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Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter at CPAC in February 2010.
BornAnn Hart Coulter
(1961-12-08) December 8, 1961 (age 63)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Alma materCornell University (B.A.)
University of Michigan Law School (J.D.)
Occupation(s)Author, columnist, political commentator
Years active1996–present
Websitehttp://www.anncoulter.com

Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961) is an American lawyer, conservative social and political commentator, author, and syndicated columnist. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public events and private events. Well-known for her right-wing political opinions and the controversial ways in which she defends them, Coulter has described herself as a polemicist who likes to "stir up the pot" and, unlike "broadcasters," does not "pretend to be impartial or balanced."

Early life

Ann Hart Coulter was born in New York City on December 8, 1961, to Nell Husbands (née Martin; a native of Paducah, Kentucky) and John Vincent Coulter (a native of Albany, New York). The family later moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Coulter and her two older brothers, James and John, were raised. She graduated from New Canaan High School in 1980.

While attending Cornell University, Coulter helped found The Cornell Review, and was a member of the Delta Gamma national women's fraternity. She graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984 with a B.A. in history, and received her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988, where she achieved membership in the Order of the Coif and was an editor of the Michigan Law Review. At Michigan, Coulter was president of the local chapter of the Federalist Society and was trained at the National Journalism Center.

Law career

After law school, Coulter served as a law clerk, in Kansas City, for Pasco Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. After a short time working in New York City in private practice, where she specialized in corporate law, Coulter left to work for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee after the Republican Party took control of Congress in 1994. She handled crime and immigration issues for Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan and helped craft legislation designed to expedite the deportation of aliens convicted of felonies. She later became a litigator with the Center for Individual Rights.

Media career

Ann Coulter is the author of seven books, and publishes a weekly syndicated newspaper column. Known for her polemical style, She also makes numerous public appearances, speaking on television and radio talk shows, as well as on college campuses, receiving both praise and protest. During one appearance at the University of Arizona, a pie was thrown at her. Coulter has, on occasion, responded with insulting remarks towards hecklers and protestors who attend her speeches.

Books

Ann Coulter

Coulter is the author of seven books, all of which have appeared on New York Times Best Seller list, with a combined 3 million copies sold, as of May 2009.

Coulter's first book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, 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, published by Crown Forum in 2002, became number one on The New York Times non-fiction best seller list. In Slander, Coulter argues that President George W. Bush was given unfair negative media coverage. The factual accuracy of Slander was called into question by then-comedian and author, and now Democratic U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken. He also accused her of citing passages out of context. Others investigated these charges, and also raised questions about the book's accuracy and presentation of facts. Coulter responded to criticisms in a column called "Answering My Critics", where she wrote "the most devastating examples of my alleged 'lies' keep changing" and that some accusations of her factual inaccuracy are either outright wrong or really just "trivial" factual errors (e.g., referring to "endnotes" as "footnotes", or incorrectly identifying Evan Thomas' grandfather, Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas, as his father).

In her third book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, also published by Crown Forum, she reexamines the 60-year history of the Cold War — including the career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Whittaker Chambers–Alger Hiss affair, and Ronald Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" — and argues that liberals were wrong in their Cold War political analyses and policy decisions, and that McCarthy was correct about Soviet agents working for the U.S. government. She also argues that the correct identification of Annie Lee Moss, among others, as communists was misreported by that liberal media. Treason was published in 2003, and spent 13 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.

Coulter's fifth book, published by Crown Forum in 2006, is Godless: The Church of Liberalism. In it, she 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.

Coulter published If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, in October 2007.

Her most recent book was released January 6, 2009, entitled Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America.

Columns

In the late 1990s, Coulter's weekly (biweekly from 1999–2000) syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate began appearing. Her column is featured on six conservative websites: Human Events Online, WorldNetDaily, Townhall.com, FrontPageMag, Jewish World Review and her own website. Her syndicator says, "Ann's client newspapers stick with her because she has a loyal fan base of conservative readers who look forward to reading her columns in their local newspapers."

In 1999, Coulter worked as a regular columnist for George magazine. Coulter also wrote exclusive weekly columns between 1998 and 2003 and with occasional columns thereafter for the conservative magazine Human Events. In her columns for the magazine, she discusses judicial rulings, Constitutional issues, and legal matters affecting Congress and the executive branch.

In 2001, as a contributing editor and syndicated columnist for National Review Online (NRO), Coulter was asked by editors to make changes to a piece written after the September 11 attacks. On the national television show Politically Incorrect, Coulter accused NRO of censorship and said that she was paid $5 per article. NRO dropped her column and terminated her editorship. Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of NRO, said, "We did not 'fire' Ann for what she wrote... we ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty ."

Coulter contracted with USA Today to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention. She wrote one article that began, "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston..." and referred to some unspecified female attendees as "corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons." The newspaper declined to print the article citing an editing dispute over "basic weaknesses in clarity and readability that we found unacceptable." An explanatory article by the paper went on to say "Coulter told the online edition of Editor & Publisher magazine that 'USA Today doesn't like my "tone", humor, sarcasm, etc., which raises the intriguing question of why they hired me to write for them.'" USA Today replaced Coulter with Jonah Goldberg, and Coulter published it instead on her website.

In August 2005, the Arizona Daily Star dropped Coulter's syndicated column citing reader complaints that "Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives."

In July 2006, some newspapers replaced Coulter's column with those of other conservative columnists following the publication of her fourth book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. After the Augusta Chronicle dropped her column, newspaper editor Michael Ryan explained that "it came to the point where she was the issue rather than what she was writing about." Ryan also stated that "Pulling Ann Coulter's column hurts; she's one of the clearest thinkers around."

She has criticized former president George W. Bush's immigration proposals, saying they led to "amnesty". In one column, she claims that the current immigration system is set up to purposely reduce the percentage of whites in the population. In it, she said:

In 1960, whites were 90 percent of the country. The Census Bureau recently estimated that whites already account for less than two-thirds of the population and will be a minority by 2050. Other estimates put that day much sooner.

One may assume the new majority will not be such compassionate overlords as the white majority has been. If this sort of drastic change were legally imposed on any group other than white Americans, it would be called genocide. Yet whites are called racists merely for mentioning the fact that current immigration law is intentionally designed to reduce their percentage in the population.

Overall, Coulter's columns are highly critical of liberals and Democrats. In one, she wrote:

This year's Democratic plan for the future is another inane sound bite designed to trick American voters into trusting them with national security.

To wit, they're claiming there is no connection between the war on terror and the war in Iraq, and while they're all for the war against terror — absolutely in favor of that war — they are adamantly opposed to the Iraq war. You know, the war where the U.S. military is killing thousands upon thousands of terrorists (described in the media as "Iraqi civilians", even if they are from Jordan, like the now-dead leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). That war.

Television and radio

Coulter made her first national media appearance in 1996 after she was hired by the then-fledgling network MSNBC as a legal correspondent. She was dismissed from the network at least twice. First, in February 1997, after she insulted the late Pamela Harriman (U.S. Ambassador to France), as the network was covering her memorial service. They missed her jousting and quickly rehired her, only to fire her eight months later after she tangled with a disabled Vietnam veteran on the air. Robert Muller, co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, asserted that, "in 90% of the cases that U.S. soldiers got blown up – Ann, are you listening – they were our own mines." (Muller was misquoting a 1969 Pentagon report that found that 90% of the components used in enemy mines came from U.S. duds and refuse). Coulter, who found Muller's statement laughable, averted her eyes and responded sarcastically, "No wonder you guys lost." It became an infamous — and oft-misreported — Coulter moment. The Washington Post and others turned the line into a more personal attack: "People like you caused us to lose that war." But her troubles with MSNBC only freed her to appear on CNN and Fox News, whose producers were often calling.

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post made a point to respond to the Time article to explain that his widely quoted reporting of Coulter's reply to the veteran in an article he wrote had its origin in Coulter's own later recollection of the incident. Describing his previous story, Kurtz added, "I did note that, according to Coulter, the vet was appearing by satellite, and she didn't know he was disabled."

In an interview with Bob McKeown on the January 26, 2005, edition of The Fifth Estate, Coulter came under criticism for her statement: "Canada used to be...one of our most...most loyal friends, and vice versa. I mean, Canada sent troops to Vietnam. Was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?" McKeown contradicted her with, "No, actually Canada did not send troops to Vietnam." On the February 18, 2005, edition of Washington Journal, Coulter justified her statement by referring to the thousands of Canadians who served in the American armed forces during the Vietnam era, either because they volunteered or because they were living in the USA during the war years and got drafted. She said, "The Canadian Government didn't send troops but they came and fought with the Americans. So I was wrong. It turns out there were 10,000 Americans who happened to be born in Canada." (Between 5,000 and 20,000 Canadians fought in Vietnam itself, including approximately 80 who were killed.). John Cloud of Time, writing about the incident a few months later, said "Canada noncombat troops to Indochina in the 1950s and again to Vietnam in 1972".

In 2005, Coulter appeared as one of a three-person judging panel in The Greatest American, a four-part interactive television program for the Discovery Channel hosted by Matt Lauer. Starting with 100 nominees, each week, interactive viewer voting eliminated candidates. She voted for George Washington, over Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King, Jr., for the title of Greatest American ever.

Coulter has also made frequent guest appearances on many television and radio talk shows, including American Morning, The Fifth Estate, Glenn Beck Program, The Mike Gallagher Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Real Time with Bill Maher, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Sean Hannity Show, The Today Show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Fox and Friends, The Laura Ingraham Show, The View and HARDtalk.

Films

In 2004, Coulter appeared in three films. The first was Feeding the Beast, a made-for-television documentary on the "24-Hour News Revolution". The other two films were FahrenHYPE 9/11, a direct to video documentary intended 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.

In 2006, Coulter refused permission to include a scene featuring herself and Al Franken in a debate in Connecticut in Franken's film, Al Franken: God Spoke.

Personal life

Coulter has been engaged several times, but never married. She has dated Spin founder and publisher Bob Guccione, Jr., and conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza. In October 2007, she began dating Andrew Stein, the former president of the New York City Council, a liberal Democrat. When asked about the relationship, Stein told the paper, "She's attacked a lot of my friends, but what can I say, opposites attract!" On January 7, 2008, however, Stein told the New York Post that the relationship was over, citing irreconcilable differences.

Coulter owns a condominium in Manhattan and a house, bought in 2005, in Palm Beach, Florida. Although she says that usually she lives in New York, she votes in Palm Beach and is not registered to do so in New York. She is a fan of several jam bands, such as the Grateful Dead, the Dave Matthews Band, and Phish. Some of her favorite books include The Bible, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, true crime stories about serial killers and anything by Dave Barry.

Religious views

Coulter says that she holds Christian beliefs, and has declared that she is Presbyterian; she has mentioned that her father was Catholic while her mother was not. At one public lecture she said: "I don't care about anything else: Christ died for my sins and nothing else matters." In a 2004 column, she summarized her view of Christianity: "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." She then mocked "the message of Jesus ... according to liberals," summarising it as "...something along the lines of 'be nice to people'," which, in turn, she said "is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity."

Confronting some critics' views that her content and style of writing is un-Christian, Coulter has stated that "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it." She has also said: "... 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." In Godless: The Church of Liberalism, as well as in personal appearances, Coulter characterized evolution as "bogus science", and contrasting her beliefs to what she called the left's "obsession with Darwinism and the Darwinian view of the world, which replaces sanctification of life with sanctification of sex and death."

In October 2007, while being interviewed by Donny Deutsch on the CNBC show The Big Idea, Coulter stated that Christians consider themselves "perfected Jews" and that it would be better if everyone was a Christian. Deutsch had asked that if her dreams came true, what would this world look like, and she responded that "It would look like New York City during the Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like." When Deutsch continued to press her on the statement, she explained that people at the convention were happy, tolerant, and Christian. Deutsch then asked her if she believed everyone should be a Christian, and Coulter replied, "Yes". Coulter then went on to explain that Christians believe themselves to be "perfected Jews" and ended the interview with:

I don't want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is 'Christ died for our sins.' We consider ourselves perfected Jews. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Jew is not offensive at all.

Political activities and commentary

Ann Coulter at The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet.

Ann Coulter has described herself as a "polemicist" who likes to "stir up the pot" and doesn't "pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do". While her actual political activities in the past have included advising a plaintiff suing President Bill Clinton as well as considering a run for Congress, she mostly serves as a political pundit, sometimes starting firestorms of controversy, ranging from rowdy uprisings at many of the colleges where she speaks to protracted discussions in the media. Time magazine's John Cloud once observed that Coulter, "likes to shock reporters by wondering aloud whether America might be better off if women lost the right to vote." This was in reference to a statement that she made: "It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950—except Goldwater in '64—the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted." Similarly, in an October 2007 interview with the New York Observer, Coulter said:

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women. It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it's the party of women and 'We'll pay for health care and tuition and day care — and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?

Paula Jones–Bill Clinton case

Coulter first became 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. Coulter's friend George Conway had been asked to assist Jones' attorneys, and shortly afterward Coulter, who wrote a column about the Paula Jones case for Human Events, was also asked to help; she began writing legal briefs for the case.

Coulter later stated that she would come to mistrust the motives of Jones' head lawyer, Joseph Cammaratta, who by August or September 1997 was advising Jones that her case was weak and to settle, if a favorable settlement could be negotiated. From the onset, Jones had sought an apology from Clinton at least as eagerly as she sought a settlement. However, in a later interview Coulter recounted that she herself had believed that the case was strong, that Jones was telling the truth, that Clinton should be held publicly accountable for his misconduct, and that a settlement would give the impression that Jones was merely interested in extorting money from the President.

David Daley, who wrote the interview piece for the Hartford Courant recounted what followed:

Coulter played one particularly key role in keeping the Jones case alive. In Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff's new book Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, Coulter is unmasked as the one who leaked word of Clinton's "distinguishing characteristic" — his reportedly bent penis that Jones said she could recognize and describe — to the news media. Her hope was to foster mistrust between the Clinton and Jones camps and forestall a settlement...

I thought if I leaked the distinguishing characteristic it would show bad faith in negotiations. Bob Bennett would think Jones had leaked it. Cammaratta would know he himself hadn't leaked it and would get mad at Bennett. It might stall negotiations enough for me to get through to Susan Carpenter-McMillan to tell her that I thought settling would hurt Paula, that this would ruin her reputation, and that there were other lawyers working for her. Then 36 hours later, she returned my phone call.
I just wanted to help Paula. I really think Paula Jones is a hero. I don't think I could have taken the abuse she came under. She's this poor little country girl and she has the most powerful man she's ever met hitting on her sexually, then denying it and smearing her as president. And she never did anything tacky. It's not like she was going on TV or trying to make a buck out of it."

In his book, Isikoff also reported Coulter as saying: "We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the President." After the book came out, Coulter clarified her stated motives, saying:

The only motive for leaking the distinguishing characteristic item that gives in his book is my self-parodying remark that "it would humiliate the president" and that a settlement would foil our efforts to bring down the president.... I suppose you could take the position, as does, that we were working for Jones because we thought Clinton was a lecherous, lying scumbag, but this argument gets a bit circular. You could also say that Juanita Broaddrick's secret motive in accusing Clinton of rape is that she hates Clinton because he raped her. The whole reason we didn't much like Clinton was that we could see he was the sort of man who would haul a low-level government employee like Paula to his hotel room, drop his pants, and say, "Kiss it." You know: Everything his defense said about him at the impeachment trial. It's not like we secretly disliked Clinton because of his administration's position on California's citrus cartels or something, and then set to work on some crazy scheme to destroy him using a pathological intern as our Mata Hari.

The case went to court after Jones broke with Coulter and her original legal team, and it was dismissed via summary judgment. The judge ruled that even if her allegations proved true, Jones did not show that she had suffered any damages, stating "...plaintiff has not demonstrated any tangible job detriment or adverse employment action for her refusal to submit to the governor's alleged advances. The president is therefore entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff's claim of quid pro quo sexual harassment". The ruling was appealed by Jones' lawyers. During the pendency of the appeal, Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000 ($151,000 after legal fees) in November 1998, in exchange for Jones' dismissal of the appeal. By then, the Jones lawsuit had led to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

In October 2000, Jones revealed that she would pose for nude pictures in an adult magazine, saying she wanted to use the money to pay taxes and support her grade-school-aged children, in particular saying, "I'm wanting to put them through college and maybe set up a college fund." Coulter publicly denounced Jones, calling her "the trailer-park trash they said she was," (Coulter had earlier chastened Clinton supporters for calling Jones this name) after Clinton's former campaign strategist James Carville had made the widely reported remark, "Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park, and you'll never know what you'll find", and called Jones a "fraud, at least to the extent of pretending to be an honorable and moral person."

Coulter wrote:

Paula surely was given more than a million dollars in free legal assistance from an array of legal talent she will never again encounter in her life, much less have busily working on her behalf. Some of those lawyers never asked for or received a dime for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work performed at great professional, financial and personal cost to themselves. Others got partial payments out of the settlement. But at least they got her reputation back. And now she's thrown it away.

Jones claimed not to have been offered any help with a book deal of her own or any other additional financial help after the lawsuit.

Brief congressional candidacy

In 1999 and 2000, Coulter considered running for Congress from Connecticut on the Libertarian Party ticket to serve as a spoiler in order 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' vote against Clinton's impeachment. The leadership of the Libertarian Party of Connecticut, after meeting with Coulter, declined to endorse her. As a result, her self-described "total sham, media-intensive, third-party Jesse Ventura campaign" did not take place.

Comments on Islam, Arabs and terrorism

On September 14, 2001, three days after the September 11 attacks, Coulter wrote in her column:

Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

Responding to this comment, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations remarked in the Chicago Sun Times that before September 11, Coulter, "would have faced swift repudiation from her colleagues", but "now it's accepted as legitimate commentary." David Horowitz, however, saw Coulter's words as irony: "I began running Coulter columns on Frontpagemag.com shortly after she came up with her most infamous line, which urged America to put jihadists to the sword and convert them to Christianity. Liberals were horrified; I was not. I thought to myself, this is a perfect send-up of what our Islamo-fascist enemies believe – that as infidels we should be put to the sword and converted to Islam. I regarded Coulter’s phillipic as a Swiftian commentary on liberal illusions of multi-cultural outreach to people who want to rip out our hearts."

Coulter has also been highly critical of the U.S. Department of Transportation, particularly with regard to their refusal to use racial profiling as a component of airport screening. After a group of Muslims were expelled from a US Airways flight when other passengers expressed worries, sparking a call for Muslims to boycott the airline because of the ejection from a flight of six imams, Coulter wrote, "If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether."

Coulter cited the 2002 Senate testimony of FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley for condemning her superiors for refusing to authorize a search warrant for 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui when he refused to consent to a search of his computer. It was known that he was a Muslim, had attended flight school, had overstayed his visa, and the French Intelligence Service had confirmed his affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups. Coulter said she agreed that probable cause existed in the case, but that refusing consent, being in flight school and overstaying a visa shouldn't constitute grounds for a search. Citing a poll which found that 98 percent of Muslims between the ages of 20 to 45 said they would not fight for Britain in the war in Afghanistan, and that 48 percent said they would fight for Osama bin Laden, she asserted "any Muslim who has attended a mosque in Europe – certainly in England, where Moussaoui lived – has had 'affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups'", so that she parsed Rowley's position as meaning that "'probable cause' existed to search Moussaoui's computer because he was a Muslim who had lived in England." Because "FBI headquarters...refused to engage in racial profiling" they failed to uncover the 9-11 plot, Coulter asserted. "The FBI allowed thousands of Americans to be slaughtered on the altar of political correctness. What more do liberals want?"

Coulter wrote in another column that she had reviewed the civil rights lawsuits against certain airlines to determine which airlines had subjected Arabs to the most "egregious discrimination" so that she could fly only that airline. She also said that the airline should be bragging instead of denying any of the charges of discrimination brought against them. In an interview with The Guardian, she quipped, "I think airlines ought to start advertising: 'We have the most civil rights lawsuits brought against us by Arabs.'" When the interviewer replied by asking what Muslims would do for travel, she responded, "They could use flying carpets."

Another comment that drew particular criticism from the blogosphere, as well as fellow conservatives, was made during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2006, where she said, referring to the prospect of a nuclear-equipped Iran, "What if they start having one of these bipolar episodes with nuclear weapons? I think our motto should be, post-9-11: raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences." Coulter had previously written a nearly identical passage in her syndicated column: "I believe our motto should be after 9/11: Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that's offensive. How about 'camel jockey'? What? Now what'd I say? Boy, you tent merchants sure are touchy. Grow up, would you?"

2008 presidential campaign

Just as the 2008 presidential campaign was getting under way, Coulter drew criticism for statements she made at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference about presidential candidate John Edwards:

I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm – so, kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards, so I think I'll just conclude here and take your questions.

The comment was in reference to Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington's use of the epithet and his subsequent mandatory "psychological assessment" imposed by ABC executives. It was widely interpreted as meaning that Coulter had called Edwards a "faggot", but Coulter has argued on a couple of occasions that she didn't actually do so, while simultaneously indicating she would not have been wrong to say it. Edwards responded on his website by characterizing Coulter's words as "un-American and indefensible" and asking readers to help him "raise $100,000 in 'Coulter Cash' this week to keep this campaign charging ahead and fight back against the politics of bigotry." He also called her a "she-devil", adding, "I should not have name-called. But the truth is – forget the names – people like Ann Coulter, they engage in hateful language." Coulter's words also drew condemnation from many prominent Republicans and Democrats, as well as groups such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Three advertisers (Verizon, Sallie Mae and Netbank) also pulled their advertisements from Coulter's website, and several newspapers dropped her column. Coulter responded in an e-mail to the New York Times: "C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean." On March 5, 2007, she appeared on Hannity and Colmes and said, "aggot isn't offensive to gays; it has nothing to do with gays. It's a schoolyard taunt meaning 'wuss'".

As the campaign waged on, she continued to insert her commentary regarding the candidates, both Democrats and Republicans. In a June 2007 interview, Coulter named Duncan Hunter as her choice for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, saying "my favorite candidate is Duncan Hunter , and he is magnificent. The problem is most people say, "Who's Duncan Hunter?" He's a genuine war hero. He has one son, I think, in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. He is good on every single issue. He has been out front on building a wall. He did build a wall at San Diego. He's very good on — on the life issue. He's good on everything."

On January 16, Coulter began endorsing Governor Mitt Romney as her choice for the 2008 Republican nomination, saying he is "manifestly the best candidate" (contrasting Romney only with Republican candidates John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Rudy Giuliani).

By contrast, Coulter was critical of eventual Republican nominee John McCain. On the January 31, 2008 broadcast of Hannity and Colmes, Coulter claimed that, if McCain won the Republican nomination for president, she would support and campaign for Hillary Clinton, stating, " is more conservative than McCain."

In an April 2, 2008 column, she characterized Barack Obama's book Dreams From My Father as a "Dimestore Mein Kampf." Coulter writes, "He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it's 'easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.' Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it."

2010 Canadian university tour

In March 2010, Ann Coulter performed a speaking tour of three Canadian universities: The University of Western Ontario, the University of Ottawa and the University of Calgary. The tour was organized by the International Free Press Society.

A day before Coulter's speech at the University of Western Ontario, an e-mail to Coulter from Francois Houle, provost of the University of Ottawa, was leaked to the media. The e-mail warned that "promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges." Coulter released a public statement claiming that by sending her the e-mail, Houle was promoting hatred against conservatives. During Coulter's speech at the University of Western Ontario, it was widely reported that she told a Muslim student to "take a camel", in response to the student's question about previous comments by Coulter that Muslims should not be allowed on airplanes.

On March 22, the University of Ottawa made international news when Coulter's speech was cancelled because of protesters (the number of which there are conflicting reports). Event organizers and her staff cited security concerns, but Alain Boucher of the Ottawa Police Service said the police were not undermanned; there were 10 officers visible at the scene "plus other resources" nearby. There was initially disagreement as to who cancelled the speech, but Boucher said Coulter's security team decided to call off the event: "We gave her options" – including, he said, to "find a bigger venue" – but "they opted to cancel ... It's not up to the Ottawa police to make that decision." Boucher said the crowd did not get way out of hand, and that there were no arrests. CTV News reported "It was a disaster in terms of just organization, which is probably one of the reasons why it was cancelled", citing the small number of students tasked with confirming who had signed up to attend Coulter's talk.

Event organizer and conservative activist Ezra Levant blamed the protest on the letter sent to Coulter by Houle. After the cancellation, Coulter called the University of Ottawa a "bush league", stating:

I go to the best schools, Harvard, the Ivy League and those kids are too intellectually proud to threaten speakers. ... I would like to know when this sort of violence, this sort of protest, has been inflicted upon a Muslim — who appear to be, from what I’ve read of the human rights complaints, the only protected group in Canada, I think I’ll give my speech tomorrow night in a burka. That will protect me.

Bibliography

References

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  81. Isaiah Washington Enters Treatment Facility!
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  97. Ann Coulter: The Elephant In The Room January 16, 2008
  98. YouTube - Coulter: I'll campaign for Hillary if McCain is the nominee
  99. AnnCoulter.com - Printer Friendly Article: OBAMA'S DIMESTORE 'MEIN KAMPF'
  100. Cheadle, Bruce (March 22, 2010). "Watch your mouth, Ann Coulter warned for Canadian tour". The Star. Toronto.
  101. Coulter: Canadian U Provost Guilty of Hate Crimes
  102. Students divided over Coulter's cancelled speech
  103. Ottawa police say they didn't shut Coulter down; March 26, 2010
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  105. Wightman, Ken (March 26, 2010). "Ottawa police say they didn't shut Coulter down". Digital Journal. Retrieved July 2, 2010.
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  107. "Protest Cancels Coulter Speech in Ottawa". Fox News. March 24, 2010. Retrieved July 2, 2010.
  108. Wightman, Ken (March 24, 2010). "Ann Coulter cancels Ottawa talk over security concerns". Digital Journal. Retrieved July 2, 2010.

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