Outside the Beltway

Congress seems no closer to a DACA deal than they were in January.

After an extended break for the Republican retreat, Congress heads back to work today with just three days before a possible government shutdown.

They’re right. And there’s precious little they can do about it.

Dodge is facing controversy this morning for using the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in a Super Bowl commercial, but they’re not the only party who may have some questions to answer.

Two Amtrak crashes in less than a week is newsworthy. It is not, however, a trend.

One of the oddities of military culture is the constan

A newly released poll has encouraging signs for Democrats in 2018, but there are several caveats.

A confusing new report from the Washington Post.

Have we reached the point where the processing speed, connectivity, and cameras on our smart phones are simply good enough?

The two most important allegations in the Nunes memo appear to be complete lies.

Will Joe Arpaio cause the GOP to lose an otherwise winnable Senate race?

Mostly it just tells us that Nunes and his allies are hacks.

President Trump is claiming that the Nunes memo vindicates him. He’s wrong.

He’s tan. He’s rested. He’s ready. And, yes, he’s running.

Senator Mark Warner, Vice-Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, says, “We Need Revolution, Not Just Evolution” in Security Clearances.”

My latest for The National Interest takes a contrarian view on the new National Defense Strategy.

National Review legal analyst David French argues that the Nunes memo actually undermines the central claim its proponents were seeking to bolster.

The 2008 Republican nominee for president condemned his party and its president for the release of a controversial memo attacking the FBI.

The military options thus far presented for dealing with the DPRK have not been satisfying.

Republicans have released the memo prepared by Congressman Devin Nunes that purports to call into question the basis for the Russia investigation. In the end, though, it amounts to much ado about nothing.

The first jobs report for 2018 beat expectation slightly, but the most positive signs came in the underlying data on wages.

After spending much of 2017 trying to do it, Republicans are giving up on any effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act before the midterms.

The current budget deal expires in six days and Congress doesn’t seem to know what it’s going to do about it.

The guy who found Al Capone’s vault wishes we had a guy like Sean Hannity back in the Watergate era.

What seems like a nothingburger story from CNN.

When it comes to foreign policy, Donald Trump has no over-arching philosophy and little knowledge, so don’t expect anything approaching a coherent doctrine from his Administration.

Donald Trump lies about even the most trivial matters, How are we supposed to believe anything else he says?

The lead story on Yahoo News at the moment, courtesy People magazine (“Robert Wagner Now Considered a ‘Person of Interest’ in Wife Natalie Wood’s Mysterious Death”):

Imagine a world where Hillary Clinton was President and stood accused of the same things Donald Trump and his campaign are currently under investigation for.

Robert Mueller’s investigators are looking at the President’s role in drafting a false statement regarding the June 2016 meeting between his son and a lawyer linked to the Russian government.

Chelsea Manning is running for Senate, but she may be violating military regulations by doing so.

In addition to deadlines on the Federal Budget and DACA, Congress also has to deal with the debt ceiling at some point in the next month.

Yesterday marked fifteen years since I launched Outside the Beltway on the old Blogspot service. 

John Kelly continues to throw away the good name he earned in decades of service as a Marine to serve the agenda of President Trump.

Yet another demand for a loyalty pledge from a law enforcement official by a President under investigation.

Embattled New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez has dodged a bullet, but still faces uncertain prospects for reelection.

Two weeks later, it’s still unclear what caused a false missile alert to be sent out in Hawaii.

A train carrying Republican Congressmen and Senators, and their families, was involved in a crash in western Virginia.

The President talked about national unity last night, but given his own rhetoric as a candidate and as a President, it’s a call that seems to be hypocritical.

A longstanding claim—that I myself believed to be true—is that spending money on preventative care like regular checkups would save money in the long run by catching health issues before they become acute. The evidence does not support this.

The White House’s immigration plan is facing opposition in both chambers of Congress from moderate and conservative Republicans alike.

In May, Irish voters will vote on a referendum to remove the near-universal ban on abortion in the nation’s Constitution. And it looks as though it will pass.

Once again, President Trump is going soft on Russia. Why? I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide.

Do yourself a favor and skip the State Of The Union Address tonight. You won’t be missing anything important.

Andrew McCabe has stepped down as the FBI’s number two after months of attacks from President Trump.