Outside the Beltway

Thomas Friedman continues his quixotic quest for a third party. His candidate: a fantasy Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney faces the same resistance to the idea of a Mormon President that his father did when he ran for President four decades ago.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels will become president of Purdue University upon completion of his term in January. The faculty is apprehensive because Daniels has not had an academic career.

NASA was in need of new telescopes and got a helping hand from their good pals at the DoD.

Nicholas Katzenbach, a central figure in the civil rights fights of the 1960s, has died.

If we taught the Federalist Papers more rigorously would that lead to a shared view of the constitution?

The American economy is so bad that people are reverse migrating to the Third World.

Seven of the top ten and fifteen of the top twenty universities on the planet are American.

David Brooks points out that, despite the mythology of America as a land of rugged individuals and Europe as a socialist experiment gone wrong, the amount of social welfare spending is roughly the same.

Once again, the face of the Republican race has changed.

Most people forget most of what they learn in school. Should we call the whole thing off?

The scam of the US News college rankings and the various ways in which colleges scam said scam rankings.

Things aren’t all sunshine and roses for the Obama 2012 campaign.

Did you know there was another GOP debate last night? Well, you didn’t miss much.

The prospects for real economic recovery are not good.

Ahead of his big foreign policy speech, Mitt Romney has unveiled his “Foreign Policy and National Security Advisory Team” which “will assist Governor Romney as he presents his vision for restoring American leadership in the world and securing our enduring interests and ideals abroad.”

In a shot across the bow of the current publishing model, Princeton is requiring professors to retain rights to their published work so that it may be freely distributed.

The public supports the Presidents tax plans, but will that matter on Election Day?

Assuming that the President is easy to beat could cause Republicans to move too far to the right.

Repeating the “destruction creates wealth” fallacy every time there’s a natural disaster doesn’t make it any less of a fallacy.

So, you want a career in foreign policy field and are weighing your options….

Cornel West is a bright and accomplished man. He has his PhD from Princeton and has inspired bidding wars between prestigious universities for his services. But, man, he’s out there.

Daniel Indiviglio makes “The Case for Making Wages Public: Better Pay, Better Workers.”

It’s the marketing of college as a panacea that’s a scam, not college itself.

Illegal immigration from Mexico is down substantially, and it has nothing to do with all those anti-immigration laws.

A new Gallup poll discovers something rather obvious, but there’s still a lesson for the GOP.

The venerable Brooks Brothers is getting into the college apparel business, selling sweaters and polos for Boston College; the U.S. Naval Academy, Auburn, Cornell, Harvard, New York, Ohio State, Princeton, Stanford, and Vanderbilt Universities and the Universities of Alabama, Georgia, Notre Dame and Virginia.

Should President Obama do whatever General Petraeus wants in Afghanistan?

Paul Krugman thinks liberals understand conservatives but not vice versa. He’s half right.

In a column about American Exceptionalism, a newspaper columnist makes a bizarre historical analogy.

Contempt for Congress is an old American tradition. Unfortunately.

While elite schools confer many advantages on their graduates, they also wall them off from normal people and create an entitled, out-of-touch elite.

We’re approaching the point where those job approval numbers start to matter, and President Obama’s are heading down again.