Outside the Beltway

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani tops the latest CNN poll of Republican presidential contenders.

Tim Pawlenty may face trouble from a pardon he issued while he was Governor of Minnesota.

Mitch Daniels, the candidate of George Will and a host of mainstream Republicans hoping for something better in 2012, has announced he will not be running for president in 2012.

With Huckabee out, the right side of the GOP primary base may end up divided. And that will help Mitt Romney.

We won’t have Mike Huckabee to kick around in 2012.

A study shows that most national columnists and talking heads are about as accurate as a coin flip.

President Obama is vulnerable, but he’s facing a GOP field that is underwhelming even for Republicans.

Arizona’s so-called “Birther Bill” seems to violate several provisions of the Federal Constitution.

Donald Trump is waiting to announce whether he’s running for president until after taping of “The Apprentice” concludes. Some thing NBC shouldn’t allow him to wait.

Donald Trump has been surging in polls of Republican voters recently, but that doesn’t mean much of anything.

Why did then-Governor Mike Huckabee’s office destroy all its office hard drives shortly before leaving office?

Quite improbably, Mike Huckabee seems to be positioned at the top of the GOP field right now. The only question is whether he really wants to run for President again.

The Supreme Court will decide whether states may jail parents who fail to make child support payments without providing them an attorney.

Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State, has died at 85.

With minor exceptions, all of the potential candidates for the GOP nomination in 2012 seem to have accepted the idea that defense spending, and the Bush-era interventionist foreign policy, are off the table when it comes time to talk spending cuts.

Republicans are starting to sour on Sarah Palin, meaning that they’re finally starting to catch up to the rest of the country.

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.

Republicans begin to discover that defeating an incumbent President isn’t an easy task.

Opposition to marriage equality is no longer the wedge issue it used to be.

A new set of polls from Gallup show that President Obama is still looking good for re-election.

Oddly, the Democratic Party seems to be responding to the 2010 midterms by moving further left.

The home mortgage interest deduction benefits Democrat-voting states most! Is the fix in?

The Get The Flock Outta Here Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

It’s straw poll season already. First up, New Hampshire where things turned out about how you’d expect them to considering Mitt Romney lives there now.

An obscure Arizona law has raised questions over whether Congressman Gabrielle Giffords could lose her seat if she is disabled for an extended period.

One columnist argues that Sarah Palin’s response to the Arizona shootings mark the end of whatever political future she might have had. He’s probably correct.

Geno Auriemma and his UConn Huskies should rightly be enormously proud of their accomplishments. But comparing them to John Wooden’s is embarrassing.

The prospective Republican field for 2012 is dismal. Then again, it always is.

This is a strange disconnect between Sarah Palin’s popularity within the Republican Party and her popularity with the nation as a whole. One wonders if the GOP notices, or cares.