Ann Coulter

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Ann Coulter.

Ann Hart Coulter (born February 25, 1962) is an American best-selling author, columnist, and conservative political commentator. Known for her outspoken style and vitriolic attacks on those with liberal views, she frequently appears on television, radio and as a speaker at public and private events. She is one of the most popular conservative commentators in the United States.

Early life

Ann Coulter was born in New York City. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Coulter and her two older brothers were raised. Her father was an FBI agent who became a corporate attorney.

As an undergraduate at Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences in Ithaca, New York, Coulter helped found The Cornell Review and was a member of the Delta Gamma national women's fraternity. She graduated with honors from Cornell in 1984, and received her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, where she achieved membership in the Order of the Coif and was an editor of the Michigan Law Review. At Michigan, Coulter founded a local chapter of the Federalist Society and was trained at the National Journalism Center.

After law school, Coulter served as a law clerk for Pasco Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Kansas City. After a short time in private practice New York City, Coulter left to work for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. She handled crime and immigration issues for Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham. She later became a litigator with the Center For Individual Rights, a public-interest law firm.

Media career

Television, films and radio

Coulter first became a media figure when she was hired in 1996 by MSNBC as a legal correspondent. The network dismissed her at least twice due to her outspokenness. Since then, she has made frequent guest appearances on television, including The Today Show, Hannity and Colmes, The O'Reilly Factor, American Morning, Crossfire, Real Time, Politically Incorrect, and the fifth estate. She made her first film appearance in 2004, when she appeared in three films: Feeding the Beast, a made-for-television documentary on the "24-Hour News Revolution"., FahrenHYPE 9/11, a direct to video documentary designed to rebut Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, and Is It True What They Say About Ann?, a documentary on Coulter containing clips of interviews and speeches. She is a frequent guest on many talk radio shows, including Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mike Gallagher.

Books

Ann Coulter is the author of five books, all of which have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Her first book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (ISBN 0-89526-113-8), was published by Regnery Publishing in 1998. The book details Coulter's case for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Her second book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (ISBN 1-4000-4661-0), published by Crown Forum in 2002, remained number one on The New York Times Best Seller list for seven weeks. In Slander, Coulter argues that President George W. Bush faced an unfair battle for positive media coverage.

Her third book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (ISBN 1-4000-5030-8), also published by Crown Forum, defends the presidency of Richard M. Nixon and claims Democratic politicians and the media have treasonously undermined United States foreign policy. She also claims that Annie Lee Moss was correctly identified by Joseph McCarthy as a Communist. Treason was published in 2003, and spent thirteen weeks on the Best Seller list.

Crown Forum published a collection of Coulter's columns in 2004 as her fourth book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter (ISBN 1-4000-5418-4).

Coulter's fifth book, published by Crown Forum in 2006, is Godless: The Church of Liberalism (ISBN 1-4000-5420-6). Coulter argues, first, that liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, and second, that it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. Godless debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

A sixth book, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, is scheduled to be published by The Crown Publishing Group in October, 2007.

Columns

Since the late 1990s, Coulter has had a weekly (biweekly from 1999-2000) syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate. It appears in about a hundred newspapers, on her own web site, and on several conservative websites: WorldNetDaily, Townhall.com, Human Events Online, FrontPageMag, Jewish World Review and the Drudge Report.

In 1999, she was briefly a regular columnist for George magazine. She also wrote exclusive columns weekly between 1998 and 2003 and occasionally since for the conservative magazine Human Events. In it, she discusses judicial rulings, constitutional issues, and legal matters affecting Congress and the executive branch.

Honors and awards

In 2000, Ann Coulter received a Conservative Leadership Award from the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute and the Conservative Journalist of the Year Award from the Media Research Center. In 2001, she was described as one of the top 100 U.S. public intellectuals in Richard Posner's book on that subject. That same year, George magazine named her "one of the 20 Most Fascinating Women in Politics."

Political activities

In addition to her frequent media appearances and popular writings about politics, Coulter's activities have included advising a plaintiff suing the president and considering a run for Congress.

She debuted as a public figure shortly before becoming an unpaid legal advisor for the attorneys representing Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. Based in part on her experience with this case, Coulter wrote a book critical of Clinton called High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton.

In 1999 and 2000, Coulter considered running for Congress from Connecticut on the Libertarian Party ticket to throw the seat to the Democratic candidate and see that Republican Congressman Christopher Shays failed to gain re-election, as a punishment for Shays's voting against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. She dropped the idea when the Libertarian Party of Connecticut declined to endorse her.

Political views

Under construction.

Religious views

Coulter proclaims Christian religious beliefs, saying: "... Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy—you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism." She contrasts her belief that "Jesus' distinctive message was: People are sinful and need to be redeemed, and this is your lucky day because I'm here to redeem you even though you don't deserve it, and I have to get the crap kicked out of me to do it", with the view that "according to liberals, the message of Jesus [...] is something along the lines of 'be nice to people', " which she describes as "one of the incidental tenets of Christianity"

Controversies

Under construction.

External links

• Ann Coulter Official Web Site
• Ann Coulter column archive from Human Events (January 1998-June 2003, oldest articles first)
• Ann Coulter column archive at Human Events (Most recent column first)
• Ann Coulter column archive at National Review (2000-2001)
• Ann Coulter column archive at uExpress.com (1999-Present. Select Headline Archive to see the list of columns.)