Outside the Beltway

The prospects for real economic recovery are not good.

With the advantage of hindsight, it’s clear that more creative strategies were needed. But they probably couldn’t have been passed.

Marcia Anderson has become the first African American woman to be promoted to a two star general in the US Army.

A new poll shows that Americans are starting to look East.

Not every 10th anniversary of a horrible surprise attack has been treated the same.

Whether it’s a “Ponzi Scheme” or not, Social Security has serious systemic problems that must be addressed.

The Solyndra case is a classic example of what’s wrong with “government investment.”

No matter how weak he becomes, no President will ever be completely irrelevant to the political process.

Did World War II teach us anything about spending-as-stimulus? Not really.

Another bad report from the Labor Department.

Repeating the “destruction creates wealth” fallacy every time there’s a natural disaster doesn’t make it any less of a fallacy.

That a popular two-term governor of Utah is being rejected by likely Republican primary voters as insufficiently conservative shows just how extreme American politics has gotten.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gave the strongest signal ever that there will be some U.S. military presence in Iraq after December 31st.

Rick Perry’s vision of capitalism doesn’t exactly comply with what Adam Smith had in mind.

According to Paul Krugman, what the American economy needs is for a bunch of space aliens to invade us.

Watching the news and reading the op-eds makes it clear: America is doomed.

Former Oregon governor and long-time US Senator Mark Hatfield has died.

The defense spending lobby is already engaging in fear-mongering over very modest defense cuts.

A legendary American soldier, General John Shalikashvili, has died.

A majority of Americans want to ban smoking in public; a fifth want to ban it even in private.

Should President Obama do whatever General Petraeus wants in Afghanistan?

Ppartisan politics no longer stops at the water’s edge. This is a bad sign for the Republic.

For the first time since the end of World War II, the GOP is wrestling with two diametrically opposed visions of foreign affairs.

Contrary to what Senator McCain, seeking realism in military policy does not make one an isolationist.

Tim Pawlenty’s new fiscal plan isn’t very grounded in reality.

The Anthony Weiner reveals once again the odd American obsession with the intersection of sex and politics.

The jobs market has been weak for much longer than just the past two years.

Former Serbian commander Ratko Mladic has been arrested for alleged war crimes committed in the 1990s.

The US-Israeli relationship is not one of equals.

President Obama’s approval numbers shot up after Osama bin Laden was killed two weeks ago. They’ve already settled back to where they were

Newt Gingrich says the coming presidential election will be the most important since the Civil War.

Will days of strong economic growth ever return? And what happens if they don’t?

America’s war colleges have some problems but we can’t close them.

Tom Ricks doesn’t understand why we need an exit strategy in Libya.

When America’s leaders make the decision to engage in military action abroad, has the time for debate ended, or is it more important than ever that those with doubts about the policy speak out?

Another survey shows that Americans don’t know much about their own history, but does it really matter?

Will one of the worst natural disasters to hit Japan in centuries change the relationship between the Japanese government and the people?

Can the massive destruction caused by the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns stimulate the economy?

Overnight, we celebrate the biannual ritual of resetting all our clocks so as to save daylight. Oddly, the amount of daylight continues to heed its own rhythms.

In just over a decade, America has gone from a bipartisan consensus that torture and brutality are bad to a bipartisan consensus that they’re necessary.

The last American veteran of a conflict which ended nearly a century ago has died.