Outside the Beltway

Earmarks or no, members of Congress are going to bring home the bacon to their districts. It is what their constituents want (and expect) them to do.

A Merry Christmas to all.

The institutions charged with solving our Information Age social problems are stuck in the Industrial Age.

Tonight’s topics: the Republican effort to run out the clock on the 111th Congress, various reform proposals that are floating around, and goodness knows what else.

Bernie Sanders took to the floor of the Senate yesterday to rail against President Obama’s tax cut deal. It was history in the making, but it’s not clear that it actually accomplished anything.

Tonight’s topics: The tax cut deal, Obama’s primary challengers, and whether politicians should care about the unemployed.

The states fought hard to retain the right to appoint Senators, right?

Why would policy outcomes be different under the 17th Amendment?

Viacom says a lower court ruling in favor of Google “would radically transform the functioning of the copyright system and severely impair, if not completely destroy, the value of many copyrighted creations.”

Tonight’s topics: The fallout from the latest WikiLeaks dump and the Pentagon’s report on gays in the military.

The American copyright system is broken. Cory Doctorow offers some useful suggestions for fixing it.

Tonight’s topics: Escalation on the Korean peninsula, the continued woes of the eurozone, and goodness knows what else.

Tonight’s topics: New airline screening measures, Karzai vs. Petraeus, political infighting among victorious Republicans, and the defeated Democrats keeping their leadership intact.

So will there be an efficacious backlash against TSA policies? I am guessing no.

Hamid Karazi says that the United States needs to reduce it’s military presence in his country. Perhaps we should listen to him.

Okahoma’s James Inhofe has a message for the Tea Party movement — don’t be fooled by the “War On Earmarks.”

Ok, what strategy should Speaker Boehner pursue?

Tonight’s topic: Slow news day. We’ll figure out something.

She didn’t gain national prominence until late August, and she’s going to most likely lost by a wide margin tonight, but Christine O’Donnell received more coverage from the media than any other candidate running in 2010.

With polls opening in less than 48 hours now, the final pre-election polling is showing that 2010 is going to be a pretty bad year for Democrats.

Some Democrats believe the Jon Stewart – Stephen Colbert rally this weekend will serve as a get-out-the-vote drive.

Tonight’s topic: The election is finally here.

Apparently Juan Williams is really, really, really important.

Tonight’s topics: The foreclosure mess, low GDP growth, and the world-wide Tea Party.

Tonight’s topics: The latest mortgage scandal, lust for a third party, the role of judges in Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, political motorcades and their impact on the little people, and who knows what else. I hear there’s an election coming up, so perhaps that will enter into the discussion as well.

The IRS wants to license tax preparers but exempt lawyers and CPAs from the requirement.

Yet another study shows what any of us who’ve ever spent any time around soldiers already knew: Our Army is not comprised of stupid people who couldn’t find a decent job.

Tonight’s topic: America’s rising income inequality and what, if anything, we ought to do about it.

Tonight’s topics: Democrats’ infighting, the continued Tea Party “takeover” of the GOP, the Obama administration’s following of its predecessor’s lead on executive power, and the degree to which America’s economic competition is fair.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is leaving his job at week’s end to run for mayor of Chicago.

Tonight’s topics: Bob Woodward’s new book, the Murkowski write-in bid, the weird race in Delaware, and the end of the Great Recession.

Christine O’Donnell is buying ads on posts arguing that the party screwed itself by voting for her in yesterday’s Republican primary.

Will appointing Elizabeth Warren to head a consumer protection agenda unleash an eruption of Democratic votes in November?

Tonight’s topics: The Gallup poll and the vanishing 10-point Republican lead, whether we overreacted to 9/11, Mike Castle and the RINO/DINO problem, income inequality, and the retirement of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Comments sections on larger blogs seem inevitably to turn into cesspools. Is it worth trying to stop it happening?

AP staff have been instructed “combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months.”

The AP will now start mentioning bloggers whose work they use in their stories. Fat lot of good that will do.