Outside the Beltway

Wherein I explore the notion that ignorance is bliss.

Despite appearing to have emerged from April’s election as the winner, Benjamin Netanyahu was unable to form a government. This means that Israel will have to hold new elections in September.

Some 2020 Democratic hopefuls are turning to a surprising source for counsel.

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

Taiwan has become the first nation in Asia to legally recognize same-sex marriage.

The White House claims to want to talk to Iran but the President’s actions make clear that negotiation is the furthest thing from his mind.

President Trump’s foreign policy has largely been a failure, and there are specific reasons why.

Other than confirming a lot of Trump Judges, the Senate has not been getting much work done so far this year.

While he campaigned on a message of restraint, Donald Trump has largely adopted the interventionist foreign policies of his predecessors.

The Trump Administration is taking an unnecessarily militaristic approach toward Iran, and that poses real dangers for the country and for the Middle East.

This could be a very big deal – unless it isn’t.

Its explanation for why its paywall is coming down 3 days leads us to an obvious question.

The Trump Administration’s policies toward Iran aren’t going to work, but that’s because they aren’t supposed to work.

As Democrats at the state level seek to limit the ability of parents to decline to vaccinate their children. they are facing resistance from Republican colleagues.

The tone and content of President Trump’s 2020 campaign is already quite apparent.

Both major parties have claimed victory but it certainly looks like Likud will hang on.

The Israeli prime minister is engaging in a familiar but dangerous gambit to retain power.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is cutting short his US trip to deal with what his government is calling a Hamas attack.

Because of course he did.

Some context for ongoing discussions.

With criminal charges and an election hanging over his head, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to the political right for support and survival.

And a link to a worthwhile read.

President Trump personally overrode the objections of security officials, the White House Counsel, and the Chief of Staff to make sure his son-in-law got a security clearance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being charged with three charges of corruption even as he faces an election in just over a month.

The Trump Administration continues to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe, can it ever be repaired?

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

In what amounts to a setback, the Supreme Court has lifted an injunction barring the Trump Administration’s ban on transgender service in the military to go forward pending further legal proceedings.

Florida’s New Governor has removed the Sheriff of Broward County over his officer’s lack of response before and during the Parkland shooting.

In his annual message, Kim Jong Un sent a message to President Trump on denuclearization and the future of the Korean Peninsula.

With just hours to go, a partial government shutdown is becoming more and more likely.

The Trump Administration is attempting to bypass the Circuit Courts of Appeal and get immediate Supreme Court review of the President’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military.

In what has to qualify as one of the most horrifying displays of moral depravity on the international stage, the Trump Administration is saying it doesn’t really care if the Saudi Crown Prince is a murderer or not.

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.

Trump’s words matter.

Charges have been filed against the man responsible for the massacre in Pittsburgh in both Federal and State court.

Saudi Arabia’s story about the disappearance and death of Jamal Khashoggi continues to “evolve.”

For the second time this year, a Federal Court has struck down a state law designed to punish businesses that engage in a boycott aimed at Israel.

With four weeks to go until Election Day, Donald Trump and the Republicans are continuing to stoke the divisions laid bare by the Kavanaugh nomination.

President Trump’s second speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations wasn’t much better than the first, but it it did get the world laughing at us.

The Trump Administration is inviting Vladimir Putin to Washington, D.C. for a second summit in the fall. What could possibly go wrong?

We still don’t know what President Trump and Vladimir Putin talked about or agreed to during their two-hour meeting on Monday.

There should be no question about a request to interview a former US Ambassador.

The Polish Government has amended a controversial law that sought to punish people for discussing the role that some Poles played in the Holocaust.

A towering figure gone much too soon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces what could be a scandal that will quickly push him out of office.

Another unilateral withdrawal from an international institution.

South Korea’s President is saying that Kim Jong Un has renewed his supposed commitment to ‘denuclearization,’ but it isn’t at all clear what that means.

A Federal Judge in Virginia has handed a significant legal victory to a student who sued their school district because they were barred form using the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a bombastic speech on Iran yesterday that reveals just how empty and dangerous the Trump Administration’s policy toward Iran actually is.