Outside the Beltway

Thanks apparently in part to body camera footage, two police officers in Louisiana are facing murder charges in the shooting death of a child during a police chase.

Well this could be a game changer.

Forget about Congress, the real story going forward is likely to be Republican dominance of state legislatures nationwide.

Representatives from most of the Republican Presidential campaigns met to discuss reforms to the debate process, but none of their ideas will actually improve the quality of debates.

A pair of new polls confirms that Republican hopes that Donald Trump would fade are failing to come true.

With Congress set to come back from its recess, attention is once again turning to the race for Speaker and one Paul Ryan, Congressman from Wisconsin.

Paul Ryan has yet to say if he will run for Speaker of the House, but that hasn’t stopped the opposition on the hard right from forming already.

The criteria for next month’s third Republican Presidential debate have been announced, and they’re likely to end up being bad news for several Republican candidates.

The next Republican debate is likely to be a lot smaller than the previous two, and that could prove fatal for several candidates.

The first significant national polls taken in the wake of last week’s debate show that Donald Trump has slipped somewhat, but still remains the clear leader of the Republican race for President.

A trial court Judge in Oregon is the latest public official to refuse to do his job.

The 2016 election will be fought on a very small battlefield, and right now the makeup of that battlefield heavily favors the Democrats.

Most of the Republican candidates for President would rather support a lawbreaker than the Rule of Law. The American people should judge them accordingly.

It will never actually happen, of course, but some of Donald Trump’s fellow candidates for President have been eager to endorse his idea to abolish birthright citizenship.

A Clerk in Kentucky appears to be headed for a showdown with a Federal District Court Judge that she is destined to lose.

Donald Trump is center stage, John Kasich is in, and Rick Perry is relegated to the kid’s table.

The last three polls to be released before Thursday’s debate show Donald Trump continuing to solidify his lead.

Donald Trump leads in the first of the final polls to be released before Thursday’s debate.

The first of a series of polls in anticipation of next week’s debate shows Donald Trump still at the top, with a surprise coming out of Ohio.

His remarks about John McCain’s military service don’t seem to be hurting Donald Trump with Republican true believers.

Despite his remarks about John McCain, Donald Trump is likely to be around for some time to come.

Taxes on wine, beer, and spirits vary wildly from state-to-state and even within each state.

Donald Trump has gotten almost nothing but negative press since entering the race for President, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting him very much just yet.

The Attorney General of Texas is responding to the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling by telling Clerk’s who issue marriage license that they are free to ignore the law.

There’s a lot of pandering and outright nonsense in the wake of the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage.

The reaction of many of the GOP candidates to the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges is about what you’d expect, but there are a few interesting surprises.

Republicans aren’t going to like this one.

Political reality shows us that the shootings in Charleston are not going to have any appreciable impact on the likelihood of any type of gun control law passing anywhere outside of the bluest of the blue states.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal enters the Presidential race today, but it’s hard to see how he even manages to become a plausible candidate.

As Governor Haley pushes the South Carolina legislature to take the Confederate Flag down, the movement moves beyond the Palmetto State.

The head of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has resigned in the wake of criminal charges for covering up sexual abuse of children.

A new North Carolina law allows government employees to decline to perform their jobs by claiming it violates their “religious liberty.”

Once seen as a rising Republican star, Bobby Jindal’s impending Presidential bid now looks like it’s over before it begins.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker isn’t officially a candidate for President yet, but he’s doing quite well in Iowa anyway.

Marco Rubio seems to be in lockstep with the extreme social conservatives when it comes to same-sex marriage.

Rand Paul is out with one of his more forceful attacks on Republican hawks to date.

What if they held a straw poll and nobody came?

Thwarted by the legislature, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal used his executive power to take action that seems directed more toward evangelicals in Iowa than anything happening in his home state.

With 14 candidates vying for the Republican nomination, TV execs are scrambling to make the debates watchable.

The Republican debate stage in 2016 is going to be even more crowded than it was in 2012.

Once again, only six or seven states are likely to matter.

Two Republican candidates for President say that Republican elected officials should simply ignore the Supreme Court if it strikes down bans on same-sex marriage.

Former Hewlett Packard CEO, and failed Senate candidate, Carly Fiorina will be running for President for some reason.

Five years after it became law, the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act appears to be over.

A new poll suggests that the American public does not support laws that give religious exemptions to businesses that want to discriminate based on sexual orientation.

A bill pending in Louisiana seems likely to become the next national focus in the debate between marriage equality and claims of ‘religious freedom.’

Kentucky has offered the Supreme Court a defense of its ban on same-sex marriage that seems laughable.

Another tone deaf action from leading Republicans.