Outside the Beltway

Could a coin like this solve the looming debt ceiling crisis?

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.

The world’s most prolific blogger is leaving corporate media and opening the tip jar.

Our politicians have averted an artificial crisis of their own making. The next one’s in two months.

Automatic tax hikes and spending cuts took effect at midnight. A deal involving the executive and half of the legislative branch could largely reverse them.

For the New Year, how about challenging your ideas just a little bit?

A rich child is 45 percent more likely to earn a four-year college degree than a poor one.

Alex Pareene’s annual hack list omits an obvious candidate: Alex Pareene.

Jake Tapper is moving to CNN, where he’ll host a daily show and run their political coverage.

Robert Bork, the controversial jurist whose failed Supreme Court bid ushered in a new climate in American politics, has died at 85.

Obsessive media coverage makes us believe mass shootings are far more common than they actually are.

Will the massacre of twenty children in a Connecticut elementary school mark a turning point in America’s gun culture? Don’t count on it.

It’s okay to criticize military veterans–even if you never served in the military.

George Zimmerman’s attorneys have filed a defamation lawsuit against NBC News.

My first piece for the New York Daily News, “A Drone Strike on Democracy,” has posted.

Ross Douthat says American women should stop being decadent and have more babies.

The New York Post splashed the photo of a man pushed in front of a train on their cover.

A photograph of a New York cop putting boots on a homeless man went viral. The man remains bootless, however.

Vilifying Thomas Jefferson is as much as mistake as placing him on a pedestal.

In a NYT op-ed titled “The Monster of Monticello” Paul Finkelman expresses his befuddlement that people play down Thomas Jefferson’s legacy as a slave owner.

Ronald Reagan won the tax fight. The debate now centers on whether to continue cutting taxes or slightly reverse the trend.

With just about a month to go before we hit the “Fiscal Cliff.” things don’t look good at all.

There aren’t enough readers who want political reporting that’s “more substantive than POLITICO and much more sophisticated than C.Q.” and willing to pay for it.

They are playing the game without rules in Egypt.

Seems that the answer continues to be “no.”

Dean “Unskewed Polls” Chambers is back, and he’s as deluded as ever.

Republican opposition to same-sex marriage is costing it yet another demographic group.

Many conservatives are living inside of a media bubble and they’ll continue to have problems until the consciously decide to break out of it.

The David Petraeus/Paula Broadwell story gets curiouser.

An attempt to lay down some basic groundwork for discussing this story.

The scandal that led to P4’s downfall has many layers, none of them flattering to the most famous American general of his generation.

Wherein I get a bit petty (but to make a point and, maybe just because it amuses me).

If you’re a white Southerner who gets most of his information from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, you probably don’t know a lot of people who voted for Barack Obama.

Mayor Bloomberg has decided to hold the New York Marathon Sunday even though millions are still without power and the city infrastructure is unable to cope with normal activity.

Mitt Romney has ground to make up if he’s going to catch the President and there’s not much time left to do it.