Outside the Beltway

Both candidates are telling the public that they can change the way Washington works. They’re both setting themselves up to be the source of major disappointment.

Do Americans have any idea how different their lives are from the rest of the humanity?

The President’s Cabinet is less a Team Of Rivals and more a Team Of Managers.

Michael Fumento becomes the latest prominent conservative to criticize what conservatism has become.

Is President Obama’s announcement on same-sex marriage helping to create a change in opinion on the issue among African-Americans?

Marriage has always been an evolving institution.

Some Republicans see the light on same-sex marriage. Whether the party will listen is another question.

A blog post lampooning black studies dissertations got a writer fired, setting off a controversy over the limits of free speech.

Further thoughts on Ron Paul’s game plan, assuming he has one.

The outpouring from my Twitter stream yesterday on the news of the death of Adam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys, surprised me.

Based on the postmortems, it certainly seems like the Romney campaign threw Richard Grenell under the bus.

Richard Grenell’s time as Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman lasted less than a month. The fact that he’s gay appears to be the reason it ended.

Despite their rhetoric, there would be few differences between a Romney Administration and an Obama Administration when it comes to foreign policy.

There are advantages to cash that electronic transactions cannot replicate.

OTB’s comment section as a microcosm of the American political landscape.

Andrew Sullivan wants the Catholic Church to give up its hatred of homosexuals. There’s another alternative.

Why isn’t Obama doing better in the polls and did we just see a Kinsey Gaffe in the wild?

Dharun Ravi was convicted of bias intimidation toward Tyler Clementi. It’s not at all clear that he should have been.

There will be no more GOP candidate debates. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

The GOP Establishment is in crisis, but it has nobody to blame but itself.

When it comes to same-sex marriage, the right is fighting a losing battle.

We can feel that we “know” athletes, entertainers, politicians, and others that we’ve followed, rooted for, or whatnot over a period of time and feel a genuine sense of loss when they’re gone.

In the 1980s, Americans were bowling alone. Now, we’re living that way.

Are the Republicans the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich? Or a viable contender for the White House?

Conservatives are rejecting Andrew Sullivan’s Newsweek essay out of hand, but they ought to pay attention to what he’s saying.

Are their cultural reasons for America’s obesity problem?

The problem with Europe may not be the Euro, but the fact that there really aren’t any Europeans.

Rick Santorum returns to his old ways when asked about same-sex marriage.

To Republicans, even thinking about engaging in diplomacy is enough to accuse the President of appeasement.

Understanding the state of the GOP field requires recognizing that President Obama is actually pretty moderate.

Ron Paul doesn’t want to talk about his newsletters now, but he was pretty talkative 15 years ago.