Outside the Beltway

While it has an admitted populist appeal. the idea of Congressional pay being withheld during a shutdown is a non-starter due to the Constitution.

With Congress out of town until at least Thursday and negotiations apparently deadlocked, the White House is saying it’s likely the shutdown will last into 2019.

President Trump announced today that James Mattis would be out as Secretary of Defense by the end of the year.

A preliminary report from Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan found at least 500 Catholic Priests whose abuse of children had been covered up by Church officials.

President Trump has lost another one of his top advisers on the fight against ISIS.

One of the strongest climate regulations in the country is almost certainly unconstitutional.

There was no progress on resolving the government shutdown today, and little hope that anything will happen before late next week.

President Trump is now apparently on the warpath against the Federal Reserve Board Chairman he appointed only a year ago.

While the political media is spending a lot of time talking about it, the actual impact of this latest government shutdown is likely to be limited and possibly even unnoticeable to most Americans.

Trump doesn’t understand (nor respect) the role of the Fed.

The government entered its third shutdown of the year with little sign of an immediate resolution.

Happy Friday!

The Pentagon is being ordered to draw up plans to withdraw roughly one-half of the American forces remaining in Afghanistan. It’s about time.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery to remove cancerous nodes from a lung, but reports seem to point to a quick recovery.

A Federal Judge has ruled that neither the Sheriff’s Office nor the School Board had a specific duty to protect individual students during the shooting last February in Parkland, Florida.

With just hours to go, a partial government shutdown is becoming more and more likely.

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 North Korean government is making clear what it means when it speaks of denuclearization, and its far different from what the United States means.

New York State seems likely to join the list of states where marijuana has been legalized sometime next year.

Tennessee will have an open Senate seat in 2020 thanks to Lamar Alexander’s decision to retire at the end of his current term.

The Senate passed a bill that keeps the government funded through the beginning of February, but fails to provide any funding for the President’s border wall.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed major reforms in Federal sentencing and related laws. As the name of the bill implies, it’s a first step, but a good first step.

The Trump Administration is reportedly preparing to withdraw the small contingent of American troops from Syria. If it actually happens, this would be a good move.

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

The mystery surrounding a secret proceeding in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation has at least partly been solved.

As expected, Bill Cosby’s lawyers have filed an appeal of his conviction earlier this year on sexual assault charges.

With three days to go before a government shutdown, there are at least some signs that the President may be backing away from his threats to shut down the government over funding for his border wall.

Under fire from the New York Attorney General, Donald Trump’s questionable charitable foundation is shutting down.

As expected, the Justice Department has issued a new rule banning bump stocks. However, it is likely to face legal challenges.

Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema will end up representing Arizona in the Senate together.

With the Friday night deadline fast approaching, nobody in Washington seems to know what’s going on.

Republicans scored a win in Court last week, but it seems likely to lead to a political loss in the long-term.

After a barrage of criticism, New Jersey Democrats are abandoning a controversial redistricting proposal.

Mystery continues to surround a proceeding that has been making its way through the Federal Courts in Washington, D.C.

As Washington heads into the final days of a budget shutdown, Republicans find themselves on the losing end of a public relations battle.

Former Vice-President Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders are, not surprisingly, leading the early polls for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

An argument against “bothersiderism” in this case and, yet again, noting the problem with single seat districts.

Thanks apparently to the fact that it remained unwilling to get in line behind the Trumpidians, the conservative owner of The Weekly Standard has shut the magazine down.

The scandal-plagued Secretary of the Interior is leaving office at the end of the year.

On the way out the door, Scott Walker signed a bill to take powers away from his successor (and demonstrated a lack of understanding of Venn diagrams).

Eight years after it was signed into law, a Federal Judge has ruled the Affordable Care Act to be unconstitutional.

Trump has selected current Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to replace John Kelly as Chief of Staff, but that’s unlikely to change how the West Wing operates.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor contends that a recent change in tax law unravels the basis for the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare.

Another piece of humanity has left the Solar System.

In a small, but meaningful, step, the Senate has rebuked the Administration’s policies toward the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Jon Kyl was named to replace John McCain back in September, but as expected he’s already announcing that he’ll be leaving at the end of the year.

More evidence that President Trump was an active participant in the scheme to silence Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels in advance of the 2016 election.