Outside the Beltway

It’s time to end this absurd annual spectacle.

Like the men who came before him, Barack Obama has vastly increased the powers of his office. Someone should have asked him about that last night.

Mitt Romney is once again making completely false claims about the status of the United States Navy.

The GOP still hasn’t dealt with the legacy of George W. Bush.

It’s a wonder the Constitution gets followed at all.

Did the Founding Fathers make it too hard to amend the Constitution? No, they didn’t.

My first piece for The New Republic, “Why the Obama Administration’s Drone War May Soon Reach a Tipping Point,” is up.

Is Mitt Romney the least experienced major-party presidential nominee since1940?

A Selection Of Speaker Gingrich’s Thoughts Over The Years

Many people seem to have a rather inappropriate view of their relationship to the President of the United States.

Giving the President the unchecked power to kill American citizens raises some serious red flags.

Is America’s political system to blame for our current problems?

It’s a shame that Duverger’s Law doesn’t come with criminal penalties.

On reflection, the nature of Marcus Bachmann’s influence over his wife is indeed a legitimate question in a political campaign.

A Presidential candidate’s medical condition is entirely relevant to their fitness for office.

Thomas Ricks makes the case that JFK was the worst President of his century but his argument misses the mark.

Elias Isquith proclaims my Atlantic essay “How Perpetual War Became U.S. Ideology” to be “a total disaster.”

Contempt for Congress is an old American tradition. Unfortunately.

Like all Presidents before him, Barack Obama is asserting the right to virtually unfettered discretion when it comes to military matters.

U.S. officials are making clear that the current mission in Libya may not lead to the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule. If that’s the case, then why are we there in the first place?

The American right has become infected with the notion that Barack Obama isn’t just wrong, but evil. That won’t be healthy in the long run.

Rep. Jane Harman is leaving Congress to become president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Was the 2011 SOTU a blatant rip-off of past speeches? Or simply banal?

Bipartisan seating at the State Of The Union is a pointless act of political theater. Then again, so is the State Of The Union Address itself.

The Presidency has lost the aura of mystique that used to surround it, and that’s a good thing.

Jonah Goldberg observes, “It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building; four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took two years; the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days it takes longer to build an overpass.”

Justice Alito said recently he won’t be attending the next State of the Union address. Sounds like a good idea to me.

“Those who doubt that the failings of higher education in America have political consequences need only reflect on the quality of progressive commentary on the tea party movement.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger predicts President Obama’s re-election. Historically, that’s the safe bet.

In his farewell speech on Friday, Rahm Emanuel said that the Obama Administration had faced tougher times than any previous President. That is a fundamentally absurd idea.

If you think Jimmy Carter is the Worst Figure in American History, you really need to read more.

Colombia has sworn in a new president. And so begins the Santos era as the Uribe era heads for the history books.

Will a debate over foreign policy tear apart the GOP ? Probably not.