Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, a research-based, public policy “think tank.” He is a health policy expert and weekly contributor at Forbes.com. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Matthews is a past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists. Dr. Matthews also served for 10 years as the medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation, and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate and The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud).

He has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Barron’s, USA Today, Forbes magazine and the Washington Times. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network.

Dr. Matthews received his Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas.

Mr. Shackelford is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate on constitutional issues, and has won three state landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases in the past few years alone. He was recently named one of the 25 greatest Texas lawyers of the past quarter-century by Texas Lawyer, and is the recipient of the prestigious William Bentley Ball Award for Life and Religious Freedom Defense for his leadership and pioneering work protecting religious freedom.

Penna Dexter is a radio commentator and columnist for various Christian conservative outlets. She is a frequent commentator and guest host for Point of View Radio Talk Show with Kerby Anderson. Her weekly commentaries air on the Moody Broadcasting Network and the Bott Radio Network. Penna’s columns appear at Baptist Press and the Christian Post blog page. Penna is an executive at Todd Dexter & Associates, the integrated marketing consulting company founded by her husband, Todd Dexter.

For eight years she served as Marlin Maddoux’s co-host on Point of View and for two years she co-hosted a daily drive time live broadcast on the Dallas-based Criswell Radio Network.

Penna’s interest in conservative politics and the issues that affect the family began when she was a child working on political campaigns with her parents. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in International Relations. She spent 8 years in the banking industry. Penna and her husband Todd are members of Trinity Presbyterian Church, they have three adult children.

Howard Goldthwaite is the Senior Director of Creative Strategy at First Liberty Institute, the nation’s largest nonprofit law firm exclusively dedicated to defending religious liberty.

He spent many years as a Creative Director, working at several large advertising agencies where he created national campaigns for brands like Samsung, GlaxoSmithKline, BMW, Nestlé, Denny’s, and many more.

He’s a writer, speaker, and filmmaker, and teaches aspiring film students as an adjunct college professor.

You can watch his TEDx talk on Youtube: “A Banjo Player Overcomes the PR Disaster of the Movie ‘Deliverance.’”

As a lifetime doodler, he’s also is the creator of First Liberty’s own cartoon strip: “Jurisprunejuice.”

Howard Goldthwaite is a prolific writer, with over a dozenbooks on Amazon. You can see several of his books on his Facebook page: QuietTime Well Spent.

No American should be forced to sacrifice one constitutionally protected freedom to enjoy another.

Aggrieved atheists, annoyed agnostics and others troubled by a Nativity display, Hanukkah menorah or a poster celebrating Eid al-Fitr at a U.S. military base, might now have a harder time succeeding.  

GOP lawmakers are correct to say the US has sanctioned other countries for doing what the Colorado Supreme Court did to Donald Trump.

Switzerland recently announced it plans to eliminate tariffs on 95 percent of all imports. Donald Trump recently announced that as president he would impose tariffs of at least 10 percent on virtually all imports to ...

Conservatives have generally opposed the progressive left’s years-long effort to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) countries and companies the left doesn’t like.

The new animated video "No Better Letter" tells the true story of Thomas Jefferson's letter explaining the separation between church and state.  

We rarely connect the dots between feminism and our current societal woes.

First Liberty would like to share these two, beautifully illustrated children’s books as a free gift to all people of faith. These books are perfect for teaching your kids and grandkids how the Founding Fathers valued the freedom of all Americans to publicly exercise their faith.

Both books are perfect for parents and grandparents who want to pass on their love for religious liberty that God has blessed us with in America. These books also instill a strong passion to fiercely protect our precious freedoms—or they could quickly erode away.