Outside the Beltway

Donald Trump’s demagoguery and disdain for individual liberty enters a new phase.

Republicans insist that uttering the words “Radical Islamic Terrorism” is somehow important in the fight against ISIS and other terror networks, but it is entirely unclear what doing so would accomplish.

Hillary Clinton’s attempt to explain her relationship with Wall Street and banking interests makes it sound like she’s channeling Rudy Giuliani.

We are legally, morally, and practically obligated to respond. Let’s not do so stupidly.

We can draw a rather direct line from the Iraq war to the rise of ISIS.

Ben Carson displays incoherence and ignorance on foreign policy issues that disqualify him from being considered a serious candidate for President of the United States.

In the wake of President Obama’s to send Special Forces to Syria, a new poll finds the public doesn’t like the idea very much.

President Obama is set to sign a military spending bill that effectively guarantees that his 2008 campaign promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will go unfulfilled.

A new Gallup poll shows public approval of Congress once again approaching historic lows, but it means far less than anyone thinks.

American intelligence officials are saying that a Russian passenger jet that went down over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula was most likely brought down by a bomb.

Another day, another military escalation in the Middle East.

Instead of eliminating the Department of Education, Ben Carson wants to give it a new, bizarre, and dangerous mission.

Another Republican Congressman has said that the Select Committee investigating the Benghazi attack is primarily concerned with scoring political points against Hillary Clinton.

The man who will likely be the next Speaker of the House accidentally acknowledged the real motivation behind the Select Committee investigating, yet again, the Benghazi attack.

The Taliban dealt a major defeat to a numerically superior Afghan Army force, raising questions about just how well Afghanistan can defend itself on its own.

A Texas 9th Grader named Ahmed Mohammed was arrested because school officials and police refused to believe that the clock he built wasn’t a bomb.

A front page cover on yesterday’s murders in Virginia crosses the line from reporting to exploitation.

Get ready for another pointless political circus.

A Federal Appeals Court In Washington has ruled that the military tribunal convictions of one group of Guantanamo Bay detainees was unconstitutional.

The American people don’t believe that liberty should be sacrificed in the name of security, but their leaders largely don’t care.

Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

The Senate returns tomorrow to try to pass an extension of the PATRIOT Act before it expires, but it may not be able to do so.

The first batch of email from Hillary Clinton regarding the 2012 attack in Benghazi have been released, and they don’t reveal anything we didn’t already know.

Seymour Hersh is out with a conspiracy theory about the death of Osama bin Laden that just doesn’t make sense.

A Judge in New Jersey has ruled that the twin children of a New Jersey woman were in fact fathered by two different men.

Largely in reaction to revelations about N,S.A. surveillance, Germany has cut back on its intelligence cooperation with the United States.

Some observations about Stewart’s interview (and some digression from me–okay, a lot of digression by me).

President George W. Bush had a running battle with the CIA throughout his eight years in office. Now, they’ve given him an award.

Another tone deaf action from leading Republicans.

Ben Carson is inching closer to running for President, and he’s continuing to pander to the most extreme elements of the Republican Party.

President Obama will ask Congress to authorize a war he started six months ago.

Has the legislative branch abdicated its responsibility in US foreign policy?

Some are criticizing the President for not going to Paris for yesterday’s rally.

The men responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre are dead, but the problems for France, and the rest of Europe, may just be at the beginning.

Reversing a previous decision, Sony will allow The Interview to be screened in a small number of theaters.

In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on C.I.A. torture, some have suggested that eight years of Jack Bauer helped make torture more acceptable to the American public.

The U.S. Government has formally charged North Korea with responsibility for the hacking attack on Sony. How to respond to that attack is a more complicated question.

The costs of more than a decade of war are far higher than many ever thought, and we’re still paying the price for the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration while they were being fought.

Hackers who have divulged embarrassing secrets from deep within Sony Pictures are now threatening violence if a film about a plot to kill Kim Jong Un is released.

Was Man Haron Monis a terrorist, or just a lone nut who had latched on to the rhetoric of ISIS to justify his own delusions? In the end, it hardly matters.

Vice-President Cheney’s amoral defense of torture has come to define how most conservatives view the issue, and that’s a problem.

What now?

The shocking has become routine. We’re no safer because of it.