Outside the Beltway

As Governor Haley pushes the South Carolina legislature to take the Confederate Flag down, the movement moves beyond the Palmetto State.

Jeb Bush’s campaign launch seems to be going well so far, while Rand Paul and Ted Cruz (and Donald Trump) seem to be slipping.

The Supreme Court ruled that states don’t have to grant license plates that display the Confederate flag. Their decision has the potential to seriously harm the First Amendment.

Thanks largely to a series of court decisions, same-sex marriage is effectively legal in all of Mexico.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court let stand a ruling striking down North Carolina’s mandatory ultrasound law.

To nobody’s surprise, Jeb Bush has entered the race for President.

Iowa Republicans may be a day away from putting the Iowa Straw Poll out of its, and our, misery.

He hasn’t declared yet, but Scott Walker is running for President, and he’s pandering to the most extreme wing of the Republican Party.

Rick Perry is hoping to do something that hasn’t happened before in American politics, come back from a campaign that imploded.

Republicans running for President need to tread carefully in their responses if the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage nationwide.

The agency that runs Washington D.C.’s mass transit has banned all political ads after Pamela Gellar attempted to run an advertisement featuring a drawing of Mohammed.

Lindsey Graham is the latest entrant into the Presidential race, but it’s hard to see how he gets out of the bottom of the polls.

Billionaire wunderkind Elon Musk has had a lot of help from taxpayers.

The former Olympian has made a transition.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker isn’t officially a candidate for President yet, but he’s doing quite well in Iowa anyway.

Starting tomorrow, we can expect to see the Supreme Court hand down decisions in some of its most high profile cases. Here’s a preview.

The Iowa Straw Poll seems to be dying, and that’s a good thing.

Beau Biden, the former attorney general of Delaware and son of Vice President Joe Biden, has died of brain cancer at the age of 46.

The race for the Republican nomination is as tight as ever, and so far nobody seems to be emerging as a clear front-runner.

The President’s plan to give deportation relief to millions of illegal immigrants has hit another legal snag.

The Supreme Court accepted a case that will require the Justices to decide just what it meant when it established the “one person, one vote” rule for drawing legislative districts.

The Senate went home last night without passing a bill to renew the PATRIOT Act, which expires at the end of the month.

What if they held a straw poll and nobody came?

Thwarted by the legislature, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal used his executive power to take action that seems directed more toward evangelicals in Iowa than anything happening in his home state.

Rand Paul held the Senate floor for nearly twelve hours yesterday to talk about the PATRIOT Act, but it’s unclear if he accomplished anything.

With 14 candidates vying for the Republican nomination, TV execs are scrambling to make the debates watchable.

The largely conservative state of Nebraska seems to be on the verge of repealing its law authorizing capital punishment.

The Republican debate stage in 2016 is going to be even more crowded than it was in 2012.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry is going to be looking for that elusive second act in American politics.

Fresh off an election victory, British Prime Minister David Cameron is set to propose a series of new measures to crackdown on extremism that raise serious civil liberties concerns.

The House has passed a bill that would place real restrictions on the National Security Agency’s data mining program. Now, it moves to the Senate.

A plan to distribute migrants from the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa across the entire European Union seems destined to cause political conflict.

Two Republican candidates for President say that Republican elected officials should simply ignore the Supreme Court if it strikes down bans on same-sex marriage.

A new poll has some bad news for Jeb Bush in the Hawkeye State, which leads to the idea that maybe he shouldn’t waste too much time there to begin with.

And some thoughts on how a small number of voters can influence major office-holder behavior.

There must be something odd in the water in the Lone Star State, because a bizarre conspiracy theory seems to have taken root there.

Possibly big news out of Canada

In a move that is clearly designed to have an impact in the General Election, Hillary Clinton came out in support of broad immigration reform in Nevada yesterday.

Some people in the media can’t seem to get it through their heads that speech they consider hateful is entitled to as much protection as speech that they support.

Two men were killed last night before they could carry out what appears to be a planned attack on an anti-Islam event in Texas.

Ben Carson is running for President.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are talking about fundamentally changing what it means to be an American, and it’s a bad idea.

Economic growth slowed significantly in the first three months of 2015, but it’s not clear what that means going forward.

Tomorrow promises to be an historic day at the Supreme Court, but it’s been a long legal, political, and social battle.

Ted Cruz and Steve King think the Court should be prevented from hearing any case involving same-sex marriage. Because they know they’re losing.

For months, Ted Cruz said the nomination of Loretta Lynch must be blocked. Then, he failed to show up when the Senate voted on her nomination.

Less than two weeks after entering the race, Florida Senator Marco Rubio is at the top of the GOP field in a new poll.