Outside the Beltway

With only a handful of opposition, Paul Ryan was easily elected the 62nd Speaker of the House.

If pre-election polling is to be believed, Stephan Harper and Canada’s Conservative Party seem likely to lose power after Monday’s elections, but there are several reasons why this may not end up being the case.

Donald Trump’s immigration plan is would create a police state, violate people’s rights, and hurt America’s economy. And his supporters will most likely love it.

In 1992, an eccentric billionaire ran an independent campaign against a Bush and a Clinton. It could happen again.

The winners of the Women’s World Cup will get paid far less than the men that played last year, but that’s not because of sexism.

In week a that has seen discussion of lost causes, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Surpreme Court appears poised to fight one last battle.

Pope Francis’s new encyclical isn’t exactly being received positively by American conservatives, because they seem to be missing the point.

After months of “not running,” Jeb Bush will formally enter the Presidential race on June 15th.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer suggests that his fellow Congressmen and Senators are underpaid at $174,000 per year.

Congressman Darrell Issa says that America’s poor are generally better off than the poor in the rest of the world. While he’s correct, he’s also incredibly tone deaf.

A Judge in New Jersey has ruled that the twin children of a New Jersey woman were in fact fathered by two different men.

Ben Carson is running for President.

Some thoughts on a column by Roger Noriega on the Obama administration and Latin America,

While the issue of income inequality is quite real, Oxfam’s numbers are not.

Mitt Romney certainly seems to be running for president again. And he’s now on at least his third reinvention.

For the fourth time in three years, a Federal Court has ruled that Florida’s law requiring drug tests for welfare recipients is unconstitutional.

Yet another example of the need for context when discussing stats.

But, hey, don’t worry, there’s nothing racial going on here. Nothing at all.

The House of Representatives has filed its lawsuit against the President. As expected, it doesn’t amount to much.

A knowledgeable observer has a dim forecast.

The first person to be quarantined under the new policy announced by New York and New Jersey is raising concerns about the way she was treated, and whether the policy is even the right idea.

Remember the border crisis? Yea, it’s not much of a crisis these days.

While the world pays attention to Syria and Iraq, Yemen is once against lurching into chaos.

Self-described socialist Bernie Sanders is contemplating an independent run for the presidency.

Alabamians like to exclaim, “Thank God for Mississippi.” Perhaps it’s time for that slogan to cross the Pond.

Fairly or not, the President has created the impression that he is not a good leader, and there’s not much he can do about it at this point.

Rick Perry is sending 1,000 members of the Texas National Guard to the border to do nothing.

That ball is in your court, Congress.

The number of uninsured Americans has declined since the Obamacare mandate went into effect.

Coming across as uncaring doesn’t help advance your political arguments.

Hillary Clinton does not come across well when she tries to play the empathy card.

TNR makes the worst possible case for a proposition that’s almost certainly right.

A new job for the Congressman recently filed by his own constituents?

Twenty-five years after his seminal “End of History” article, Francis Fukuyama reflects on its legacy.

Today’s foreign-policy disputes rarely consider the way America’s response to one crisis might affect another.

Shutting down rational debate one meme at a time.

A legal setback for Voter ID laws in Wisconsin.

Republicans attack an attorney for doing his job. So much for that whole “constitutional conservative” thing, I guess.

Predicting the end of the DPRK is a fool’s errand.

Time to have some sympathy for those poor penny-pinching Congressmen and Senators? Hardly.

Some thoughts and links about the ongoing turmoil in Venezuela.

A CBO report on the Affordable Care Act is getting a polarized reading.

Ta-Nehisi Coates explores his complicated reaction to the first African-American president.

Two experts debate the topic, demonstrating how little we really know.