Today is our Weekend Edition show and we glad you could join us on this Presidential Inauguration Friday. Joining Kerby around the table today is Penna Dexter, Nick Pitts and Dr. Merrill Matthews. They will take a look at the inauguration and other top stories in the news. Weigh in with your opinion, call us in-studio at 800-351-1212.
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. She and her husband Todd have three children who are in their twenties. They are members of Trinity Presbyterian Church.
He came to the Denison Forum in 2014 after a fateful conversation with its founder, Dr. Jim Denison. Pitts, a Ph.D. candidate at Dallas Baptist University (DBU), had spent the summer studying at Oxford with other students and faculty including Denison, a visiting professor.
He contributes to the Forum in the areas of geopolitics and popular culture, as well as serving as the editor of the Daily Briefing. He continues work on his doctorate and serves as an adjunct professor at DBU, teaching a master’s level course in the philosophy of leadership.
His Ph.D. research centers upon John F. Kennedy’s engagement of the religious community in the 1960 presidential campaign. He presented a paper on the topic at Calvin College’s 2015 symposium on religion and public life.
He is an editor at large for The Liberty Project, an online magazine, and his op-eds have been published by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Religion News Service and Townhall.com.
He received a bachelor’s degree in 2007 from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and a master’s degree in 2009 from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
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.