Outside the Beltway

Rand Paul’s filibuster is one that all American’s should thank him for that.

The Chinese are hacking Washington institutions to unearth the secret plan under which the town operates.

Cory Booker’s decision to explore a run for the U.S. Senate has upset the powers-that-be in New Jersey Democratic politics.

Arab news giant Al-Jazeera is buying Al Gore’s failing Current TV network, hoping to get a bigger presence in the US cable market.

Alex Pareene’s annual hack list omits an obvious candidate: Alex Pareene.

Jake Tapper is moving to CNN, where he’ll host a daily show and run their political coverage.

Is it good to live in a world where news of a massacre can travel around the world in an instant?

Almost a decade ago, Roger Ebert wondered if making mass murderers famous doesn’t provide a perverse incentive.

Barack Obama’s Washington is more foul-mouthed and course, according to no evidence whatsoever.

Why do natural disasters cause the news media to act so stupidly?

Once again, it seems necessary to debunk some commonly believed myths about polling.

Should we stop televising political debates?

Getting to the heart of the problem from my POV (plus historical numbers).

Not exactly journalism.

Public distrust of the media is at an all-time high. It’s easy to see why.

The recent;y concluded party conventions are further evidence that the events have largely outlived their usefulness.

President Obama didn’t blow the doors off the Time Warner Cable Arena last night, but he didn’t need to.

Depending on what time you watched any of last night’s proceedings in Charlotte, you got a very different experience.

Not surprisingly, Romney campaigns staffers don’t seem to want to take responsibility for Clint Eastwood’s performance last night.

Mitt Romney’s speech last night was the best he’s ever given, but it’s impact may have been undercut but several odd production decisions that preceded it.

Maybe the real problem this year isn’t that the campaign is unduly nasty, but that it’s incredibly petty.

The quadrennial political conventions have become, long, boring, tedious, and largely predetermined. It’s time to shake things up by making them a lot shorter.

Because of a culture where being first is more important than being right, ABC News made a few mistakes in its Friday morning coverage of the Colorado shootings.

Once again, the usual suspects are exploiting tragedy for political purposes.

Mitt Romney has had a rough two weeks, but Barack Obama has to deal with a bad economy.

The Romney campaign went on television to address the Bain issue, but again they just seem to have muddied the water.

Are infrastructure projects the key to turning around the economy? Not really.

None of the cable news networks did particularly well last night.

The people who gave us the “war on Christmas” are now touting an upsurge on black-on-white crime.

Richard Grenell’s time as Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman lasted less than a month. The fact that he’s gay appears to be the reason it ended.

Thanks to a media that focuses obsessively on irrelevancies, we now have a permanent political silly season.

The George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case takes yet another bizarre turn.

Once again, the punditocracy seems to have misread the voting public.

It’s time to let the legal system do its job.

The Etch A Sketch meme isn’t nearly as powerful as those pushing it believe it to be.

George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin met on the night of February 27th. Martin died, and a firestorm has erupted.

If you listen to the punditocracy, you’d think that there’s actually a doubt as to who the GOP nominee will be.

There’s an entire industry that profits from exploiting political controversy and division. Why do we let them get away with it?

This is no way to pick a Presidential Nominee.