Outside the Beltway

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

Changing our relationship status to Complicated.

And when did it know it?

Breaking News.

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).

To borrow a phrase: budgeting is the science of muddling through (with an emphasis on the “muddling” far more than the “science.”

Games legislators play…

Glenn Beck will leave his Fox News show in December.

Republican budget cuts to this point have been less than serious.

A look at history reveals that President Obama’s decision to decline to defend Section Three of DOMA is hardly unprecedented.

Yet again: to the Commerce Clause!

Is Jon Stewart a useful idiot?

Should public schoolteachers make more money than the people paying their salaries?

Hosni Mubarak has stepped down — for reals this time.

While earlier in the day the indications were that Mubarak was on his way out, Mubarak himself had different plans it would seem. The question becomes: now what?

Do conservatives believe in evolution and global warming?

Glenn Beck seems to have more in common with End Time preachers than he does with a serious political analyst.

It seems to me that inactivity can have just as profound affects as activity and likewise that it is rather difficult to argue that health care isn’t part of interstate commerce.

Breaking news from CNN.

Ok, oh scolders, what is it you want us to be blogging about in lieu of discussing a certain Hockey Mom?

Time for midterms.

Pedestrian fatalities are up. Experts blame Michelle Obama.

Factions on the right and left continue to charge one another with trying to politicize the Tucson murders. They’re now nitpicking the memorial service.

We really need a better understanding of mental health disorders in this county, and events like those over the weekend underscore this fact.

More breaking news on the shooting-in this case, about the shooter.

I don’t like it when things my allies say are misquoted and attacked; it’s no better when my allies do it.

Constitutional interpretation is easy, right?

Was John McCain’s place of birth as big an issue to the fringe left as Obama’s has been (and continues to be) to the fringe right?

What the Haley Barbour situation illustrates is that we, as a country, have not fully accepted or dealt with our own past.

The repeal of DADT has resulted in some odd claims being made.

The Congress has passed a repeal of DADT.

Tonight’s topics: the Republican effort to run out the clock on the 111th Congress, various reform proposals that are floating around, and goodness knows what else.

Since when is working the week before Christmas sacrilege?

Tonight’s topics: The tax cut deal, Obama’s primary challengers, and whether politicians should care about the unemployed.

Why would policy outcomes be different under the 17th Amendment?

If 33 states can muster support to kill a law, how would it have gotten enacted to begin with?

Are the interests of a given state different than the interests of the people living in that state?

Tonight’s topics: The fallout from the latest WikiLeaks dump and the Pentagon’s report on gays in the military.

The major outlets that received document drops from Wikileaks are covering the story in different and interesting ways.

Tonight’s topics: Escalation on the Korean peninsula, the continued woes of the eurozone, and goodness knows what else.

Tonight’s topics: New airline screening measures, Karzai vs. Petraeus, political infighting among victorious Republicans, and the defeated Democrats keeping their leadership intact.

So will there be an efficacious backlash against TSA policies? I am guessing no.