Outside the Beltway

Justice Alito said recently he won’t be attending the next State of the Union address. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged in a newly released letter that the Wikileaks Afghan War document dump wasn’t as damaging as the Pentagon initially claimed. So what was the uproar all about?

A new law allows Presidential candidates to set up transition offices while they’re still running for election, perhaps providing an opportunity for shortening the 2 1/2 month interregnum between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

Jim Treacher has coined a new term, Oprahturfing, to describe wealthy celebrities funding attendance at political rallies. While clever, the concept of “Astroturfing” is being misused by both sides.

Politicians are, by definition, a bit abnormal. However, this year we seem to have more than our fair share of the truly odd.

A group of conservative activists is planning a last minute ad blitz that could help put several Republican challengers over the top.

Republicans are suddenly targeting — and Democrats in some cases are conceding — House seats that were until recently considered out of play.

If everything you know about Islam comes from Pam Geller and Christianity from Christopher Hitchens, you’re doing yourself a grave disservice.

More on Greg Mankiw’s thought experiment on taxes and incentives to work.

For a guy who has no chance of winning, Carl Paladino certainly knows how to get himself press coverage.

Are we facing a Sharia take-over?

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Virginia is under scrutiny ? Why ? Because she has a job.

InstaPaper’s business model is stealing content created by others, stripping it of the ads that pay the creators, and running their own advertising on it.

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. He probably doesn’t know it, though, because he’s currently sitting in a Chinese prison.

New Jersey’s governor has killed a vital infrastructure project because of huge cost overruns. It’s penny wise and pound foolish.

MSNBC.com is contemplating a name change to distinguish their brand from that of a left-leaning cable news channel.

More numbers for campaign 2010–in this case, ones that show the maintenance of the status quo in several states.

Responding to the rant that got Rick Sanchez fired, Slate’s Brian Palmer investigates the question, “Do Jews Really Control the Media?” His short answer, “Maybe the movies, but not the news.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger predicts President Obama’s re-election. Historically, that’s the safe bet.

Three lives intersected last week at Rutgers University, but one person didn’t make it out alive.

More than ever before in the past, Fox News Channel will be the exclusive medium through which many of the candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination communicate with the public. And that’s a problem.

A new projection of Congressional reapportionment shows a dramatic shift to traditionally Republican states in the South and Southwest.

A Vanity Fair piece imagines what John Lennon’s life would have been like had he survived an assassin’s bullet.

Dan Drezner asks, “Has Bob Woodward jumped the shark?” My snarky response is that he did that in Bob Casey’s hospital room.

A staffer for U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss left a threatening slur on an Internet discussion of the right of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.

Another new media star is coming to the rescue of an old media dinosaur. Put it’s probably too late.

For the moment, the Tea Party movement is helping pull the GOP out of a slump that seemed like it would continue for a long time. Will it last, or will the movement end up doing for Republicans what the left has done for Democrats ?

Great news, everybody: The biggest economic calamity since the Great Depression has been over for well over a year.

The Tea Party movement and the populist backlash against DC mayor Adrian Fenty are a sign that things are changing so fast that a lot of people simply can’t adjust.

Sarah Palin had a very good track record in her primary season endorsements, but it’s not at all clear that she will have much of an impact on the 2010 General Election.

Last night’s celebration in Wilmington is sure to be tempered just a bit by news that Christine O’Donnell is sixteen points behind her Democratic opponent.

Why do innocent people confess to crimes they didn’t commit, and what should we do about it ?

White America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority.

The strength of the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party manifests itself in a poll out of Maine showing the Olympia Snowe is vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2012.