Outside the Beltway

Is the current media environment a problem for proper political discourse?

Hamid Karazi says that the United States needs to reduce it’s military presence in his country. Perhaps we should listen to him.

Democratic consultants Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell offer some free advice for President Obama. It’s worth every penny.

Of the five countries that use the death penalty the most, only one is a democracy.

Will the incoming “Tea Party” caucus in the House and Senate force the GOP to reconsider its views on foreign policy? Don’t count on it.

David Broder offers up some odd ideas on the relationship between a war with Iran and the economy.

It only seems fair to take an entire tweet, lengthy though it may be, into account when reacting.

We already knew that Hamid Karzai was corrupt, now we know he takes bribes from the Iranians.

In what is being described as the largest leak of secret documents in U.S. history, Wikileaks has made public more than 400,000 documents related to the seven year long Iraq War.

The Tea Party movement doesn’t seem to have a coherent view on foreign policy. Which means that a Tea Party victory will just mean more of the same Republican neo-conservatism.

The story about the private security guards who “arrested” a journalist at a Joe Miller campaign event just keeps getting stranger by the day.

Venezuela have reached a series of agreement on energy. Should the US be concerned?

The “Ronald Reagan” that many of today’s conservatives wish today’s Republicans were more like didn’t actually exist.

If it’s September, it must be time for Mahmoud Ahmadinjad to stand up before the United Nations General Assembly and say something completely insane.

Is there a quiet cyberwar going on and we are just starting to notice it?

According to a new book from Bob Woorward, American policy in Afghanistan is the result of a decision making process that can only be described as chaotic at best.

Fidel Castro is back in the public eye, but he’s singing a slightly different tune now.

The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart is suffering a little New Media embarrassment after writing a blog post based on comments by a Congressman who doesn’t exist.

Will Israel attack Iran ? You’d better hope not.

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas’ new book, AMERICAN TALIBAN: HOW WAR, SEX, SIN, AND POWER BIND JIHADISTS AND THE RADICAL RIGHT, continues a long tradition in political polemics.

President Obama didn’t use the words “Mission Accomplished” last night, but the message was the same.

Why are people’s views about Islam so screwed up ? Mostly because the only things they know about it tend to be the worst possible aspects of all.

The New York Times is reporting that the Obama Administration has convinced Israel that Iran is much further away from developing nuclear weapons than Tel Aviv fears, but there seems to be something else going on here.

The title says it all.

According to John Bolton, Israel has a deadline of August 21st to attack Iran’s nuclear program. This is the fourth deadline he’s set in the last three years.

Every new report out of Iran seems to bring us closer to the moment when Israel has decided it’s heard enough. What happens if that day actually happens ?

This year’s Zogby poll of public opinion in the Middle East exhibits a marked shift on the Obama Administration, Iran.

Saddam Hussein’s closest adviser in the 1990s, Tariq Aziz, is talking to reporters, and he wants American troops to stay in Iraq.

The scumbags at WikiLeaks have published a huge trove of classified documents provided to them by one or more traitors in our military.

According to Maureen Dowd, Barack Obama’s biggest problem is that there are too many white people in this picture.