Outside the Beltway

An entirely unsurprising decision from Federal Prosecutors in Washington, D.C.

More interesting developments from the Supreme Court on what has been one of the biggest legal stories of 2014.

The budget bill Congress set to pass Congress would effectively reverse the will of the voters of Washington, D.C., who just voted to legalize marijuana.

The House of Representatives has filed its lawsuit against the President. As expected, it doesn’t amount to much.

For better or worse, Marion Barry was a fixture in D.C. politics for much of the 40 year period of home rule that began in 1975.

The process that seems likely to lead to a Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage has begun.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Supreme Court has accepted the appeal of a case that could completely gut the financial structure of the Affordable Care Act.

Tuesday’s Republican wave didn’t change the fundamentals.

Big victories for advocates of marijuana legalization.

Two states and the nation’s capital could have legal marijuana after Tuesday’s elections.

A Federal Judge has dismissed lawsuits filed by Tea Party groups over the IRS targeting scandal.

New York State’s gun law takes rights away from nearly 35,000 people without any due process whatsoever.

The Roberts court has been very good on First Amendment issues, but it needs to address the First Amendment issue right outside its front windows.

A national sandwich chain makes its employees sign a very restrictive covenant not to compete. It’s probably not enforceable.

A District of Columbia Judge has ruled that photographs of women taken in public do not violate the law.

The die is cast.

By failing to act, the Supreme Court has effectively legalized same-sex marriage in eleven more states.

The security lapses at the Secret Service just continue to mount.

A legal setback for the Affordable Care Act, but the important arguments on this issue lie in higher courts.

The Supreme Court has issued a stay that will allow changes to Ohio’s early voting law to remain in effect for this year’s election. That was the correct decision.

Facts are stubborn things.

Justice Ginsburg had some interesting things to say about the same-sex marriage cases headed to the Supreme Court.

Could John Hinckley, Jr. face murder charges 30 years after his attempted assassination of President Reagan?

Another Obamacare case is heading to the Supreme Court, but it’s unclear if they’ll agree to hear it, or when they’d hear it if they did.

A Federal Appeals Court has rejected a challenge to Obamacare based on a somewhat obscure provision of the Constitution.

In a logical extension of the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller, a Federal Judge has struck down D.C.’s law barring people from carrying handguns in public.

Contradictory rulings from two Federal Courts of Appeal show that statutory construction isn’t a simple thing.

My latest collaboration with Butch Bracknell, “Ahmed Abu Khattala and the Miranda-Rights Question,” has posted in The National Interest.

A Federal Appeals Court has struck down a D.C. law requiring tour guides to get a license and pass a test.

The justice system works, there’s no need to scrap it.

House Republicans go to war against marijuana in the District of Columbia

Ahmed Abu Kattalah, the alleged ringleader of the September 2012 attack in Benghazi, has been arrested.

Obsessing over what a politician believed in the past accomplishes nothing.

How the richest man in the world quickly changed the education curriculum in 45 states.

And Pennsylvania makes it 19.

The Democrats have a big advantage in the Electoral College, at least for now.

Crony capitalism in The Sooner State.

Wisconsin recently became the third state to criminalize revenge porn. Why is it still legal in the other 47?

New York has joined nine other states and the District of Columbia to vote to for an Electoral College bypass.

The Second Amendment isn’t broken, and you don’t fix things that aren’t broken.