Outside the Beltway

A novel proposal for making SCOTUS appointments more responsive to election outcomes.

The Senate yesterday confirmed a 37-year-old to a lifetime Court of Appeals seat.

President Trump’s detailed schedules reveal a man who doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time actually working.

More than any recent President, Donald Trump displays a tremendous amount ignorance about the world. Even worse is the fact that he seems proud of it.

Two more defections from the stable of writers at RedState provide further proof of the extent to which conservative media has become a pro-Trump echo chamber.

President Trump is claiming he never said Mexico would directly pay for the wall, except for all those times when he said Mexico would directly pay for the wall.

President Trump is claiming that he could use authority to declare a “national emergency” to build his wall even if Congress doesn’t authorize it.

President Trump is making clear that he doesn’t care how his shutdown is impacting Federal workers.

As the shutdown drags on, Mitch McConnell finds himself facing pressure from the White House and from members of his own caucus.

In what clearly appears to be a rebuke of the President, Defense Secretary James Mattis is retiring as Secretary of Defense.

Hours before the House was set to vote on a temporary funding bill for the government, President Trump has apparently changed his mind.

The latest entry in the unity third party presidential candidate genre is just as bad as they always are.

The publisher of the National Enquirer admits that it made payments to a Playboy model for the purpose of protecting Donald Trump’s campaign for President.

While most Hollywood blockbusters have male leads, films starring women actually do better on the aggregate.

Once again, President Trump is threatening a shutdown over the border wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for.

The continued problem cause by a lack of shared reality.

An effort by the Federal Government to prosecute Wikileaks founder Julian Assange raises serious First Amendment issues.

Even as its leader continues to deny the reality of Global Climate Change, the Trump Administration has released an utterly devastating report on the impact of such change over the course of the coming decades.

Somewhere, Tim Russert is smiling.

My latest for War on the Rocks.

My latest for The National Interest.

Donald Trump’s lies became even more frequent during the recently-concluded campaign season.

The emergence of a silly talking point.

Rather than cauterizing an open wound, she’s fanned the fuels of a fire.

Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA report showing that she does indeed have some Native American heritage in her family’s past. That won’t stop conservatives from continuing to attack her, though.

Part III is here (a lot sooner than Part II was).

The second installment of a seemingly forgotten series.

The first poll taken in the wake of the Kavanaugh nomination fight suggests the voter enthusiasm gap is shifting toward Democrats.

Math rules.

The Kavanaugh fight is just another indicator of our national divide.

I’ve changed my mind on a couple of things and hardened my opinion on others.

Less than a day before a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a third woman has come forward with new allegations involving Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Republicans have set a Judiciary Committee vote for less than a day after hearing from Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Why a much-cited analogy in the Brett Kavanaugh controversy is problematic.

We’ll likely never know whether the Supreme Court nominee is a sexual assaulter. But it really doesn’t matter.

We should take Congressional officers out of the line of succession.

A basic explanation for Trump’s behavior towards Russia.

President Trump says he wants to talk to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but his own lawyers clearly don’t trust him enough to allow that to go forward.

Some Democrats want to compel President Trump’s translator to testify about his private meeting with Vladimir Putin. That’s a bad idea.

One day after an embarrassing performance at the Helsinki Summit, President Trump an absurd, completely unbelieve walk back of things the entire world heard him say loud and clear.

President Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin was an even bigger disaster than anticipated.

Another poll shows that the vast majority of Americans do not want to see the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade overturned.

The NATO Summit is going about as well as can be expected.

At least in these early days, Democrats appear to lack a coherent message, or a coherent strategy, to propel any effort to block Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

There’s a reason President Trump’s Supreme Court picks are “normal” in a way his national security and economic teams are not.

There are good arguments as to why progressive Senators should vote against his confirmation. Let’s stick to those.

The President is generating so much outrage on a daily basis that we’re missing important stories.

America promised immigrants who volunteered to serve in our military a fast track to citizenship. Now, we’re throwing them out.

It’s more complicated than one might think.

Today is a great day to reflect on the Enlightenment ideals that fueled a Declaration.