Articles by David Keene
National Security Council Chairman John Bolton, according to his detractors, is squirreled away in his White House office salivating at the prospect of military action against Iran. They picture Mr. Bolton as a blood-thirsty warmonger who signed on last April as President Donald Trump's national security adviser to undermine the president's belief that sending in the Marines is not the only or even the best way to respond to the actions of nations that disagree with us.
Published
May 22, 2019
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Some years ago, one of our neighbors attended a Neighborhood Watch meeting with the Prince George's County police chief. He asked the chief whether he knew that the president of the National Rifle Association was a resident of the county. The chief didn't, but expressed concern about our safety.
Published
May 2, 2019
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Critics are obsessed by President Trump's rants as they desperately dig for evidence that he colluded or conspired with Vladimir Putin's Russia to "steal" the 2016 election. As one reads through the Mueller Report, it is clear that the president was upset and frustrated by investigation into activities he knew hadn't taken place — who can blame him?
Published
April 22, 2019
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When Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged last week that he believed "spying did occur" during the 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic outrage centered on his use of the word spying, something the FBI insists it never does.
Published
April 16, 2019
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When I ran into Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn at the state's NRA convention in mid-January, the temperature outside stood at 25 degrees below zero.
Published
April 9, 2019
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Washington-based pundits and reporters keep telling us that the Democrats are looking for a presidential nominee who can win next November. CBS, CNN, NPR and Democratic strategists repeat the mantra that next year's primary voters will have "electability" as their first concern.
Published
March 28, 2019
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The 'progressives' controlling today's Democratic Party have little knowledge of our respect for the Constitution, history or institutions. They want what they want and they want it now — even if it means ignoring or rewriting the rules under which the nation has operated so successfully since its founding.
Published
March 25, 2019
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The dinner I was enjoying with a senior Republican senator back in 2013 kept being interrupted as his cellphone chimed and he was forced to step away from the table to take the call from one or another of his colleagues.
Published
February 19, 2019
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As the Republicans of 1940 maneuvered for the chance to take on President Roosevelt, H.L. Mencken observed that the ultimate winner would no doubt be "whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything." Today's increasingly crowded field of Democratic presidential wannabes proves that little has changed in the decades since Mencken penned those words.
Published
February 12, 2019
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As every new Congress convenes, the majority party signals its priority with the introduction of House Resolution One. H.R. 1 is the bill the leadership intends to push hard and early to let the public know just what the new Congress wants and is all about.
Published
February 4, 2019
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A century ago, baseball faced its darkest hour when eight members of the 1919 American League champion Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to throw the World Series.
Published
January 2, 2019
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Say what one wants about President Donald J. Trump, but he is a man who makes every effort to keep his promises.
Published
December 26, 2018
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Once upon a time every American boy dreamed of becoming a major league baseball player. Harold Baines was one of those boys. Residents of St. Michaels, Maryland, where Mr. Baines grew up in the '60s, say he was rarely without his baseball glove. Before video games and before St. Michaels had become a tourist destination, the small Maryland Eastern Shore village was the sort of quintessential small town one associates with that era.
Published
December 18, 2018
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The fear of a nightmare future that inspired "Animal Farm," "Brave New World" and "1984" is rapidly becoming a reality in today's China, where that nation's Communist leaders have embraced the technology of the 21st century to craft a surveillance state few but these 20th century authors could even imagine.
Published
December 4, 2018
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Shortly after his confirmation in 1991, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas observed that "being black has far less to do with the color of one's skin than one's politics." This truth has become more obvious in the years since for women as well as African-Americans.
Published
November 27, 2018
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Last week, President Trump awarded Sen. Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Senate Republican ever, the Medal of Freedom. In doing so, Mr. Trump emphasized the high personal regard in which he holds Mr. Hatch, but the medal was deserved not just because the president likes the senator, but because Orrin Hatch deserves recognition as a Senate great at the end of a distinguished career.
Published
November 20, 2018
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Last April, Aurelia Skipwith, the new deputy assistant secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks arrived at a hotel for a speech. When she asked the desk clerk for directions to the ballroom, she got not only the directions she sought, but the observation that "you must be an Obama holdover."
Published
October 29, 2018
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When Philadelphia police obtained a search warrant and raided Dr. Kermit Gosnell's clinic eight years ago, they were seeking evidence of illegal prescriptions for opioids and other addictive drugs. Gosnell would later be sentenced to 30 years in prison for running an illegal prescription mill, but they found much more.
Published
October 22, 2018
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Spending a little time in a state like Montana is enough to convince anyone that Washington is not the center of the universe. President Trump carried the state in 2016 by some 20 points and has been back here twice in the last month in an effort to help Republican State Auditor Matt Rosendale beat back Democratic Sen. Jon Tester's bid for a third term.
Published
September 23, 2018
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The other day as my old friend Adam Walinsky and I were lamenting the craziness of the current political atmosphere, he asked me what earlier period I believe was as bad as the one we are living through today. Adam, a former speechwriter and aide to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, once ran as the Democratic candidate for attorney general in New York and is a close student of history. I asked in return if he was thinking of the McCarthy era,
Published
September 18, 2018
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