Outside the Beltway

For the most part, April’s jobs report was good news.

The Pew Center is out with a new political typology.

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

There’s not much movement in the President’s job approval numbers.

The bottom line is that the problem with the Ryan Plan is the Ryan Plan.

Americans are rallying around the President in the wake of the mission against bin Laden, but it’s likely to be short-lived.

Obama’s main politics are hardly as leftist as many make them out to be. Indeed, much of them could have fit well in the the GOP of 1990s and early 2000s.

Why are many of the top Republicans are sitting out the race despite a seemingly vulnerable incumbent?

So, some bright people are surprised at new polling showing that a significant minority of Southerners have not enthusiastically embraced their ancestors’ loss in the Civil War.

President Obama is suffering in the polls because of high gas prices, but is there really anything he can do about them?

Contempt for Congress is an old American tradition. Unfortunately.

The new CBS/NYT poll is out and the numbers are not exactly happy, no matter whom you support.

Standard & Poor’s didn’t believe the Obama Administration’s argument that Washington would be able to fix the deficit. There’s no reason they should have.

It is waaay too early to be putting much stock in polling for 2012 (either in terms of X v. Obama or GOP v. GOP).

According to a new poll, the American public still isn’t sold on the idea of cutting entitlements to cut the budget deficit.

Charles Krauthammer called Donald Trump the “Al Sharpton” of the GOP presidential primary contest

One of the Tea Party movement’s favorite Senators used the dreaded c-word.

President Obama’s signing statement on the allocation of funds to Presidential “czars” sets a potentially dangerous Constitutional precedent.

We’re approaching the point where those job approval numbers start to matter, and President Obama’s are heading down again.

Will the Ryan Plan ever be voted out of the House?

The GOP seems to be telling President Obama that revenue increases are off the table. That’s a huge mistake.

Two new polls show that the public supports the budget deal, but has no idea what to do to solve our long term problems.

Paul Krugman is disappointed with the President, but it’s really his own fault for being so naive.

Did the GOP toss social conservatives under the bus when it gave away the Planned Parenthood rider?

What, if anything, does the budget deal mean for the future?

Games legislators play…

For the past day or so, America’s fighting men have been pawns in a cynical political game.

A government shutdown is not just a hypothetical in a debating contest. It will affect real people.