Debra Saunders

Debra J. Saunders (born 1954) is the White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review Journal. Prior to taking that position she was a political satirist for the San Francisco Chronicle She is syndicated by Creators Syndicate, and is carried by newspapers throughout the country and on townhall.com.

Between 1987 and 1992, Saunders was a columnist and editorial writer for the Los Angeles Daily News. She has previously worked for conservative advocacy groups and for a Republican leader of the California State Assembly.

In addition to her columns, Ms. Saunders has written for The Wall Street Journal, National Review and Reader's Digest. She is the author of one book, The World According to Gore (ISBN 1-893554-14-7).

Saunders is married to Wesley J. Smith.

Although viewed by some as a conservative Republican, Saunders consistently opposed the War on Drugs. She campaigned in her column for President Bush to issue more pardons and sentence commutations. She also supports same-sex marriage.

Saunders voted against Proposition 22 but was critical of the California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.

In 2007, she penned an article that criticized the imprisoned freelance blogger Josh Wolf, although she opposed his imprisonment.

Saunders puts herself in the "agnostic/skeptic global-warming camp,".

In 2011, she was the first to break the story about the comic and trading card series Foreskin Man, which was being used to promote a ballot initiative to ban circumcision in San Francisco.

Saunders is on record as supporting the death penalty, and has opposed clemency for Stanley Tookie Williams and Kevin Cooper (writing a denunciation of Judge William Fletcher and 11 judges on the ninth circuit when they accused the state of deliberately forging evidence and sabotaging Cooper's hearing in 2005). In 2015 she appeared on Death Row Stories explaining why she felt Cooper was guilty.