Outside the Beltway

Arianna Huffington has become an online mogul by convincing big donors to pay her for content others generate for free. Did she steal the idea?

There was bound to be entertainment during Charlie Rangel’s Ethics Committee hearing, and the Harlem Congressman did not disappoint this morning.

Here’s my plan for creating a budget surplus of $126 billion by 2015 and $592 billion by 2030.

Thanks to an interactive web tool from The New York Times we can all try to make the hard political choices needed to fix the budget mess.

Maine’s Olympia Snowe appears to be the next target of the Tea Party movement, but she is also uniquely situated to retain her seat if she chooses to.

A ten year old case out of Texas raises yet more doubts about the justice of the death penalty.

There are grumblings from within the Democratic caucus in the House that Nancy Pelosi may not be the best choice for Minority Leader. Unfortunately for Democrats, though, they don’t seem to have a viable alternative at the moment.

An incident at a school in England provides us with an object lesson in why the often derided concept of separation of church and state is an important part of protecting individual liberty.

The New York Times has joined the mostly muted chorus calling on Democrats to select someone other than Nancy Pelosi as their new Minority Leader. In all likelihood, their call will go unheeded.

Keith Olbermann was reportedly suspended for failing to apologize for making political donations to Democratic candidates, but it really seems intended to serve to justify the illusion that MSNBC’s programming is not partisan.

While health experts warn Americans to cut the amount of fat in their diet, the Federal Government helps businesses like Domino’s and Taco Bell promote high-fat products to the public.

Dana Milbank asks, “Would we be better off under a President Hillary Clinton?” His affirmative answer isn’t very convincing.

The race between Jeb Hensarling and Michelle Bachmann for Chair of the House GOP Conference is a microcosm for a battle that is likely to take place within the GOP for the next two years.

Vice-President Joe Biden’s motorcade has been involved in at least five crashes.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner held a private, off-the-record meeting in comedian Jon Stewart’s office back in April. Speculation abounds.

A longish NYT postmortem titled “Democrats Outrun by a 2-Year G.O.P. Comeback Plan” attributes Tuesday’s Republican victories to a January 2009 PowerPoint presentation. But structural factors were more important.

An NBC analysis shows Tea Party candidates winning only 5 of 10 Senate races and 40 of 130 House races, a success rate of only 32 percent.

Rasmussen polls were biased toward Republicans by 3 to 4 points. Rigged results? Or screening error?

Republicans either lost or barely won a whole lot of races because their vote was split with minor party candidates.

In yet another move designed to take the fun out of being a kid, San Francisco has banned the Happy Meal.

George W. Bush’s new memoir reveals that he briefly considered replaced Dick Cheney as Vice-President before the 2004 elections. His decision not to do so reveals much about the relationship between Presidents and Vice-Presidents in modern American politics.

The British press takes a look at America’s Midterm Elections.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg thinks a President independent of either political party would be a good idea. Is he right?

Thanks to a combination of good intelligence and fast action, it looks like the U.S. and UK avoided a serious attack on airliners last week.

Theodore Sorensen, a speechwriter and close adviser to President John F. Kennedy, died today at the age of 82

Neither Law Schools nor law students are admitting the fact that the legal market has changed significantly.

215,000 people attended the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” compared to 87,000 for “Restoring Honor.” Even if you believe the numbers, they don’t tell us much.

The Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear ended up having a point after all, but it’s not one that anyone is likely to take to heart.

We’ve been talking about the 2010 elections since, oh, the day after the 2008 elections.   Now, it’s time for final predictions.

Did President Obama degrade his office by appearing on “The Daily Show”? Or is that notion a relic of a bygone era?

After months of media reporting on the Republican advantage in outside spending, NYT reports that Democrats retain a sizable advantage at the campaign level.

It’s apparently legitimate to call Sarah Palin a liar without producing any evidence or bothering to check facts.

Has Uncle Sam got a deal for you: Lend the Treasury money for five years and it will only cost you negative 0.55 percent!

Political columnist John Heilemann thinks he’s come up with a scenario that would put Sarah Palin in the White House, but his assumptions don’t add up.

Charles Murray argues that the Tea Party is right to complain about out-of-touch elites.

A call for ideological purity in the Democratic Party in today’s New York Times demonstrates that Democrats can be just as foolish as Republicans.

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.

While the displacement of poor blacks from their neighborhoods by affluent whites may be lamentable, it’s better than the alternatives.

President Obama is reportedly avoiding a visit to India’s Harmandir Sahib, or Golden Temple, for fear that he’ll be accused of being a Muslim.

Recklessness.

Nineteen years after they ended, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings are back in the news thanks to a voicemail that Thomas’s wife left for Professor Hill.

Remember that $400 tax cut President Obama gave you? Neither do 90 percent of Americans.

Politico says 99 Democratic House seats are “in play.” They’re not. But dozens are.

Who’s to blame for the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, President Obama or those who have actually been encouraging bias against Muslims?