Outside the Beltway

In Rick Santorum’s brand of conservatism, no smart people need apply.

Romney supporters seem to want to paint Obama as Carter. This is unlikely to help.

The Dos Equis guy is fundraising for Obama.

A new round of polling has Obama in the lead and shows reasons why Romney’s supporters should be concerned, but it’s unclear how long any of this will last.

A rather egregious case of misplaced priorities in Texas.

A legal setback for the Texas Voter ID law, but not much of a political setback for Voter ID laws in general.

Tonight’s convention speech is the most important speech Mitt Romney has ever given.

Lindsey Graham: “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

Will an MRI of your brain someday be able to tell if you’re lying? And, if it can, should it be admissible in Court?

Unless something changes, Obama remains the odds-on favorite to win.

The GOP is set to approve rules changes that will impact the 2016 primaries, and beyond. They’re a good start.

American politics has been reduced to a charade where all people do is yell at each other.

Whether or not it’s proper to call the FRC a “hate group,” the persecution complex being displayed in the wake of Tuesday’s shooting is absurd.

A black ‘Democrat’ who seconded Obama’s nomination in 2008 is endorsing Romney in 2012. It’s not a big deal.

A gunman, possibly upset about FRC’s policies, shot a guard at the conservative Christian group’s Washington, D.C. offices this morning.

This charge is false, as 10 minutes’ work by the Washington Post would have shown.

If a new Gallup poll is any indication, Paul Ryan was not a great pick.

The most recent round of national polling seems to show that the negative attacks on Romney are having an impact.

Mitt Romney continues to have serious problems getting people to like him.

Harry Reid is a scoundrel, not a hero.

Publishing unsubstantiated rumor is not journalism.

Romney’s foreign tour didn’t go quite as well as planned, but it’s unclear how much the minor gaffes will actually matter.

The Romney campaign has hurt the press corps’ feelings.

My latest for World Policy Review, “Oversight or Not, Drones Are Here to Stay,” has posted.

Don’t look for an effort to enact new gun laws in the wake of the Aurora shootings.

Once again, the usual suspects are exploiting tragedy for political purposes.

President Obama set off a firestorm by claiming business owners didn’t build “that.”

CFR’s Laurie Garrett has a piece in The Atlantic headlined “Good Job, CIA: Your Pakistan Vaccine Plot Helped Bring Polio Back From the Brink of Eradication.”

Antonin Scalia says Supreme Court justices have a collegial relationship and make decisions based on legal philosophy, not politics.

Provisions in the Affordable Care Act may cause the entire statutory scheme to collapse.

Reporters covering the 2012 election are letting the campaigns control what they report to a disturbing degree.

A new report on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital seems to be much ado about nothing.

Lies and misrepresentations in politics seem to be something the American people have come to, if not accept, at least expect.