David Keene
Columns by David Keene
John Bolton is misunderstood
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
Many who speak out, on left or right, can become targets of inflamed rhetoric
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
Mueller and the saving of a presidency
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
The FBI can describe it as ‘intelligence gathering,’ but spying by another name is still spying
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
Reading Wisconsin’s 2020 tea leaves
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
Democratic wannabes preen and crowd the line-up
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
Packing the Supreme Court
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
How a ‘nuclear option’ returned power to Republicans
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
Early promises of the Democratic wannabes
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
How Democrats signal their plans
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
Baseball’s infamous bribery scandal of 1919
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
A promise to build a border wall on defined Trump’s candidacy, he’s not backing down
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
Harold Baines, both good and great
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
How the Chinese use technology to build their unassailable state
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
Another ‘Year of the Woman’
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
Orrin Hatch deserves a Medal of Freedom
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
Confirming Aurelia Skipwith
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
Gosnell the murderer revisited
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
Montana voters don’t like politicians who tell them one thing and do another
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
Adrift in the age of #MeToo
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
