Outside the Beltway

Newly disclosed details about the US role in Colombia.

According to reports, the President had no idea that the NSA was listening to the phone calls of foreign leaders until this summer.

Relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia seem to have soured in recent years.

The American taxpayer spent a lot of money today paying their employees not to work.

One inmate’s view of the asylum.

United States helped Saddam Hussein launch some of the worst chemical attacks in history against Iran.

CNN reports that CIA is going to great lengths to keep operatives from talking about what happened at Benghazi.

Keeping 166 detainees in Gitmo costs taxpayers $454 million.

Conservatives are doing what the criticized JournoList for doing—even though JournoList didn’t.

Once again, a Federal Court rules that the First Amendment rules does not protect a reporter from being compelled to reveal sources or the results of an investigation.

Words don’t always mean what you think they mean.

The latest NSA leaks are likely to prove to be diplomatically embarrassing.

Two polls indicate that most Americans oppose the President’s latest moves on Syria. This makes sense considering actual policy there seems to be entirely incoherent.

Outrage over leaks like those that Edward Snowden makes doesn’t exist when its politicians doing the leaking.

One Congressman thinks it would be a good idea to treat journalists as criminals.

While our leaders may not be fully trustworthy, they, not disgruntled low level employees, are best positioned to decide.

Meet Edward Snowden, the 29 year old CIA/NSA contractor who has confessed to leaking the details of the NSA’s data mining projects.

Sometimes it seems like all John McCain does is appear on Sunday morning news shows. The problem goes deeper than that, though.

Jay Stanley and Ben Wizner, privacy experts at the ACLU, argue that metadata is more sensitive than we think.

I have for months taken it as a given that she went on five Sunday morning talk shows and lied about what happened there. Did she?

Republicans should reject the calls to call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the unfolding scandals in Washington.

After many attempts to manufacture grand scandals out of very little, Republicans may finally have a legitimate outrage on their hands.

Just how serious was the leak that the Associated Press reported on last May?

The Obama Administration’s response to the Benghazi attack is approaching critical mass. It’s not going away any time soon.

The talking points prepared in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attack were heavily edited at the request of the State Department.

Republicans looking to Benghazi for political ammunition are likely going to be disappointed.

The CIA unsuccessfully lobbied to put Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the eldest of the Boston Marathon bombers, on the counterterrorism watch list in 2011.

General Petreaus is now Dr. Petraeus and will be teaching a 1-1 load a the City University of New York.

There seems to be an effort underway to reassess the legacy of our 43rd President.

The Boston Marathon bomber must be tried in a court of law.

A bipartisan commission of elder statesmen confirms what we’ve known for years.

A new report confirms that the United States did engage in torture in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

The GOP’s decision to filibuster the Senate Gun Control Bill doesn’t make a lot of political sense.

A Fox News reporter may go to jail for refusing to reveal a source. Should journalists have an absolute testimonial privilege?

Emily DePrang looks back at “‘Baghdad Bob’ and His Ridiculous, True Predictions.”

The CIA will soon be storing our nation’s most sensitive information with a private company.