Outside the Beltway

Dan Coats is stepping down as Director of National Intelligence, and President Trump wants to replace him with an inexperienced, obsequious toady.

While much of the talk about Robert Mueller’s testimony has focused on the Trump campaign, there was another part to his testimony that brings attention to a far more serious threat.

The evidence is clear that Russia interfered in the election in 2016 and intends to do so again. Despite this, Mitch McConnell is blocking legislation designed to enhance election security.

In contrast to the idea of granting statehood to the District of Columbia, the American public appears to strongly support statehood for Puerto RIco.

On Wednesday, much of official Washington, and likely a good part of the country itself, will pause to watch what are likely to biggest hearings since the late 1980s.

He could lose the popular vote by an even larger margin in 2020—and still coast to re-election.

Once again, twenty candidates will participate in the second debate scheduled to take place over two nights at the end of the month.

Just over nine years after retiring from the Supreme Court, former Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has passed away at the age of 99.

The House of Representatives passed a defense spending bill that seeks to limit Presidential authority when it comes to striking Iran and aideing the Saudi war on Yemen.

After a firestorm of criticism for his handling of a decade-old plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta has resigned.

Detroit shows how modern technology can lead to a virtual police state.

A weird media narrative has formed.

Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was formally charged with multiple counts of procuring underage girls for sexual molestation.

Well, of course they are.

Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire investor previously charged with sex crimes involving minors, has been charged with sex trafficking involving minors.

Let’s call it what it is.

Democrats clashed, to some degree, in last night’s inaugural debate of the 2020 season but they clearly agreed far more than they disagreed.

Various federal and state agencies are enforcing existing laws while Congress scrambles to update them.

A Florida Woman is being charged with felony burglary after breaking into her estranged husband’s apartment to seize his guns and give them to the police.

Following through on a threat made by the President earlier this week, immigration authorities are reportedly planning mass raids aimed primarily at immigrant families starting tomorrow.

Another woman has accused President Trump of sexually assaulting her some 20 years ago.

The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s sex offender registry violates due process protections in the state and Federal Constitutions.

Not surprisingly, the President’s opening speech of the 2020 campaign was filed with lies.

President Trump’s opening rally of the 2020 campaign sounded an awful lot like a rally from 2016

Hospital phone lines are being overwhelmed.

Four years ago, Donald Trump began his campaign for President. What has followed has been as bad as could have been predicted that day.

Today’s edition of “I Am Not Making This Up,”

Texas has become the latest state to eliminate red-light cameras amid increasing evidence that they are largely counterproductive.

At least some conservatives appear to finally be recognizing that their movement has been taken over by grifters and frauds. The only question is, what took them so long?

Donald Trump has betrayed the legacy and the sacrifices of the soldiers who fought their way onto the beaches of Normandy.

Scot Peterson, the school resource officer who hid from fire during last year’s school shooting in Florida has been charged criminally. The legal basis for those charges seems flimsy.

David Brooks joins the long line of commenters predicting the GOP’s demise.

Last week, New Hampshire became the latest state to repeal the death penalty. Thus becoming the 21st state to do so.

A new report indicates that Russian social media trolls are involved in spreading anti-vaccination propaganda in the United States and elsewhere.

Strong public records laws, not an excess of weirdness, has driven a sad meme.

Just over a month after he entered the race, Joe Biden has a commanding lead over his fellow Democrats while Bernie Sanders has several candidates hot on his heels.

In the latest development in the child sex abuse investigations in the Catholic Church in the United States, five former Priests in Michigan have been arrested on sex abuse charges.

Earlier this week, SpaceX deployed the first 60 satellites in a network that could result in Internet access from virtually anywhere in the world.

As the Administration continues to stonewall legitimate requests from Congress for documents and witnesses, pressure is growing on Speaker Pelosi to authorize the opening of an impeachment inquiry.

The House has passed legislation that would extend the protections of the Civil Rights Act to LGBT Americans, but it is probably doomed in the Senate.

The size of the Democratic Presidential field, combined with other things peculiar to the way Democrats pick their nominee, is leading some to wonder if we might see a brokered convention in 2020.

As expected, the House Judiciary Committee voted yesterday on party lines to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for refusing to turn over a full copy of the Mueller Report

Recent poll numbers suggest that the President is vulnerable in the part of the country that assured his Electoral College victory in 2020, but Democrats are going to have to work hard to flip these states.

With the apparent failure of the coup attempt in Venezuela, what happens next?

Lacking any real support from the military or police, the attempted coup against Nicolas Maduro has predictably failed.

Breaking News out of Latin America

A Federal Appeals Court recently found that chalking the tires of a car parked in a public place is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. It’s not at all clear that this decision is correct.

A novel argument, untested in court, suggests that it might.

Trump campaign officials are worried about the President’s chances of holding onto a state that was crucial to his win in 2020. They should be.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears poised to uphold the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.