senate voted 60-37 Tuesday to clear the bill's first hurdle. But Republicans who voted to move ahead still want concessions that will have to be worked out before final passage. The Republican-controlled House would also have to vote for it. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

KEENE: Obama’s drives to stoke class warfare to win midterm elections

The mantra from the administration, like the rantings of the "Occupy" crowd and the new finger-pointing quasi-Marxist mayor of New York City, is that in today's United States, it is impossible to get ahead unless one is born rich, works on Wall Street or finds some other way to profit from the misery of others.

January 13, 2014
Illustration by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

KEENE: When ideology replaces reporting, truth suffers

Conservatives spend a lot of time whining about what many see as the partisan bias of what we like to call the "mainstream media," but few grasp just how far ideologically committed journalists might be willing to go to help those they admire.

January 6, 2014
Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urging him to back off his attempt to restore the so-called "assault weapons" ban of 1994. (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

KEENE: Rejoining the fight for conservatism

Bob Barr is quite a character. In a career that has included a stint with the CIA, service as a United States attorney during the Reagan years, eight years as a member of Congress who was an early critic of President Clinton and one of the first to call on his colleagues to impeach the president, a columnist and commentator and tilter against both liberal shibboleths and windmills, Mr. Barr has made a mark wherever he's been.

January 5, 2014
Illustration by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

KEENE: A judicial difference of opinion

Basically, we Americans are a practical rather than an ideological people. We are interested in what's right, but almost obsessed with what works. The two district court decisions that greeted us this Christmas on the constitutionality and practical utility of the National Security Agency's continuing drive to collect all available information on each of us reflects this difference.

December 30, 2013
Illustration by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

KEENE: Filling out the budget agreement scorecard

Baseball fans were on the edge of their seats last week hoping for news that their favorite teams would come out of Major League Baseball's winter meetings in Orlando, Fla., as winners.

December 16, 2013
Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

KEENE: James Clapper should resign for lying to Congress

It was last March when the country's director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, appeared before a Senate committee, and with the cameras rolling, took an oath to tell the truth, then hunched over, scratched his brow and proceeded to lie.

December 12, 2013