Outside the Beltway

Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos received a very generous sentence in return for his guilty plea.

The second day of questioning for Judge Brett Kavanaugh was a bit rockier than the first, but nothing happened that seriously threatens his eventual confirmation.

Donald Trump is a bad, inept, and potentially dangerous President. That doesn’t mean that a ‘soft coup’ inside the White House is the answer to the problem he presents to our democratic republic.

The first day of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings was much ado about pretty much nothing, but then that can be used to describe a process whose outcome is pretty much foreordained.

Another “progressive” victory over a longtime Democratic incumbent, but this one is a bit different.

The military regime in Myanmar has sentenced two reporters to prison for reporting on the repression of the Rohingya Muslims.

Social media has altered the way writers and readers interact in odd ways.

President Trump is alienating our allies and making friends with dictators, and the world is responding as you might expect they would.

Another milestone set to be crossed.

At a minimum, Trump is betraying his oath of office. That is one hell of a minimum.

It took less than twenty-four hours for President Trump to essentially repudiate his purported attempt to walk back the appalling comments he made in Helsinki.

Some Democrats want to compel President Trump’s translator to testify about his private meeting with Vladimir Putin. That’s a bad idea.

President Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin was an even bigger disaster than anticipated.

Forget the “republic v. a democracy” abstraction. The numbers show some serious flaws in translating popular will into government.

A reference point for the future.

The Strzok hearing provides a return to this timeworn favorite.

The Office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued indictments against twelve Russian intelligence officials for election-related hacking, and in the process has shown most of the arguments made by the President and his surrogates regarding the Russia investigation are nonsense.

On the eve of the NATO Summit, President Trump continues to engage in tactics that seem to serve no purpose other than to undermine America’s most important and successful alliance.

The President is generating so much outrage on a daily basis that we’re missing important stories.

Recent polling finds that Americans aren’t feeling quite so patriotic right now. It’s understandable, but we shouldn’t give up hope.

The right-wing government in Warsaw has purged more than one-third of the members of the Polish Supreme Court in a crackdown on political opponents.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a populist from the left, rode a wave of populism and public disdain for the outgoing President to a landslide win in Mexico

There is a frustration and a growing sense that the American political system is illegitimate.

The current discussion about SCOTUS is a good excuse to look at how other countries handle these things.

Convicted leaker Chelsea Manning lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Maryland, to the surprise of nobody.

Turkey’s authoritarian leader is going to be around for a long time.

A new survey shows that Americans are increasingly unable to tell the difference between fact and opinion. That’s a problem.

Madison was right about politicians and ambition. He just didn’t see the how it would all play out.

Either the President of the United States is a knowing liar or he is very easily duped. Neither is a comforting thought.

Another unilateral withdrawal from an international institution.

The Department of Justice’s Inspector General found that former F.B.I. Director James Comey was ‘insubordinate’ in regard to the Clinton email investigation, but found no evidence of political bias at the Bureau.

Dan Coates, the Director of National Intelligence, has issued a strong warning that has received little attention.

The actions of the Trump administration are helping Russian-EU relations (to the detriment of the US).

The President’s constant attacks on the news media are meant for a single purpose, to undermine even accurate reporting about wrongdoing in his Administration.

This President lies on a daily basis. It’s time to start calling him what he is.

Just as they did three years ago when they legalized same-sex marriage, Irish voters turned out in record numbers to repeal the nation’s ban on abortion.

In an election that pretty much everyone agrees was illegitimate, Nicolás Maduro has won a second term as Venezuela’s President.

61 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of a man who left office a failed president.

Does the administration know what it is doing?

While longtime supporters have turned on the legendary attorney over his support of Donald Trump, he’s been astonishingly consistent.

For Donald Trump and his supporters, “Fake News” means any news that doesn’t shower enough praise on him.

Instead of attending the White House Correspondents Association Dinner last night, Donald Trump took his show on the road where he continued his long-standing attacks on the press. Unfortunately, it’s a message that resonates with his supporters.

A Federal Appeals Court has reversed a lower court ruling that struck down Texas’s Voter ID law as discriminatory against minority voters.

An essay from earlier in the year by Jacob T. Levy underscores some of the points I recently tried to make about democratic norms in the current era.

A longtime “Hillary Beat” reporter ruminates on what she and her candidate could have done differently in 2016.

An attempt at defining the conversation.

Another early-morning edition of Late Night OTB.

Another Federal Court loss for gun rights activists challenging state laws banning “assault weapons.”

A woman who was fired after a photograph of her giving the middle finger to President Trump’s motorcade went viral is suing her former employer. She doesn’t have much of a case.

News anchors at dozens of local stations owned by conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group were recently required to read a script mandated by corporate headquarters, and it’s leading to some bad media coverage for Sinclair.