Outside the Beltway

Ambassador Karlov is mostly likely not a modern day Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The situation in the Middle East just potentially became much more complicated.

Now Donald Trump is alleging that the 2016 Election was tainted by ‘illegal voting,’ even though he won!

One of the Cold War era’s last dictators has finally died.

It has become necessary to destroy the party in order to save it.

In which Ted Cruz endorses the guy who called his wife ugly and said his father was involved in the Kennedy assassination.

Did Donald Trump really suggest assassination as a political weapon, even as a joke? It sure sounds like it.

Thirty five years after trying to kill President Reagan, John W. Hinckley Jr. is close to being a free man.

Ted Cruz’s convention speech was about what you’d expect, a gamble designed to set up his campaign for President in 2020 or beyond.

If you listened to politicians or the media, you wouldn’t know that homicide rates are at a level unseen since 1963.

Voters in the United Kingdom are headed to the polls in a vote that will have widespread consequences.

National tragedies, whether man-made or natural disasters, used to bring Americans together. Now they just seem to pull Americans apart.

The murder of Jo Cox, MP is looking more and more like a politically motivated assassination, and that’s causing some in Great Britain to look inward.

The cartoonist and student of human psychology is fascinated by the con artist who would be president.

No trial for Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood Robert Dear, at least not for now.

Donald Trump’s win last night made him the presumptive Republican nominee, whether Republicans will unify around him is another question.

The GOP race for President takes yet another bizarre turn.

Nancy Reagan was a crucial part what made Ronald Reagan the man he was, and today she passed away at the age of 94.

Remembering a legend on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

A new report finds that the problems at the Secret Service are far deeper than previously known.

Hillary’s leading potential Republican candidates, but so is Bernie! Rand Paul does better against Hillary than other Republicans! Those are the headlines you get from head-to-head match-up polls, but it’s all largely meaningless.

The seeds of the current peace deal date back to 2007-2008 (plus some longer-term background notes).

The fallout from Donald Trump’s debate performance, and his comments afterward, continues, and it’s leading some to wonder if we may finally be at the end of this ridiculous charade.

The murders in Charleston have revived a debate that should have been over a long time ago.

A word that has come in recent years to be used to refer chiefly to Muslim fanatics obviously applies to a man who murdered nine people because they’re black.

A black leader is running a billboard campaign to improve his community. Racism ensues.

Lindsey Graham says that, if elected president, he would summarily kill anyone thinking about joining ISIS.

An attack on al Qaeda outposts in January resulted in the death of two hostages, but also resulted in the death of two high value al Qaeda targets.

The Atlantic has a fascinating cover story by Graeme Wood titled “What ISIS Really Wants.”

My latest for The National Interest, “Obama’s Paris Blunder: Part of a Much Bigger Problem,” has posted.

An entirely unsurprising decision from Federal Prosecutors in Washington, D.C.

Reversing a previous decision, Sony will allow The Interview to be screened in a small number of theaters.

There are again reports of Chinese frustration with the Kim regime in North Korea, but change is unlikely to happen in the DPRK until Beijing is ready to let it happen.

There’s not a whole lot the United States can do to respond effectively and proportionally to North Korea’s hacking attack against Sony.

NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot dead while sitting in their patrol car In Brooklyn. And those suggesting that anyone other than the killer has “blood on their hands” are being absurd.

President Obama believes the North Korean attack on Sony was “an act of cyber vandalism” rather than “an act of war.”

President Obama criticized Sony for backing down, and said that the U.S. would respond to North Korea’s cyber attack “at a place and time we choose,”

In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on C.I.A. torture, some have suggested that eight years of Jack Bauer helped make torture more acceptable to the American public.

The U.S. Government has formally charged North Korea with responsibility for the hacking attack on Sony. How to respond to that attack is a more complicated question.

With major theater chains having pulled out, Sony bowed to the inevitable, but now there appears to be proof that a foreign power is behind the Sony hacking attacks and threats of violence.

Hackers who have divulged embarrassing secrets from deep within Sony Pictures are now threatening violence if a film about a plot to kill Kim Jong Un is released.

A critic of the imperial presidency becomes an imperial president.

For better or worse, Marion Barry was a fixture in D.C. politics for much of the 40 year period of home rule that began in 1975.

A Presidential candidate’s health and fitness for office are legitimate issues. When it comes to bringing up Hillary Clinton’s age in the context of 2016,, though, Republicans need to proceed with caution.