Outside the Beltway

President Obama’s selection of Bill Daley as Chief of Staff is being seen as a sign that the White House is moving to the center and gearing up for 2012.

President Obama’s comments about the “relatively modest pay” earned by Robert Gibbs and other high level government workers may be a bit tone deaf. But they’re right.

The filibuster reform package that Senate Democrats unveiled yesterday has much to recommend to it. Unfortunately, it’s probably doomed.

Is the filibuster essential for the Senate to function as designed?

Anti-Immigrant groups are beginning their assault on the 14th Amendment, but don’t expect it to go anywhere.

Honest pundits will tell you that it’s simply too early to make useful predictions about the 2012 elections.

In a new interview, Justice Antonin Scalia says that the 14th Amendment does not bar discrimination against women, whether it’s done by public or private entities. He couldn’t be more wrong.

David Kurtz reports, “House Republicans are about to use “deem and pass” — a.k.a., a self-executing rule — which you may recall was the same legislative mechanism they decried last year during the health care reform debate as a threat to all that is right and good about America.”

The author of AZ’s SB1070 has a new idea.

Compromise in politics involves more than compromising one’s principles.

Some people in the D.C. area are worried that the Federal spending gravy train may be coming to an end. They should be.

Andrew Sullivan makes a rather bizarre charge offhandedly: “Who among the neocons would have thought that one of George W. Bush’s final legacies would be bringing pogroms, bombings and genocide to Christians in his new zone of freedom?”

Is there a legalization argument building?

Freshman Members of Congress are threatening to block a vote to raise the debt ceiling that Congress will have to take by this Spring. They’d be irresponsible if they did so.

The next round in the health care reform wars is about to start.

Diplomacy means having to be nice.

Chicago’s next mayor will be either Rahm Emanuel or Carol Moseley Braun.