Outside the Beltway

Faced with mounting debt, the lame duck Illinois legislature rushed through a massive tax hike in the wee hours this morning.

President Obama’s selection of Bill Daley as Chief of Staff is being seen as a sign that the White House is moving to the center and gearing up for 2012.

Red States should gain 10 seats while Blue States should lose eight.

The Chairmen of the National Debt Commission have released a draft report for consideration. It’s got some very good ideas, but it’s most likely Dead On Arrival.

Those images on your Facebook page may come back to haunt you if you decide to run for office someday.

Republicans either lost or barely won a whole lot of races because their vote was split with minor party candidates.

We’ve been talking about the 2010 elections since, oh, the day after the 2008 elections.   Now, it’s time for final predictions.

A call for ideological purity in the Democratic Party in today’s New York Times demonstrates that Democrats can be just as foolish as Republicans.

Thanks to races in as many six states that may be decided by absentee and write-in ballots, we may not know the outcome of the 2010 Elections for several weeks after Election Day.

Voters head to the polls in thirteen days, and current indications are that they’ll be handing a big victory to the Republican Party.

It’s looking less and less likely that the GOP will gain control of the Senate, but they’re going to come awfully close,, and that might be just as good from their point of view.

Polls show the Republicans easily retaking the House but falling short in the Senate. But 2006 showed us that wave elections can produce shocking outcomes.

Sarah Palin is at the center of a divide within the GOP that could become larger even as the GOP comes closer to regaining control of Congress.

More bad news for Democrats as a new poll shows that voters are more likely to consider them extreme than Republicans.

Republicans are suddenly targeting — and Democrats in some cases are conceding — House seats that were until recently considered out of play.

If Sarah Palin isn’t running for President, why is she comparing herself to Ronald Reagan ?

Even with some key seats trending Democrat, Republicans are primed to take over both Houses of Congress come November 2.

A new projection of Congressional reapportionment shows a dramatic shift to traditionally Republican states in the South and Southwest.

The Democratic Party seems to have decided that the best way to begin the final leg of the midterm election campaign is with a legislative cave-in of epic proportions.

Christine O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware Tuesday has made it less likely that the GOP will be able to take control of the Senate, but they still have an excellent shot of making substantial gains that will transform Congress’s Upper House.

Christine O’Donnell has become the latest star of the Tea Party movement, and her primary battle with Mike Castle the latest battleground over the future of the Republican Party.

Democrats are sending some of their candidates to the Death Panels.

For most of the year, a GOP takeover in the Senate seemed beyond the realm of possibility. That’s no longer the case.

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and his hair, will live to fight another day.

Ross Douthat’s latest New York Times column demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of history in the context of immigration.

The results of last night’s Colorado Senate primaries should be causing Democrats to worry.

For-profit universities are defrauding their students. Indeed, it’s their business model.

November’s elections will set modern records for most Senate seats and governorships on the ballot.

The Electoral College is the worst way to elect a President, except for all the others.

Massachusetts will become the latest state to join the National Popular Vote movement, a compact wherein states throw their Electoral College votes to the nationwide winner once enough states agree to ensure that outcome.

You’ve probably seen a lot of these signs popping up lately.

The Fox News headline “University of Illinois Instructor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs” is grossly misleading.

Did LeBron James pick Miami because of income taxes ? Probably not.

Barack Obama may not be doing much campaigning in the fall if recent poll numbers are any indication.

What exactly is it about air conditioning that has some people so upset ?

The Supreme Court resolved a 100+ year old Constitutional ambiguity today, but the legal issues surrounding gun control remain as murky as ever.

Despite repeated promises to the contrary, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay will be remaining open indefinitely.

Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling and media mogul Conrad Black got new life today from the Supreme Court, who ruled the use of the “honest services” doctrine against them unconstitutionally vague.