Outside the Beltway

The trend toward hard-right parties continues.

Should the government need a warrant to get information it can buy on the open market?

House Democrats are releasing them because they can.

What should be the bar? Can it ever be reached?

A theory floated in Bush v Gore could radically change American elections.

Assuming they had the votes, should Democrats carve out yet another exception?

More on primaries with a foray into Madison and the general politics of power-seekers and incentives.

Our system lacks accountability.

Or, at least, he’s willing to kill democracy in order to save it.

The post really isn’t about Sinema as much as it about a theory of poltiics.

The President of the United States is an existential threat to the Republic.

Gridlock doesn’t mean government stops. It just shifts who is governing.

A fundamental building block of our system makes it nearly impossible to fix.

Thinking about wildfires and electoral politics.

A quick overview and some examples to start a longer conversation.

Orban has used Covid-19 to kill whatever vestiges of democracy remained.

Is being ruled by the elderly a bad thing?

Has this precedent permanently damaged the country? Or is it just politics as usual?

Let’s be clear-eyed about this.

The men who gathered in Philadelphia to write the Constitution were geniuses. But they couldn’t predict the future.

Alliance to party trumps alliance to branch.

Two Federal Courts have blocked the Administration from diverting Defense Department funds to pay for the President’s border wall

The House Intelligence Committee has released its report resulting from its investigation of the Ukraine scandal.

Rich Lowry puts preferred outcomes over constitutional process.

Republicans face a choice. Do they put their country first, or do they put their President first?

The White House is doubling down on its illegitimate stonewalling of valid Congressional document requests.

While the scope of Federal power has expanded beyond the ken of the Framers, this is not an example.

Justin Amash’s call for impeachment of the President, and the Republican Party’s reaction to it, is telling us a lot about the current state of the GOP.

Does the House have an obligation to proceed with impeachment?

A Federal Judge has put at least a partial hold on President’s Trump’s effort to use a “national emergency” to fund his border wall.

No, abolishing the EC would not turn farmers into serfs.

As the Administration continues to stonewall legitimate requests from Congress for documents and witnesses, pressure is growing on Speaker Pelosi to authorize the opening of an impeachment inquiry.

Republican Congressman Justin Amash has always been a rebel within his own party, now he’s making that even more apparent.

Forget high language about constitutional prerogatives. This is about parties and elections.

More Madisonian musing on the current state of our constitutional order.

Back to Fed 51 and this moment in oversight: we have to remember what ambitions drive politicians.

As I have noted before: party trumps institutional pride. The Barr testimony is just another example.

Some say yes, others no.

It’s been a rough two years under Trump, but America’s institutions are surviving.

A second Federal Judge has found that the Commerce Department violated the law when it moved to put a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census form.

Republicans face a choice in the coming days. Do they support the Constitution, or do they support Donald Trump? You can count on them making the wrong choice.

The American Civil Liberties Union has joined the list of groups with lawsuits against the President’s declaration of a “national emergency” at the southern border.

There is a bit of a disjuncture between the terminology and the reality (but that does not excuse Trump’s current actions).

President Trump’s impending decision to declare a national emergency to get funding for his border wall will quickly face serious legal challenges. It may be more vulnerable than the White House suspects.

Don’t expect the Congress (i.e., the Senate) to pull us out of this shutdown mess.

President Trump is claiming that he could use authority to declare a “national emergency” to build his wall even if Congress doesn’t authorize it.

Three Democratic Senators are suing the Acting Attorney General, asserting that his appointment was unconstitutional.

President Trump’s selection to serve as Acting Attorney General does not appear to be Constitutionally authorized to serve in that position.

As expected, the midterm elections ended up being a split result that gives Democrats and Republicans alike reason to celebrate.

On Trump’s anger.