Outside the Beltway

Surprising pollsters and political analysts down under, Australia’s ruling center-right coalition pulled off a big win in Saturday’s election.

Some context for ongoing discussions.

Free expression sometimes enables horrible crimes. How does a free society deal with that tension?

It’s been a rough two years under Trump, but America’s institutions are surviving.

One hundred years after the end of World War One, the forces that led to it are waking up from a long slumber.

Anti-Semitic violence has increased markedly over the past two years. So has the spread of far-right “anti-Globalist” conspiracy theories. This is not a coincidence.

Angela Merkel announced yesterday that she would step aside as Chancellor at the end of her current term. What that means for the short and long term future of Germany and Europe is unclear.

Even if all he gets out of the Helsinki Summit is a handshake and a photograph, Vladimir Putin has already won.

The right-wing government in Warsaw has purged more than one-third of the members of the Polish Supreme Court in a crackdown on political opponents.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the happiest man in the world right now is Vladimir Putin.

The actions of the Trump administration are helping Russian-EU relations (to the detriment of the US).

A woman who was fired after a photograph of her giving the middle finger to President Trump’s motorcade went viral is suing her former employer. She doesn’t have much of a case.

Thanks to a combination of sensationalism and outright lies, a fairly conventional story about an annual protest march in Mexico was turned into Fox News fodder that raised images of an invading army of illegal immigrants.

After a long wait, gays and lesbians in Australia have achieved marriage equality.

Ambassador Karlov is mostly likely not a modern day Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The situation in the Middle East just potentially became much more complicated.

One of the pioneers of the technology revolution of the past four decades has passed away.

Donald Trump’s plan to exclude Muslims from the United States is provoking condemnation, and confusion, around the world.

The news that at least some of the men who were involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris were among the refugees who have arrived in Europe since the summer is likely to complicate an already complicated situation.

The U.S. is set to ramp up its contribution to dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis, but there’s a lot more we can do.

In what seems to be a clear signal to Russia, the U.S. is considering pre-positioning military equipment in nation’s very close to Russian borders.

A plan to distribute migrants from the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa across the entire European Union seems destined to cause political conflict.

The Obama Administration took some fire yesterday for recent Ambassadorial Appointments, but the President’s record has been consistent with those of his recent predecessors.

Americans have long been lampooned for not speaking a second language. Now our cousins across the Pond are getting it, too.

Not surprisingly, Bill Clinton is the most admired recent President according to a new poll, but his predecessor seems to be underrated.

President Obama is rewarding unqualified hacks who raised huge sums for his campaign with ambassadorships.

We spend more per capita than any other country in the world and yet we are outperformed on a key metric, life expectancy, by a large number of countries

Let’s take a trip back in time to see what some conservatives thought 2012 would look like if Barack Obama were elected President.

Eight of Cameroon’s 37 Olympians are “missing.”

Mitt Romney’s view of the ideal relationship between the United States and Israel is, at the very least. quite odd, and, potentially, dangerous.

Paul Krugman’s latest column, “Depression and Democracy,” is simply bizarre.

Business Week has a fascinating profile of Dietrich Mateschitz, whom they dub “Red Bull’s Billionaire Maniac.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was greeted with protests from some EU parliamentarians when he addressed them as its rotating president of the European Council.

A capsule look at the world situation as 2010 draws to a close.

The disaster that began last Monday in Hungary continues to unfold.

Daniel Larison’s “The Case Against NATO” makes compelling reading. In my New Atlanticist post “The Case Against the Case Against NATO,” I explain why it’s wrong.