Maureen Dowd (born January 14, 1952) is a Washington D.C.-based columnist for The New York Times. She has worked for the Times since 1983, when she joined as a metropolitan reporter. In 1999, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her series of columns on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Dowd was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of five children, where her father (who was born in County Clare in Ireland) worked as a Washington D.C. police inspector. (via Wikipedia)