Outside the Beltway

The ignominious saga of Anthony Weiner appears to have reached its end.

Pope Francis defrocked former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after decades of allegations of abuse of young boys and seminarians.

Two new reports identify hundreds of Catholic Priests who have been credibly accused of abusing children over the past decades.

Two months after being named, Heather Nauert withdrew her name as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations due to a ‘Nannygate’ problem.

Faced with a field that could be more crowded than the Republican field in 2016, Democrats have come up with a different solution to the rather obvious problem of debate scheduling.

President Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border while at the same time undercutting his own case for doing so.

Thanks mostly to political opposition that misrepresented the nature of the deal it had made, Amazon has abandoned plans to locate parts of its new headquarters in New York City.

Walter Jones, a former supporter of the Iraq War who became one of the most prominent anti-war voices in Congress, has passed away at the age of 76. He will be missed.

President Trump’s impending decision to declare a national emergency to get funding for his border wall will quickly face serious legal challenges. It may be more vulnerable than the White House suspects.

The President will sign the bill to fund the government and avert another government shutdown, but in doing so he’ll also lay the groundwork for another showdown with Congress.

A Federal Judge found that former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort lied repeatedly after entering into a plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. This either makes him incredibly stupid or willing to sacrifice himself to hide the truth from Federal investigators.

The former #2 official at the FBI is trying to sell a book.

In a rare display of assertiveness in the foreign policy arena, the House voted yesterday to bar U.S. assistance in Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war on Yemen.

Is 50 percent too high a take? Or the best deal in town?

The National Debt officially topped $22 trillion, marking a $2 trillion increase since President Trump took office.

The former Attorney General is seriously pondering a presidential bid. Seriously.

It was only a matter of time before Trump’s rhetoric against the press would lead to something violent. Last night in El Paso, it happened.

The right has spent a seemingly inordinate amount of time focusing on relatively powerless Members of Congress.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar became the latest Democrat to enter the 2020 race on Sunday.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is the latest entrant into an already crowded field for the Democratic nomination.

A death penalty case from Alabama raises First Amendment issues that the Supreme Court chose to brush aside.

Critics on both the Left and the Right rightly see an injustice here but the US Supreme Court allowed it to happen.

The publisher of the National Enquirer is learning that it may have been a mistake to go to war against Jeff Bezos.

The longest-serving member of Congress in American history has passed away at the age of 92.

In his business career Donald Trump relied largely on fear and intimidation to get his way on business deals. As President, he’s finding that nobody is afraid of him.

The date and location of the next summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un have been set, but it’s hard to see what can really be accomplished.

New polling indicates that a solid majority of Democrats are more interested in finding a candidate who can beat Donald Trump in 2020 than they are with finding a candidate that agrees with them on specific issues.

President Trump’s detailed schedules reveal a man who doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time actually working.

A reading recommendation.

More than any recent President, Donald Trump displays a tremendous amount ignorance about the world. Even worse is the fact that he seems proud of it.

National and Virginia Democratic officials are calling on Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to resign over racist photos in his 1984 medical school yearbook.

Despite the government shutdown, employment growth in January was far above expectations.

A new study reveals that the Republican tax cut package passed at the end of 2017 has not had the economic impact the GOP claimed it would.

Two more defections from the stable of writers at RedState provide further proof of the extent to which conservative media has become a pro-Trump echo chamber.

While much of the attention in the race for the Democratic nomination to date has been on the left, there is a path forward for a more centrist candidate.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has managed to become a media star, but she has a lot to learn about politics.

Pensions and health care costs for the elderly are crowding out other vital spending.

As public opinion of the President continues to slide his pandering to his far-right base increases.

Starbucks Founder Howard Schultz is considering an independent run for the Presidency. This would likely be good news for President Trump.

After an essentially pointless 35 day shutdown, some members of the House and Senate are proposing bills that would make government shutdowns impossible.

The Speaker was dealt a winning hand and played it with the skill of a seasoned pro. But the outcome was all but inevitable.

As the shutdown enters day thirty-five, there are some signs of movement in Washington but no real progress.

Roger Stone, who worked with the Trump campaign in an official and unofficial capacity throughout the campaign, has been indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In both cases, appeals to emotion are not diminished by disregard for accuracy.

The best Relief Pitcher in Major League history has been unanimously inducted into the Baseball Hall Of Fame.

Pete Buttigieg, the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is the latest entrant into the 2020 race for President. To say is a long-shot is an understatement.

For the first tine in nearly ten years, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving Second Amendment rights.

The Senate has the ball this week in terms of action on the government shutdown, but its work is going to end up being utterly pointless.

The government shutdown is beginning to negatively impact the public’s perception of the health of the economy.

Two years into his Presidency, Donald Trump continues to set the wrong kind of records.