Outside the Beltway

After an eleven hour day on Capitol Hill, it was Hillary Clinton 1 House Benghazi Committee 0.

With the top conservative caucus in Congress acquiescing to his candidacy, Paul Ryan is largely certain to become the next Speaker of the House.

Paul Ryan has never really wanted to be Speaker Of The House, but he’s take the job if House Republicans meet the conditions he’s set out.

A political earthquake north of the border.

A new poll shows an up-tick in public support for some gun control measures, but gun control advocates can’t ignore the political reality that says those restrictions are unlikely to ever become law.

If pre-election polling is to be believed, Stephan Harper and Canada’s Conservative Party seem likely to lose power after Monday’s elections, but there are several reasons why this may not end up being the case.

Another Republican Congressman has said that the Select Committee investigating the Benghazi attack is primarily concerned with scoring political points against Hillary Clinton.

Paul Ryan has yet to say if he will run for Speaker of the House, but that hasn’t stopped the opposition on the hard right from forming already.

California has become the second state to provide for automatic voter registration for all eligible voters when they obtain or renew a driver’s license.

Rand Paul’s flailing Presidential campaign seems to be raising concerns about his Senate seat among some Republicans.

Hillary Clinton has started to distance herself from President Obama on some issues. It’s an understandable strategy, but it carries many risks.

One of the nation’s preeminent polling firms is sitting out the 2016 primaries.

With just a day to go before House Republicans pick their candidate for Speaker, conservatives don’t seem to be able to unify behind a candidate.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus suggested that Iowa and New Hampshire shouldn’t get used to their place at the top of the primary calendar. He’s right, but fixing the crazy system that put them there isn’t going to be easy.

Congress will get a temporary funding bill passed in time to avoid a shutdown on Thursday, but it may just be delaying the inevitable.

Trump remains in the lead, but he has been steadily falling over the month of September. (And this triggers, as these things do, musings about institutions and our party system).

The seeds of the current peace deal date back to 2007-2008 (plus some longer-term background notes).

She’s where she’ belongs.

Big news out of Washington, D.C.

The latest effort by conservative Republicans to oust John Boehner appears to be coming to an unsurprising end.

To listen to many of the Republican candidates for President, it would appear that the lights have been turned out on Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

Britain’s Labour Party has taken a hard tilt left with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

A Federal Judge has ruled that part of a lawsuit filed by the House of Representatives can go forward, but the legal battle is far from over.

Some Republicans are threatening a government shutdown over funding of Planned Parenthood, but a new poll shows that it would be a big political risk for Republicans.

A Federal Appeals Court has upheld a 1949 law that bars protesters from the property around the Supreme Court building. This seems inconsistent with the Court’s recent First Amendment jurisprudence.

Another poll confirms the fact that Americans of all political stripes continue to hold Congress is disdain.

Carly Fiorina will most likely be excluded from CNN’s prime time debate in September, so of course her campaign is complaining about rules that were established months ago.

Today’s revision of Second Quarter G.D.P. growth was good news, but it doesn’t seem likely to last.

Donald Trump’s support in the polls appears to become coming largely from people who don’t typically vote in primary elections.

Even if Donald Trump isn’t the Republican nominee in 2016, he could still end up causing real harm to the party’s chances of winning the White House and holding on to the Senate.

If we are gong to assess the significance of Trump, we need to pay attention to the numbers.

There are no “anchor babies,” there are only Americans.

The July Jobs Report indicates that while the economy is growing, it is not growing very much. This seems to call the Federal Reserve’s interest rate plans into question.

The Senate Majority Leader says there will be no immigration reform while Obama is President. This is unlikely to help the GOP’s already serious problems with Latino voters.

A Federal Appeals Court has dealt a setback to Texas in the battle over its Voter ID Law.

The last three polls to be released before Thursday’s debate show Donald Trump continuing to solidify his lead.

Public opinion on the Supreme Court has declined significantly, largely because Republicans don’t like the Supreme Court very much right now.

Low costs and regulatory barriers are attracting people to red states–thus turning them purple and blue.

Hillary Clinton’s two biggest challengers were ambushed at a progressive political convention over the weekend.

We are still a ways from actual voting–this needs to be remembered.

There’s another round of reports about Joe Biden running for President, but I wouldn’t put much stock them.

The Huffington Post announced today that they would not be covering Donald Trump in their politics section from this point forward. That’s the wrong thing to do.

Relying on a particularly strained and incredulous legal analysis, the EEOC has ruled that laws against discrimination based on gender also bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.