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Decision Brief No. 05-D 44 2005-08-31 On eve of U.N. push for global government, advocates urge Senate to approve a building block: The Law of the Sea Treaty (Washington, D.C.): As concern grows that the United Nations is intent on replacing what the National Security Guidance calls "an orderly arrangement of sovereign states" with a proto-world government - complete with the ability to impose international taxes, a new push is being made for a treaty that would advance that purpose: the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). This sovereignty-sapping agenda is at the heart of a dispute now playing...

WASHINGTON, DC -- The American Conservative Union's political action committee, ACU PAC, today formally endorsed New York Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the upcoming Special Election in New York's 23rd Congressional District. ACU PAC Chairman David Keene said in announcing the endorsement that the New York State Conservative Party has given the people of the 23rd District the choice Republican leaders would deny them. "Doug Hoffman is an intelligent, sincere leader who can and will win this election and at the same time send a message to NY State GOP leaders that they won't be able to ignore," Keene...

Just got this e-mail from Ziegler: "You will want to read about my bizarre adventures on Saturday at Western CPAC in Newport Beach. You can view the complete story with video here. Please spread this link to those who you think might be interested as there are many who will be trying to spike this story. Also, please don't respond to this e-mail unless it is urgent as my e-mail box needs to be cleaned out and I am way behind in doing that. Thanks so much for your support." REMEMBER: JOHN ZIEGLER WILL BE SPEAKING AT UC MERCED THIS...

Washington conservatives who dissent from the party line are often accused of selling out our principles in hope of snagging an invitation to a Georgetown cocktail party. It costs much, much more than that to buy Washington's pillars of conservative orthodoxy. Thanks to the brave people at FedEx, the whole world now knows exactly how much more... When you hear a member of Congress described as more or less conservative than another, it's the ACU's voting index that is being cited. ACU sponsors the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, the biggest event on conservatism's annual calendar... The leaders of...

Dennis Whitfield of the American Conservative Union has sent out a press release on today’s embarrassing Mike Allen story that alleges a pay-for-play proposal between the conservative group and FedEx. "" “An article containing a false headline has been published by Capitol Hill newspaper Politico today regarding an issue with expansion of the National Labor Relations Board. This article concerns two letters; one issued by ACU and another issued by a separate organization. Mr. David Keene’s name was on a letter prepared by another organization. This was a personal decision on his part and he was not representing ACU at...

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a $2 million check in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay. In return for the $2 million, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and / or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)” The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” —...

David Keene, the Chairman of the American Conservative Union trashed Sarah Palin publicly today on NewsMax. However, a quick search of Mr. Keene's recent political contribution history reveals the following: David Keene, Managing Associate of the Carmen Group Lobbying Firm, and Head of ACU, Alexandria, VA. Political contributions in 2008 election cycle: KEENE, DAVID, ALEXANDRIA,VA 22314 THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC 5/1/07 $1,000 Specter, Arlen (R) KEENE, DAVID, ALEXANDRIA,VA 22314 THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC 12/19/07 $800 Specter, Arlen (R) KEENE, DAVID, ALEXANDRIA,VA 22314 THE CARMEN GROUP/EXEC 12/19/07 $200 Specter, Arlen (R) What I want to know is, how does a guy like this...

State of Conservatism by: Alanna Hultz, March 06, 2009 American Conservative Union (ACU) chairman David Keene addressed the National Press Club as part of the club’s Newsmaker series on the “State of Conservatism.” Keene said “in 2006-2008 the public was convinced it was time for a change and in 2008 the Republican brand was hurt because Republicans acted like moderates and liberals.” Keene said, “I don’t hope Obama will fail but I know his policies will fail because they are wrong.” He said Republicans need to get their policies together and not criticize a popular president. He argued that the...

Thursday, Nov 29, 2007 David Keene "The Laura Ingraham Show" 11/29/07 David Keene On His Endorsement Of Governor Mitt Romney: Laura Ingraham: "David, I know you made an announcement. I didn't reveal it to the listeners because I wanted you to tell us when you came on the show about who you were endorsing for the Republican nomination." David Keene: "Well, I decided earlier this week and announced this morning that I'm supporting Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. I came to that decision after a lot of thought. Early on in this process, I thought I'd stay neutral for...

Islamisation of David Keene, American Conservative Union June 27, 2007 David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), has been moving, along with several other paleo-conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza, towards a partnership with Saudi-funded, pro-Hamas institutions. A forewarning was the appointment of Grover Norquist to the ACU board. A second forewarning was the appointment of Suhail Khan to the ACU board. Then Tuesday, David Keene joined United for Peace and Justice, the ACLU, the Communist Party-USA, as a speaker in the “Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice” to “…call on Congress to restore habeas corpus, fix the...

Democrats who think they will ride to victory in November on a tide of outrage against an ill-conceived war foisted on the American public by a President who spun the intelligence available to justify action against a nation that was no threat to the U.S. may be about to get their comeuppance. President Bush's critics on the left vehemently reject the President's contention that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was actively collaborating with Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11 as either a fabrication designed to justify the use of military force to unseat the Iraqi dictator or proof that Bush just doesn't...

Leading Conservatives Call for Extensive Hearings on NSA Surveillance; Checks on Invasive Federal Powers Essential 1/17/2006 6:36:00 PM To: National Desk Contact: Laura Brinker, 202-715-1540, for Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, laura.brinker@dittus.com WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform...

Human Events is expected to name their 2005 Man of the Year some time next week and I thought we would take a look at some of the possible contenders who helped shape the past year.2005 was very much a nascent turning point for the conservative movement and with 2008 seemingly getting closer everyday we must finsih what was started in 2005.Almost all of the candidates for Man Of the Year were part of the beginning stages of a revitalized conservative movement that was begun in 05 but will have to be finished in later years. Henry Hyde After thirty...

Harriet Miers’s confirmation hearings are about to begin, so we may be on the verge of learning something meaningful about the president’s choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. Or maybe we won’t. We haven’t learned much since she was named, and one suspects there might not be all that much more out there. I don’t know enough about Ms. Miers even to guess at her qualifications for the job to which she has been appointed. I’ve heard good and bad things about her from those who’ve dealt with her, and I’ve read reams of opinion...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Conservatives, liberals align against Patriot ActBy James G. LakelyTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished June 14, 2005 Conservative groups have found common ground with the liberal American Civil Liberties Union in their opposition to the USA Patriot Act and pledge to wage a high-profile fight against it, claiming even its renewal is shrouded in secrecy.     Former Rep. Bob Barr, who led conservative efforts to impeach President Clinton, is leading a group called "Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances" that is focused exclusively on opposing the renewal of the Patriot Act.     The effort also has the enthusiastic support of three...

The constant attacks on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's character and ethics are an organized liberal campaign to demonize the Texas Republican: The goal is to cripple him as a leader or to force him out of his post as second in command among House Republicans. The campaign is being orchestrated outside Congress by a coalition of liberal interest groups financed by the usual suspects. They have taken to calling themselves the "Congressional Ethics Coalition" and claim they are non-partisan citizens' groups enraged by the "corruption" of the Republican Congress. The members of this coalition, however, are anything but non-partisan....

The left has come up with a target, and his name is Tom DeLay. He isn’t their first and won’t be their last, but for now he’s the Republican they hope to take down. They’ve tried in the past to do the same thing to others. Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and White House adviser Karl Rove have all been portrayed as ethically challenged and sleazy by the same folks who are now going after the House Republican leader from Texas. Trumped-up charges of illegality, paid ads and reports from ethics groups that are little more than fronts...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Not all conservatives are happy with the decision by Congress and President Bush to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. Some leaders said Tuesday the new law allowing a federal court review of the case is an example of the big government they have always opposed. "To simply say that the 'culture of life,' or whatever you call it means that we don't have to pay attention to the principles of federalism or separation of powers is certainly not a conservative viewpoint," said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. Allan Lichtman, who chairs the history department at American...

We are told that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan gasped when informed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that President Bush intends to send John Bolton to New York to represent this nation's interests before the world body. Annan had been hoping, no doubt, for someone more malleable who would politely look the other way or at least keep his mouth shut as the various scandals rocking the United Nations play out, someone more like departing Ambassador John Danforth. Danforth may have represented the Bush administration, but he was a team player who did little to upset things and he...

Most conservatives find my old friend, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), infuriating. They had worked their hearts out for his primary opponent, Rep. Pat Toomey, earlier this year, and when Specter was reelected to fifth term Nov. 2, they began demanding that his colleagues deny him the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 109th Congress. When Specter gave a post-election interview that some critics interpreted as a warning to President Bush against sending pro-life judicial nominees to a Specter-chaired Judiciary Committee, they thought they had the smoking gun they needed to get him. Since then, callers demanding Specter’s scalp...

David A. KeeneIt's up to the ground armies November 2, 2004 Four years ago, I was leaving an early-morning Election Day breakfast when I ran into Haley Barbour, who had left the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee some three years earlier.The race between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush was very close, according to virtually every indicator, and we were all expecting the outcome to be determined by the get-out-the-vote effort the rival campaigns had put together. I asked Haley if the Bush campaign and his successors at the RNC had fielded an army capable...

I was asked some months ago by the proverbial “high administration official” what the Bush administration ought to say about Democratic charges that President Bush’s economic policies were not producing the jobs the nation needs. Remember all the talk about the “jobless” recovery that allowed corporations to return to profitability without generating new jobs? Bush was being compared to Herbert Hoover and we were told that his policies were actually designed to encourage American business to “outsource” jobs to places like India and Mexico. Democrats in general and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in particular seemed almost ecstatic every time there...

Back in 1980, the late Terry Dolan, chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), asked me to head up an independent effort supporting Ronald Reagan’s campaign against President Jimmy Carter. Dolan felt he could raise substantial funds and quickly persuaded me to sign on. Independent expenditures of the sort we planned were perfectly legal as long as we resisted the temptation to coordinate any of our activities with the official campaign. We spent nearly $3 million (a lot of money in those days) and like to think we helped Reagan drive Carter from the White House. At about...

  Register Early for CPAC 2005 The HillTuesday, June 15, 2004 Right has few deep pocketsBy David KeeneBack in 1980, the late Terry Dolan, chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), asked me to head up an independent effort supporting Ronald Reagan's campaign against President Jimmy Carter. Dolan felt he could raise substantial funds and quickly persuaded me to sign on.Independent expenditures of the sort we planned were perfectly legal as long as we resisted the temptation to coordinate any of our activities with the official campaign. We spent nearly $3 million (a lot of money in...

Talking Points Memo & Top Story The truth on terrorism President Bush continues to believe that the war in Iraq will eventually make Americans safer, but is this case strong enough? We're fighting terrorism as a nation divided... and defeat is not an option. Bill speaks with David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, for another view on America's war.

Last week, the Democratic National Committee began distributing several pages of quotes from conservatives critical of President Bush on a variety of fronts and suggesting to the media that the fact that we don't agree with the man on everything all of the time is evidence of real weakness in his base. Some in the media took the bait, and many of us got calls from reporters wondering if the president can really rely on the strong support he's going to need from his conservative base to win in November. Now, the summer silly season is fast approaching, so perhaps...

Can't trust U.N. to run IraqBy David KeeneIn Sen. John Kerry's world, where one can have everything both ways, the way to solve the Iraq "problem" is simple enough: turn it over to the United Nations. If the Massachusetts Democrat is serious, he is either naive or a true cynic. We are learning much from Iraq. We have learned, for example, that the United Nations is as corrupt and incompetent an institution as any yet devised by the mind of man. We are told that President Bush wants to avoid his father's mistakes in Iraq, so it's worth taking a...

<p>Democrats, liberals and moderate Republicans believed they had much to celebrate in November 1964. The new conservative movement that had begun in the '50s and actually managed to nominate a candidate for president that year had been vanquished. Barry Goldwater hadn't just been defeated; he'd been crushed and most of the day's pundits were convinced that in crushing him the new political movement was dead.</p>

To bring corporate profits home, keep Kerry on road The Senate, including Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), is in a position this week to do more than just blather about lost jobs, outsourcing and competitiveness. But in a world where talk often seems more important than action, one can only wonder if the Senate will act. It isn’t all that often that Congress comes upon a problem that it can actually solve with a simple change in the law, but the problem of U.S. corporations balking at the idea of bringing their foreign earnings home to invest here...

       The Secretary of the Senate refuses to enforce the law. ACU now has no choice but to go to court, file a lawsuit, and compel the Senate to enforce the laws of the land.As you know, in 2003 Sen. John Kerry missed 60 percent of the votes in the Senate. This year he missed all 22 Senate votes until last week, when he rushed back to Washington at the behest of the gun control crowd to cast votes for a series of anti-Second Amendment measures.U.S. Code allows a Senator to be absent from the Senate only...

When I read some of those descriptions [of me in the press] I get scared of me. —Attorney General John Ashcroft, U.S. News & World Report, January 26, 2004 In January of 2003, I, hardly known as a conservative or Bush admirer, was invited by David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, to appear at its annual Conservative Political Action Conference. It was the first time a Voice writer had been asked to speak at this center of conservative activism. Joining me at the panel on civil liberties, the Constitution, and the Bush-Ashcroft Patriot Act was Bob Barr, an...

Need A Pen, Mr. President? by David A. Keene President Bush didn't have much to say about the deficit in last week's State of the Union speech, but he's been vocal about it since, pledging a 1 percent cap on increases in domestic non-defense and homeland-security spending in the budget the administration will soon send to the Hill. The deficit is, of course, simply a symptom of an imbalance between revenues and expenditures that cannot be ignored over the long term without severe economic consequences. Few voters rush to the polls to vote based on either the size of the...

Many conservatives are concerned about skyrocketing federal spending, growing deficits and the seeming inability or unwillingness of the Bush administration and its allies in Congress to do much about either. I share those concerns. Moreover, like most conservatives, I opposed the recent expansion of the Medicare program and questioned a number of other administration and congressional initiatives on ideological and political grounds. I shall continue to do so because I am convinced, like Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who gave the keynote address at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, that the "ship of governance" has wandered off course and...

"Walks like amnesty, talks like amnesty, it must be amnesty" Alexandria, VA - The White House's intention to grant legal status to non-citizens who have entered the country illegally was sharply criticized today by American Conservative Union (ACU) chairman David A. Keene. "The Bush Administration would have us believe that this move toward legalizing the status of illegal immigrants-lawbreakers-will curb the flow of illegal immigration and enhance our border security. Nothing could be further from the truth," said Keene. "When you send the message that violating our current border controls is all one has to do in order to stay...

Conservativism, Chronicles and Paleoconservativism Thomas Fleming, the brilliant editor of the self-styled paleoconservative magazine, Chronicles, deserves much of the blame for the founding of ConservativeBattleline. Months ago, he published an editorial proclaiming the "fusionist" conservatism of old National Review was dead and that no one under 60 years old adhered to its principles any longer. In the most recent issue, leading columnist Samuel Francis makes the same damning indictment, adding, fusionism "died childless." Being over sixty myself, it was hardly apt to respond to the editor--this would merely confirm his charge. Besides, the truth hurts. I was afraid he was...

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? It’s the Left — liberals, left-wingers, socialists, commies, pinkos, the Noam Chomskys and Alec Baldwins and Barbra Streisands — that hates America. But the Right – good old flag-waving patriotic God Bless America conservatives? How could they possibly be anti-American? It sounds ridiculous. Yet whatever sense or nonsense it makes, anti-Americanism is seeping into the entire conservative movement and is threatening to splinter it into pieces. I’m not talking about the racist nuts, the white supremacists and militia types. I’m talking about mainstream heartland conservatives. Howard Phillips, head of the famed Conservative Caucus, is...

Right joins left to denounce the Patriot Act. At a hotel in the suburbs of Washington Sunday, conservative leaders Grover Norquist and David Keene joined forces with some of the most bitter and determined foes of the Bush White House to denounce the administration's main law-enforcement tool in the war on terrorism, the Patriot Act. Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, and Keene, of the American Conservative Union, joined actor Alec Baldwin and People for the American Way president Ralph Neas as part of a conference called "Grassroots America Defends the Bill of Rights." The conference featured seminars designed...

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark has been leading the Democratic presidential field now for nearly two weeks. He's survived his first debate and must be feeling pretty good about things. Pundits are hailing him as just what the Democrats need to counter the image of President Bush as commander-in-chief at a time of continuing national crisis, and the other contenders must be wondering when the media guns will turn on the new entrant. In last week's debate, the general survived not so much as a result of his fast footwork, but because the other leading contenders are still focused on Howard...

Attorney General John Ashcroft began his recent "victory" tour at the American Enterprise Institute where he disingenuously justified his campaign-like appearance as necessary, lest those lacking his unique dedication to the war against terrorism succeed in "repealing" the USA Patriot Act. He then took his show on the road, speaking primarily before closed meetings of law enforcement officials assembled to applaud and nod as he not only defended the vast investigative powers he and they have acquired since Sept. 11 but argued that more were needed. Meanwhile, his spokespeople were hinting publicly that anyone who even dares question the need...

<p>The conservative movement has scored historic gains but has yet to achieve several of its basic goals.</p> <p>That's the verdict of some of its founding fathers (and one important mother).</p> <p>"We won the battle against communism, but I guess we've largely lost the battle against big government," says Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly, 79, who defied conventional wisdom by leading a women's crusade that defeated the Equal Rights Amendment in the mid-1970s.</p>

Things never seem to change. Liberals have never been able to grasp the fact that sane, responsible men and women might disagree with them for substantive or even intellectual reasons, and have been trying to dismiss conservatives since the 1950s as cranks, nuts racists and misfits. When I was in college in the early 1960s, there weren't that many of us in what has come to be known as the "conservative movement." There were the folks at National Review, of course, and there was a small publisher in Chicago that kept publishing books by NR founder Bill Buckley and a...

Tom Ridge was a pretty good governor and is President Bush's friend. People who know him say he's also a pretty good guy. But it's becoming increasingly clear that he's rapidly becoming little more than another run-of-the-mill Washington bureaucrat more interested in accumulating power than in doing his job. Anyone who doubts that should look at what his Department of Homeland Security is up to these days. The department was cobbled together in the days after Sept. 11 by an administration rightly worried about our security, and, on paper at least, it made a lot of sense. The new department...

Remembering Conservatism's Unsung HeroBy David KeeneThe Hill | July 30, 2003 I am told that we conservatives are in disarray -- that we have lost our moorings and don't quite know what to do about the fact that everything isn't going our way and that some of us actually disagree with each other on just where we ought to be going.These things are true. But they have been true from the beginning. Conservatives are and always have been a fractious bunch. The movement that grew out of the writing and feverish activity of folks interested primarily in ideas and policies...

July 22, 2003, 11:00 a.m. Not So Keene The ACU chairman sells out. By James Justin Wilson avid Keene is a man of many hats. He's best known to conservatives as head of the American Conservative Union (ACU), which describes itself as the oldest conservative advocacy group in the nation. He's also a columnist for The Hill newspaper. Finally, he's a managing associate of the Carmen Group, a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm. Recently he's also been the target of a tough letter signed by 33 House Republicans, including Sue Myrick, chairman of the Republican Study Committee. "The individual actions of...

A Conclave of Intellectuals Schooled at Pravda's KneeBy David KeeneThe Hill | July 9, 2003 BRUSSELS More than 100 European intellectuals, political officials and bureaucrats gathered here last month to discuss how to deal with George W. Bush's America. They saw themselves as representatives of the civilized world meeting to determine how to best control, or at least counteract, the influence of the United States "before it is too late." In their view, almost all the evil in today's world today can be traced directly or indirectly to the United States, or to the system of nation states that make...

A conclave of intellectuals schooled at Pravda's knee BRUSSELS More than 100 European intellectuals, political officials and bureaucrats gathered here last month to discuss how to deal with George W. Bush's America. They saw themselves as representatives of the civilized world meeting to determine how to best control, or at least counteract, the influence of the United States "before it is too late." In their view, almost all the evil in today's world today can be traced directly or indirectly to the United States, or to the system of nation states that make the existence of the United States possible....

Labor Unions Fail "Enron Test": By David Keene The scandals at Enron and Global Crossing shook Washington as well as the markets and the investor community because, in each instance, corporate executives and their cohorts in the reporting and accounting world figured out how to either avoid reporting what they were up to or to hoodwink everybody by filing incomplete or misleading reports with regulators and those who follow their activities. The result was a demand for increased corporate transparency and, eventually, the passage of legislation requiring thorough and understandable disclosure. That meant that those most likely to be hurt...

When I first visited Taiwan back in the sixties,Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang ruled the island and openly dreamed of returning to mainland China to vanquish their Communist enemies and reunite the country. They were only on the island, after all, because they had been driven off the mainland temporarily by Mao. The Red Army would have followed and killed them if it could. In fact, 50,000 of Mao’s best troops died trying. They were slaughtered by Chiang’s forces on the beaches of the small island of Quemoy that stood between them and Taiwan and were forced to back off,...

Novak may be wrong, but he's a true patriot When a nation is at war, there's a tendency among those who support it to suspect that those who opposed it before the shooting started did so either because they were secretly biased in favor of the enemy or have somehow come to hate their own country. There is a corollary tendency among those who opposed war before it actually breaks out to rally round the troops, regardless of their real feelings about its wisdom. These tendencies are human and rational. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle (S.D.), for example, who was...

Robert Novak: Wrong, But Still a PatriotBy David KeeneThe Hill | March 26, 2003 Novak may be wrong, but he’s a true patriotWhen a nation is at war, there’s a tendency among those who support it to suspect that those who opposed it before the shooting started did so either because they were secretly biased in favor of the enemy or have somehow come to hate their own country. There is a corollary tendency among those who opposed war before it actually breaks out to rally round the troops, regardless of their real feelings about its wisdom.These tendencies are human...