Outside the Beltway

Last month, a retired Navy SEAL came out as transgender. Those still in uniform, however, must serve in silence.

As many as 500 convicted al Qaeda terrorists were released Sunday night as part of a surge of violence that has killed thousands since April.

The Oval Office Address, once a common tool of the Presidency, has been in declining use of late.

The Defense Department will freeze promotions, cut workers, and suspend training in the face of across-the-board funding cuts.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons aren’t going anywhere.

Ostensible allies in the fight against the Assad regime, al Qaeda and the Free Syrian Army are killing each other.

A state of perpetual war is incompatible with good mental health and stable family relationships.

The military’s finance and accounting system has been dysfunctional for decades and is getting worse.

Frustrations with the mercurial leader of Afghanistan may increase the pace of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A decade ago. a certain New York Times columnist was more right than your humble host.

The blowback from yesterday’s revelations about U.S. surveillance on European allies continues.

The conviction of Marine Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins III for war crimes in 2006 has been overturned.

Rather than asking whether it was “worth it,” the important historical question regarding the Civil War is whether it could have been avoided.

About $7 billion in military equipment now in Afghanistan will be scrapped rather than returned to the U.S.

Radical Islamists now dominate the Syrian opposition. And you’re arming them.

Two polls indicate that most Americans oppose the President’s latest moves on Syria. This makes sense considering actual policy there seems to be entirely incoherent.

President Obama’s poll numbers seem to be suffering under the weight of nearly two months of scandals and/ media attention.

The U.S. is now confirming that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons. What’s next?

Outrage over leaks like those that Edward Snowden makes doesn’t exist when its politicians doing the leaking.

Former President Bill Clinton says President Obama should ignore the polls and intervene in Syria.

A George W. Bush renaissance? Not exactly.

Meet Edward Snowden, the 29 year old CIA/NSA contractor who has confessed to leaking the details of the NSA’s data mining projects.

Has the West inadvertently handed Iran a victory in Syria?

How would the addition of Susan Rice and Samantha Power to the President’s foreign policy team affect policy toward Syria’s civil war?

Syria isn’t Libya.

Denied her chance at being Secretary of State, Susan Rice will be moving to a position that is arguably just as important in shaping American foreign policy.

Starting today, the fate of Pfc. Bradley Manning is on trial in a courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Republicans have problems with the younger generation that they will need to fix if they’re going to succeed in the future.

Syria’s violence is slipping across it’s borders.That’s not good news at all.

The sequestration cuts are two months old, and it seems pretty clear that the claims of doom we heard before they went into effect were heavily exaggerated.

We’re actually not speculating about who might be running any more than we used to.

The United States is currently negotiating for a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014, but they’re not sharing their plans with the American people.

Yesterday’s hearings shed more light while also raising yet more questions to which we’ll likely never get a satisfactory answer.

Apparently, Benghazi has not faded (at least not for some).

The world oil markets aren’t too far away from being hit by the shock of massively increased demand from China. Somehow, we’ll have to adapt.