Outside the Beltway

Edward Snowden has likely violated many laws, but, absent additional facts, treason is not one of them.

Your latest Outrage Of The Day.

Opponents of immigration reform are using “border security” as a shield to hide their true desire to kill the very idea of immigration reform.

A new Congressional Budget Office report finds real economic benefits from immigration reform.

Does it matter if political leaders like each other on some personal level? Sometimes it does.

An absolutely ridiculous criminal case out of West Virginia.

Why did House Republicans vote overwhelmingly for a bill that their own theories would find to be unconstitutional?

There are risks to Republicans in blocking immigration reform, but there are also incentives for them to block immigration reform. Getting past that contradiction to passage isn’t going to be easy.

John Boehner clearly wants to see an immigration bill passed this year, but he has a very narrow path to victory.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court narrowly decided a case on the right against self-incrimination that is likely to do great harm to individual rights.

Scott Walker could be the GOP’s surprise candidate in 2016.

Two polls indicate that most Americans oppose the President’s latest moves on Syria. This makes sense considering actual policy there seems to be entirely incoherent.

Today’s decision by the Supreme Court was, on the surface, a victory for Federal Supremacy, but the issue itself is far from resolved.

President Obama’s poll numbers seem to be suffering under the weight of nearly two months of scandals and/ media attention.

Today is the deadline for Darryl Issa to respond to a request from Elijah Cummings to defend a decision not to release IRS interview transcripts. What happens if Issa doesn’t respond?

Public trust in the news media, along with many other institutions, continues to fall. That’s troublesome for many reasons.

Detroit faces some immense problems. Papering over them with short term deals with creditors isn’t going to solve them.

The Chairman of the RNC wants the GOP to hold its quadrennial convention earlier in the year. He’s right.

A song written when Grover Cleveland was President is still protected by Copyright Law. That makes no sense at all.

Did President Obama’s comments about taking a tough stand on military sexual assault constitute “undue influence” on specific cases? One military judge says that they did.

The GOP seems to be making the same mistakes that led to defeat in 2012.

If one is going to be in government, one ought to take governing seriously.

The U.S. is now confirming that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons. What’s next?

Congress gets bad grades in Gallup’s latest poll, and gridlock is the main reason

Thanks to the Supreme Court, your DNA cannot be patented.

There is an important difference between private companies holding private data and government holding it.

Outrage over leaks like those that Edward Snowden makes doesn’t exist when its politicians doing the leaking.

My latest for The Atlantic, “Why Should Congress and the Courts Care About Snooping If Citizens Don’t?” has posted.

Former President Bill Clinton says President Obama should ignore the polls and intervene in Syria.