Outside the Beltway

FEMA is about to run out of money, but don’t worry your Congressman is getting his vacation time in.

Supreme Court nominees were confirmed quite easily within recent memory. What’s changed?

The immediate reaction among the political class to the debt downgrade was the play the same old stupid games.

The agenda of the Tea Party movement doesn’t necessarily coincide with what voters say they want from Washington.

Has a precedent been set for future requests by the President to increase the debt ceiling?

Once again, the debt ceiling deal is raising questions about the President’s leadership.

Now that America’s political leadership have probably averted a self-inflicted global economic calamity, it’s time to assess the winners and losers.

We have a deal in Washington. Now, the leadership just has to make sure it can pass Congress.

The Senate killed the Boehner Plan but the debt ceiling crisis is still unresolved and the way out is murky.

The failure of House Republicans to pass a bill that would have been dead on arrival in the Senate, anyway, raises questions about whether a deal is possible and whether John Boehner can lead his own coalition.

It hasn’t been a very productive weekend in Washington, D.C.

The Gang of Six is back together. And they have a plan.

Let’s look at the actual proposal.

A Mitch McConnell-Harry Reid brokered deal on the debt ceiling looks promising.

President Obama has walked out of negotiations on the debt ceiling with an agreement is nowhere in sight.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has proposed a simple deal to break the impasse on the debt ceiling: Cede power to raise the ceiling to the president, with a few minor caveats.

It was a largely fruitless weekend in the debt negotiations.

The US Supreme Court declined to stay the execution of a child raping murderer over a technical violation of a treaty.

The Senate Republican leader is running a shrewd political game. But what’s good for the GOP is bad for America.

Ppartisan politics no longer stops at the water’s edge. This is a bad sign for the Republic.

Talks about a deal to raise the debt ceiling seem pretty close to collapse now that there are no Republicans involved.

As Congress left town for the long weekend, the Senate Minority Leader threw a grenade into the budget negotiations.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wants a full debate on the PATRIOT Act. What’s Congress so afraid of?

Obama’s main politics are hardly as leftist as many make them out to be. Indeed, much of them could have fit well in the the GOP of 1990s and early 2000s.

President Obama’s budget speech was light on specifics, but that’s because it was really the opening salvo of the 2012 campaign.

Four Senators who just happen to be up for re-election next year are silently looking for alternatives to the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.

The Senate leadership has agreed to exempt 1/3 of nominations from the confirmation process.