Outside the Beltway

Reflections on the events of 6 January two months later.

Democrats are already jockeying to influence President Biden’s pick should a vacancy arise.

The loaners, the dreamers, and schemes.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her top officials are under house arrest.

We’re witnessing something not seen since 1989.

Biden nominees Janet Yellen, Tony Blinken, and Avril Haines are under scrutiny for their financial disclosures.

Not another general.

When an apolitical process gets politicized.

My latest for Defense One.

Yet another retired general in the post would be a bad idea.

Maybe it’s not going to be Michèle Flournoy after all.

He would be the first Latino and first immigrant in the post.

She’d be America’s first woman intelligence chief.

The iconoclastic journalist is out at the publication he founded.

A Senate GOP report doesn’t find anything new.

A pleasant surprise.

The Republican Party is now the mirror image of the totalitarian propagandists it used to hate.

An appeal to some pretty basic virtues.

The Russians are at it again, with the cooperation of the Trump administration and its enablers.

The reporting demonstrates the uncomfortable truth.

Two rulings greatly expand the ability to evade the law for on Free Exercise grounds.

The Paycheck Protection Program protected some interesting paychecks.

The federal judge who oversees treatment of detained immigrant children has had enough.

The Commonwealth is the first state in the nation to issue regulations.

Donald Trump would be a more effective and dangerous President if he and his team were more competent.

Presidents have appointed loyalists since time immemorial. Has this one gone too far?

And I don’t mean not wearing a mask to Costco.

He’s doubling down on hypocrisy.

We need a better vocabulary for treating the spectrum between rude and horrific.

Dueling Washington Post op-eds are sowing confusion.

Whocouldanode?

We may be seeing the beginning of the end.

Bloomberg waffles on China while Sanders has a soft spot for Castro.

Lack of control of label is lack of control, ultimately, of a party.

Several trends are pointing in a new direction.

A smaller staff is arguably a good idea. But not this way.

Has this precedent permanently damaged the country? Or is it just politics as usual?

A binary choice will produce a worse outcome than necessary.

The chief diplomat of the United States isn’t very diplomatic (nor informative).

In response to the American assassination of a top General, Iran has announced the end of yet more restrictions imposed by the 2015 nuclear deal.

An American drone strike has taken out the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a move likely to significantly increase tensions across the Middle East.

After a two-year investigation, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice found no basis for the conspiracy theories being pushed by the Republicans regarding the Russia investigation.

Ted Cruz is the latest Republican Senator to repeat discredited Kremlin-backed conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.

November saw much higher jobs growth than economic analysts were expecting, but it could just be a statistical blip.

Much like the President they obsequiously defend, Republicans have become useful idiots in Russia’s war on Western liberal democracy.

Seeking to have a US citizen investigated by a foreign government based on innuendo is a major problem.

The Secretary of the Navy was abruptly dismissed late yesterday in a dispute over the a case involving a SEAL accused of war crimes.

Late last week, Attorney General William Barr demonstrated quite aptly the extent to which he has become just another Trump loyalist.

Against the advice of his top military advisers, President Trump has cleared three American soldiers of war crimes, sending a horrible signal to the world and to the troops in the field.

Another bad night for Republicans in Virginia, and another warning sign for Republicans nationally.