Outside the Beltway

The Republican candidates for President took to the stage last night for a debate that seemed to last forever and accomplished nothing.

To listen to many of the Republican candidates for President, it would appear that the lights have been turned out on Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

Rowan County, Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis says she won’t interfere in the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

California’s legislature has approved a bill that would legalize physician assisted suicide in the nation’s largest state.

A new poll shows that the vast majority of Americans oppose Kim Davis’s refusal to follow the law, even while some Republican candidates rally behind her.

Rowan County, Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis is being released from jail, but it may end up being a very short reprieve.

A trial court Judge in Oregon is the latest public official to refuse to do his job.

Most of the Republican candidates for President would rather support a lawbreaker than the Rule of Law. The American people should judge them accordingly.

Rowan County, Kentucky Clerk Kimberly Davis was found in contempt of court and jailed for her refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

The Supreme Court has denied a Kentucky Clerk’s request to stay a ruling requiring her to comply with the law and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The POLITICO gang report that a “Joe Biden strategy for [a] White House run [is] taking shape.”

A Clerk in Kentucky appears to be headed for a showdown with a Federal District Court Judge that she is destined to lose.

Last night reinforced what I thought about some candidates and changed what I think about others.

Public opinion on the Supreme Court has declined significantly, largely because Republicans don’t like the Supreme Court very much right now.

Rand Paul’s Presidential campaign isn’t going so well at the moment.

A new polls seems to show that Republicans are still clinging to their opposition to marriage equality in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has formally entered the race for President, but can he overcome his flip-flops and a turn to the hard right?

While “fundamentals” will have more impact on choosing our next president than what happens on the campaign trail, the race itself is important.

A County Clerk in Kentucky is being sued because she thinks she can refuse to do her job and still keep that job.

He definitely wouldn’t appreciate it, but in some sense you can thank Robert Bork for the Supreme Court’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges.

A long history of opposing marriage equality could end up hurting Republicans even though that battle is over in this country.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will be entering the race for President later this month, but it’s unclear if his recent turn to the hard right will help him or hurt him.

A new poll shows that solid majorities of Americans support the Supreme Court’s decisions on Obamacare subsidies and marriage. It’s a different story for Republicans.

The Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality seems to have revived an idea that has been mentioned before, but as it has always been, the idea of “getting government out of marriage” is little more than a simplistic slogan.

The Attorney General of Texas is responding to the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling by telling Clerk’s who issue marriage license that they are free to ignore the law.

The events of the past two weeks could allow the Republican Party to move forward.

There’s a lot of pandering and outright nonsense in the wake of the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage.

Debating the proper role of the judiciary.

In week a that has seen discussion of lost causes, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Surpreme Court appears poised to fight one last battle.

Wherein I take the view that as our understanding of language changes, so too does our application of the Constiution.

Andrew Sullivan, perhaps the man most responsible for putting the notion of marriage equality into the national debate, has come out of his blogging retirement to weigh in on yesterday’s historic ruling.

The reaction of many of the GOP candidates to the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges is about what you’d expect, but there are a few interesting surprises.

The Supreme Court has issued a ruling whose roots can be found in case law going back half a century.

The US Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that the U.S. Constitution contains a right to same-sex marriage.

The era of legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act is over.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal enters the Presidential race today, but it’s hard to see how he even manages to become a plausible candidate.

It’s been obvious from the moment the news broke that the murders in Charleston were rooted in racism, but some Republicans have had trouble acknowledging that.

More Democrats are calling themselves “liberal” than they have in years. Republicans, too.

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.

A new Michigan law allows religious-affiliated adoption agencies to turn away parents for religious reasons, and it seems fairly obvious what the target is in this case.

A new North Carolina law allows government employees to decline to perform their jobs by claiming it violates their “religious liberty.”

It will be some time before sanity prevails in the GOP, but slowly but surely Republicans seem to be becoming less socially conservative.

Kansas Republicans are threatening to cut off funding for the entire state judicial system if the state’s Supreme Court strikes down a law the legislature likes.

Americans are growing more tolerant of gays and gay marriage, with irrelevant exceptions.

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.

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

A new poll shows that Americans have moved to the left on a wide variety of social issues.

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