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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

Nelson Mandela

KEENE: Nelson Mandela’s legacy

I never met Nelson Mandela and like most conservatives and anti-Communists I was more than a little skeptical at South Africa's prospects as his ANC came closer and closer to bringing that country's white rulers down in the late 1980s.

December 8, 2013
A woman takes a picture on her smartphone of a statue of Nelson Mandela, near the Royal Festival Hall in London, Friday, Dec. 6, 2013. Mandela passed away Thursday night after a long illness. He was 95. As word of Mandela's death spread, current and former presidents, athletes and entertainers, and people around the world spoke about the life and legacy of the former South African leader. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

KEENE: Nelson Mandela’s legacy

I never met Nelson Mandela and like most conservatives and anti-Communists I was more than a little skeptical at South Africa's prospects as his ANC came closer and closer to bringing that country's white rulers down in the late 1980s.

December 6, 2013
Illustration by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times

KEENE: Something rotten at the IRS

In early November, Bill Elliot appeared on Megyn Kelly's Fox News Channel show to complain about the rock and a hard place he found himself in owing to President Obama's health care scheme.

December 3, 2013

KEENE: An Obama renaissance of crony capitalism

During his initial 2008 run for the presidency, Barack Obama attacked no-bid and sole-source federal contracting as wasteful and at least marginally corrupt. He promised that when elected, he would end "the abuse of no-bid contracting once and for all." His administration, he said, would be the most transparent in history and would do away with the cronyism that plagued his predecessors.

December 1, 2013
Illustration by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

KEENE: Kennedy, the man and the myth

Most Americans of my generation can remember where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been fatally shot 50 years ago because it was traumatic and it all but took place on television.

November 21, 2013
Illustration by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

KEENE: An unpredictable political forecast

All one has to do is think back over the developments of the past few months to begin to grasp the futility of making comfortable political predictions. Those in the business of doing so might as well take jobs predicting the course of the next hurricane or next month's weather.

November 19, 2013

KEENE: Learning the difference between a wary friend and determined foe

Now that the shutdown has been shut down, the media are busy telling us that Republicans may be eligible for endangered-species status for daring to stand up to President Obama's desire to begin implementation of a health care scheme that is not even close to being ready for prime time.

October 22, 2013
Sadio Balde (left), vice president of the Moroccan Council for Sub-Saharan migrants, joins dozens of Moroccan and foreign activists in a protest Nov. 9, 2012, outside a court in Rabat, Morocco, where Council president Laye Camara is being tried for illegally selling alcohol and cigarettes. Colleagues of Camara say the charges are trumped-up and are part of a widespread crackdown on legal and illegal black African migrants to this North African kingdom that lies just across the narrow Straits of Gibraltar from Europe. (Associated Press)

KEENE: A homeland for deserving Western Saharans

Last month, a Spanish forensics team called in to examine the remains of six adults and two children found in a mass grave in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara raised anew charges that in seizing the area in the 1970s, the Moroccans had captured or arrested and killed hundreds of Western Saharan civilians.

October 20, 2013

KEENE: Bringing to life the Navy novel

If Tom Clancy didn't create the genre of action-infused military novels that readers couldn't put down, he certainly perfected it. By the time he passed away on Tuesday at age 66, he had written a shelf-full of some of the most widely read all-American, cloak-and-.45 tales ever. Tens of millions of fans worldwide are left wanting -- if not grieving.

October 2, 2013
Illustration by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times

KEENE: The Founders warned us

As Congress and the White House pasted together and passed the so-called Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on the New York World Trade Center, a few conservatives raised questions about the degree to which the nation seemed ready "to trade liberty for security."

June 13, 2013
Illustration by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

KEENE: U.S. agencies join war against gun owners

America's gun owners are under siege on virtually all fronts. Congress is after us, and so are governors such as New York's Andrew Cuomo and Maryland's Martin O'Malley. They must think that when they run for the Democratic presidential nomination, a strong anti-gun stance will help them with left-wing primary voters.

March 27, 2013
Illustration School Security by Linas Garsys for The Washington Times

KEENE: Armed security is common sense

Washington's ideological blinders too often prevent anything approaching a rational discussion of issues. The battle lines are drawn and most everybody assumes without thinking that any suggestion emanating from "enemy" lines must be dangerous, wrong or even crazy.

December 28, 2012
Illustration Obama's Peak by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

KEENE: Romney’s break from Obama’s negativity

The last time Republicans held a nominating convention in Florida, Richard Nixon and his buttoned-down crew descended on Miami and got a far different reception from that accorded George McGovern, the anti-war Democrat who had been nominated in the very same city just a month or so earlier.

August 29, 2012
Illustration by Nancy Ohanian

MOLLOHAN AND KEENE: Left and right agree on criminal justice reforms

While Americans seem to be sharply divided along partisan lines when it comes to important domestic policy issues -- take health care, immigration or the national debt, for example -- in at least one area of national importance, conservatives and liberals are increasingly united: criminal justice reform.

August 15, 2012
Chris Christie

KEENE: Chris Christie wrong fit for veep

In late 1975, Los Angeles Times political reporter Bob Shogan found himself sitting next to then-Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee. He was on a flight to Florida to cover the primary pitting President Ford against former California Gov. Ronald Reagan.

August 9, 2012
Illustration Guns by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times

KEENE: Fast and furious cover-up at Holder’s Justice

Obama administration officials must remind each other daily that they will never have to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong on their watch as long as they can find some way to blame their troubles on George W. Bush.

July 6, 2012