Outside the Beltway

On a slow news day, a major concession on Obamacare

The blowback from yesterday’s revelations about U.S. surveillance on European allies continues.

The Supreme Court’s handling of standing in the two same-sex marriage cases likely seems contradictory to many outside observers.

The 5-4 ruling was much more sweeping than needed to strike down DOMA.

CNN is reviving the Crossfire shoutfest with Newt Gingrich, S.E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter, and Van Jones as hosts.

A new theory circulating on the right asserts that IRS targeting of Tea Party groups had an impact on the 2012 elections by diminish the Tea Party’s effectiveness. It’s mostly nonsense.

Does David Gregory consider Glenn Greenwald to be a reporter deserving of protection, or “just a blogger” who may be a potential criminal?

Just when you thought the sequestration process couldn’t get more cynical.

Opponents of immigration reform are using “border security” as a shield to hide their true desire to kill the very idea of immigration reform.

There are risks to Republicans in blocking immigration reform, but there are also incentives for them to block immigration reform. Getting past that contradiction to passage isn’t going to be easy.

Two polls indicate that most Americans oppose the President’s latest moves on Syria. This makes sense considering actual policy there seems to be entirely incoherent.

President Obama’s poll numbers seem to be suffering under the weight of nearly two months of scandals and/ media attention.

The U.S. is now confirming that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons. What’s next?

Thanks to the Supreme Court, your DNA cannot be patented.

Outrage over leaks like those that Edward Snowden makes doesn’t exist when its politicians doing the leaking.

Even if you trust the current occupant of the White House to exercise the powers granted to the agencies operating in secret under him, do you trust all future Presidents?

The infamous VA backlog is finally dwindling. Much of it was a function of good intentions.

The ACLU is suing over the NSA’s data mining. Does it really have a chance?

The Administration has accepted reality in its fight against a ruling that made the “morning after” pill available regardless of age.

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

Jay Stanley and Ben Wizner, privacy experts at the ACLU, argue that metadata is more sensitive than we think.

Has the West inadvertently handed Iran a victory in Syria?

Contrary to President Obama’s assertion today, the NSA’s operations don’t have proper legislative or judicial oversight.

The NSA’s data mining project is about more than just subpoenas for cell phone records.

Apparently, it’s not just reporters whose phone logs the Obama administration is tracking.

I have for months taken it as a given that she went on five Sunday morning talk shows and lied about what happened there. Did she?

How would the addition of Susan Rice and Samantha Power to the President’s foreign policy team affect policy toward Syria’s civil war?

Syria isn’t Libya.

Several top Administration officials have secret email addresses, the Associated Press reports.

Dr. Keith Ablow lays out the case that President Obama is conducting psychological warfare on us.

Starting today, the fate of Pfc. Bradley Manning is on trial in a courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Republicans have problems with the younger generation that they will need to fix if they’re going to succeed in the future.

Eric Holder’s testimony before Congress is leading to accusations of perjury, but the argument that he did so seem pretty weak.

The government is changing the way it calculates Gross Domestic Product.

Once again, national security wins and privacy loses.

The Supreme Court declined to accept an appeal of a case in which Indiana’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood had been blocked by a Federal Court.

Filling normal vacancies on the bench is not “packing the court.”

Republicans should reject the calls to call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the unfolding scandals in Washington.

The Obama Administration’s aggressive pursuit of leaks is threatening freedom of the press.

The GOP’s latest investigatory crusade could end up backfiring on them.

So far, three weeks of bad news hasn’t really had much of an impact on the public’s view of how President Obama is handling his job.

A top IRS official will reportedly invoke her 5th Amendment rights rather than testify before Congress tomorrow.

After many attempts to manufacture grand scandals out of very little, Republicans may finally have a legitimate outrage on their hands.