Outside the Beltway

After a decade of using the alleged problem of “voter fraud” to justify things like Voter ID Laws, Republicans are remarkably silent in the fact of an actual example of fraud and election tampering.

Gun laws requiring guns to be taken away from convicted felons are either being ignored or have too many loopholes. We need to fix that.

Now that women are allowed into all combat roles, the rationale for excluding them from Selective Service has evaporated.

The House of Representatives has begin the process of challenging the President’s recent declaration of a ‘national emergency’ at the southern border.

Following Donald Trump’s lead, the GOP is making clear that its game plan for 2020 is paint all Democrats as ‘socialists, baby killers, and anti-Semites.’

The American Civil Liberties Union has joined the list of groups with lawsuits against the President’s declaration of a “national emergency” at the southern border.

For now,former President Obama is staying on the sidelines in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Bernie is back and running for President, but he’s likely to face a tougher road this time around.

The lawsuits against President Trump’s “national emergency” have begun. Except more.

Thanks mostly to it’s complete and enthusiastic embrace of Donald Trump , the Republican Party faces a bleak demographic future.

The shooter who killed five people in a factory in Illinois on Friday should not have had a gun to begin with.

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

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’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.

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.

If all goes well, the bill to avert another shutdown should become law today.

President Trump now appears to accept the compromise worked out by Congress to avoid another shutdown even though he’s not pleased with it.

It’s far too early, but Joe Biden’s advantages in these polls of Democratic voters can’t be ignored.

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.

Negotiations to avert another shutdown appear to have stalled over the weekend with just four days left to go before funding runs out.

Late last night, the Supreme Court blocked a Louisiana abortion law from going into effect, the first significant abortion rights ruling since Justice Kavanaugh took the bench.

All three of the elected state officials in Virginia are under some kind of cloud, and nobody seems to know what’s going to happen next.

Elizabeth Warren still hasn’t figured out how to put the ‘Native American’ issue behind her.

The President’s second State of the Union began and ended with calls for unity. In between, it was filled with the divisive partisanship that has marked his Presidency.

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.

Lindsey Graham is telling his fellow Republicans that they better back the President if he decides to declare a national emergency to get funding for his border wall.

A reading recommendation.

Despite overwhelming calls for his resignation, Ralph Northam is refusing to step down as Governor of Virginia.

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.

The way we elect Presidents make it unlikely that a third-party candidate like Howard Schultz could ever actually win the the Presidency.

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

A WaPo data analyst gives it a shot.

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

In a rare public statement, the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller is disputing reports that the President directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

As the government shutdown continues, Washington is coming to resemble a fight between toddlers. Except the toddlers have the excuse of not knowing any better.

Despite their rhetoric, Republicans in Congress have shown through their own inaction that they don’t really support the President’s border wall.

After twenty-five days, there’s no end in sight to the Federal Government shutdown. You can thank the President for that.

Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro is the latest addition to the growing Democratic Presidential field.

Border states/districts are not as pro-wall as presidential rhetoric might make you think.

If you’re looking for the biggest obstacle to a resolution to the government shutdown, look no further than President Donald J. Trump.

President Trump appears to be backing away from the idea of declaring a national emergency to get his wall built. But the other options he’s considering aren’t much better.

The government shutdown has now entered historic territory, and the Trump Administration is moving closer to a “national emergency” or other extra-legal means to get money for his wall.

Iowa’s Steve King has long expressed anti-immigrant and racist views, now he’s asking why that’s a bad thing.

New polling clearly indicates that the President is losing the battle for public opinion over the government shutdown.

President Trump’s speech on the border wall and the shutdown was fact-free, misleading, and overall a bomb.

Bernie Sanders is facing questions about sexual harassment from women who worked on his 2016 campaign as he prepares a likely run for President in 2020.

With Pat Roberts retiring, Kansas Republicans are reportedly looking at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to succeed him.

Herb Kelleher, who helped found an airline that revolutionized the industry thanks to his unconventional choices, has died at the age of 87.

California is set up throw a huge curve ball into the 2020 Presidential nomination fight.

My mother has passed, aged 75 years.