Outside the Beltway

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.

Revelations about the NSA’s data mining programs don’t seem to be having a significant impact on public opinion.

Sometimes it seems like all John McCain does is appear on Sunday morning news shows. The problem goes deeper than that, though.

Mitt Romney returns from the political graveyard.

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.

John McCain is taking a break from advocating yet another war in the Middle East to make war against cable television companies.

The American people aren’t panicking.

Is someone who’s only be a Senator for just over 100 days a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2016?

Several Senators who voted against the Manchin/Toomey background checks bill have suffered in the polls, but it’s unclear if that matters in the long run.

John McCain is right that we shouldn’t send ground troops to Syria, but his idea for increased U.S. intervention in the country’s civil war is still too risky.

John McCain’s problems in 2008 went far beyond an economic crisis.

President Obama may regret drawing a line in the sand over Syrian chemical weapons.

For better or worse, the attack in Boston is likely to have an impact on the immigration reform debate.

The Boston Marathon bomber must be tried in a court of law.

A new report confirms that the United States did engage in torture in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

Social conservatives are seeing their clout slip away, but there’s not much they can do about it.

Will the prohibitive favorite for the 2016 Democratic nomination do it differently this time around?

The Republican field for 2016 is more wide open than any we’ve seen in a long time.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes uses a quota system to make sure his guests aren’t all white dudes.

Bill McClellan calls for ending military funeral honors for most veterans.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul won a completely meaningless straw poll.

The Canal made a number of impressions.

The Hagel confirmation, like Obama’s election, was big news to some avid news consumers.

A theory on why Benghazi will not die as a political issue.

Here we go again.

For the moment, Republicans appear to be blocking Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense but they don’t seem to know why they’re doing it.

The smear campaign against defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel has taken a bizarre turn.

Chuck Hagel will be confirmed, but the campaign against him tells us much about the current state of Republican foreign policy

My latest for The National Interest, “Ignoring the Hagel Hearing Farce,” has posted.

A good start toward solving a long standing problem.

Despite some tough questions, Congressional Republicans didn’t land a glove on Secretary of State Clinton.

Marco Rubio has some good immigration reform ideas. Will his fellow Republicans listen to him?

No Labels is attempting to relaunch itself after amounting to exactly nothing in the 2012 cycle. Let me save you the trouble: They won’t matter in 2014 or 2016, either.

In “Veterans and Senate Buddies, Until Another War Split Them,” Elisabeth Bumiller profiles the relationship between Chuck Hagel and John McCain:

Arab news giant Al-Jazeera is buying Al Gore’s failing Current TV network, hoping to get a bigger presence in the US cable market.