Outside the Beltway

Romney’s VFW speech was filled with tropes and bromides but nothing that should raise eyebrows.

Rick Perry placed his cowboy boots firmly on the third rail of American politics.

Dick Cheney’s long-awaited book’s out and he promises lots of bombshells that will have heads exploding in DC.

The world is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gave the strongest signal ever that there will be some U.S. military presence in Iraq after December 31st.

If we cannot adequately diagnose our problems it will be even harder to fix them.

House Republicans are being criticized for utilizing a tactic they learned from Senate Democrats.

The cuts to Pentagon spending in the new debt deal are further revealing a split in the GOP over foreign policy and military spending.

In the 80’s it was yachts, today it’s private jets. The argument is the same, and it’s still without merit.

On paper, the U.S. lost $1.3 billion on the Chrysler bankruptcy, but the true cost is far higher than that.

How much of an American can you be if you are willing to wreck the economy for political gain.

The US Supreme Court declined to stay the execution of a child raping murderer over a technical violation of a treaty.

Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman reports on an alleged secret CIA interrogation facility somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

Barack Obama’s leadership style may be his undoing.

Contrary to what Senator McCain, seeking realism in military policy does not make one an isolationist.

The race for the GOP nomination is taking shape.

An ex-CIA agent says that someone in the Bush White House tried to use the agency to “discredit” Iraq War critic Juan Cole.

It was a good day in Court for opponents of the Affordable Care Act.

Rand Paul has borrowed a bad idea from the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Marc Thiessen claims Khalid Sheikh Mohammad mocked the CIA interrogators who waterboarded him.

John McCain thoroughly dismantles the argument that Osama bin Laden’s capture vindicates the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

For the first time, a majority of Republicans support creation of a third political party. Does it really mean anything?

The defense of torture as an extreme measure for extraordinary circumstances has evolved.tortu

The debate over “enhanced interrogations” has been renewed by the bin Laden mission, but whether it “worked” or not isn’t the question.

A study shows that most national columnists and talking heads are about as accurate as a coin flip.

Rush Limbaugh heaps praise on President Obama for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

One can almost hear the pitter-patter of American boots in the distance.

Once again, President Obama has ignored Candidate Obama’s promises to reign in the Presidential powers assumed by George W. Bush.

The Obama Administration is resisting efforts to expand Fourth Amendment protections to services like Gmail. That’s unfortunate.

The Obama Administration has given up on the idea of trying the September 11th suspects in a civilian court. Considering how much that trial would have perverted the justice system, that’s a good thing.

President Obama says he acted in Libya to avert an imminent genocide, but there’s no evidence that any such thing was about to occur.

Ten days after sending American forces into kinetic military action in Libya, President Obama addressed the nation to explain “what we’ve done, what we plan to do, and why this matters to us.”