Outside the Beltway

Now that Republicans have the House, wouldn’t they be better off playing nice?

More tortured logic on the issue of the filibuster.

Is the filibuster essential for the Senate to function as designed?

President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts are calling for bipartisanship in the New Year.

The Federal Communications Commission is using a statute from the 1930s to try to regulate the technology of the 21st Century. It’s a mistake.

Did Obama’s tax cut deal demolish the Republican charge that he’s a radical? Not hardly.

The battle between social and fiscal conservatives continues, with the SoCons now saying that criticism of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is now considered evidence of ideological impurity.

The GOP is being urged to avoid social issues and concentrate on reducing spending, shrinking government, and economic freedom. It’s a good idea.

Shockingly, Mitch McConnell and other Republicans are hoping to increase their numbers in Congress and take back the White House.

Mitch McConnell made clear today that he’s targeting Barack Obama for defeat in two years.

Ok, what strategy should Speaker Boehner pursue?

Congressional Republicans and President Obama both held press conferences today that included talk of bipartisanship and working together. Don’t believe it.

The enthusiasm for Tea Party candidates likely helped the House Republican wave. But it also likely cost the GOP four Senate seats that it would otherwise have won — and thus the majority.

Jack Conway’s “Aqua Buddha” ad has come back to haunt him in the polls, and may become the act that seals his fate on Election Day.

Republicans are promising two years of gridlock and obstructionism if they take control of Congress, but is that really what the people who are likely to vote for them next week really want?

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.

Lisa Murkowski is the worst kind of sore loser candidate, willing to screw over her party’s voters and her own donors to keep her seat

The Republican Party is keeping relatively quiet on the Proposition 8 ruling. That’s a good idea.

Mitch McConnell and Al Franken provide a lesson in Senate comity.

Senate Republicans want to rethink the 14th Amendment’s automatic citizenship for people born in the U.S.

As the campaign in Kentucky heats up for the final sprint to November, Rand Paul seems to have succeeded in moving beyond many of the mis-steps that plagued him three months ago.

Twenty-five years after retiring as President Reagan’s Budget Director, David Stockman is back with a scathing indictment of Republican fiscal policies over the past four decades.

Thanks to a united Republican Caucus, the Senate failed to take up a deeply flawed campaign finance “reform” bill.

Recent debates over the economic and fiscal impact of the Bush tax cuts indicate that Republicans still haven’t learned the lessons of the Bush years.

Vice-President Biden glances into the future and sees a relatively good year for Democrats. Is he right ?

Two widely-hyped reports have Wall Street firms donating less money to Democrats as payback for financial reform efforts. But a closer look reveals no such thing.

More Politics 101 for Rand Paul.

Mitch McConnell says he’s open to a filibuster of the Elena Kagan nomination, but he has a very limited idea of what a “filibuster” actually is.