Outside the Beltway

For a party that says its not interested in impeachment, the GOP sure keeps bringing it up.

The Tea Party v. “establishment” battle in the GOP has been pretty one-sided this year.

Once again, the Tea Party has gotten the best of House GOP Leadership.

The usual suspects are blocking any action at all on the border crisis.

It wasn’t the Democrats.

Republicans are dismissing talk of impeachment as a Democratic fundraising ploy, but it may be they are protesting just a bit too much.

Once again the GOP finds itself on the wrong side of public opinion.

The Texas Senator is threatening to block any bill dealing with the border crisis that doesn’t defund the relief President Obama granted to children of illegal immigrants last year.

The current Congress is on course to be the least productive in decades.

Republican overreach could end up helping the President and his party.

Chris McDaniel and his Tea Party supporters are being very sore losers.

We federal civil servants are apparently in for a backdoor pay raise.

The people with the biggest voices in the GOP seem to be leading it to positions that most Americans disagree with.

The South Dakota Republican Party has officially endorsed the impeachment of President Obama.

As a legal matter, the new allegations against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker don’t amount to much. But, will they impact his bid for re-election.

Did sending some of its workforce home without pay impact the work environment at the Defense Department? Duh.

An unknown Tea Party candidate unexpectedly beat the House Leader in today’s GOP primary.

Mostly because of politics, the hopes of some and fears of others will never be realized.

Some old fashioned political arm twisting has up-ended the apple cart in Richmond.

Boehner ready to pack it in?

More bad news for the Tea Party.

An award for breaking a campaign promise.

The Tea Party challenge to Mitch McConnell has not exactly gone as planned.

It might not be pretty.

Purity for profit on display.

Cliven Bundy still has his defenders among the hardcore right, but many people have joined Kentucky’s junior Senator in throwing Cliven Bundy under the bus

Once again, the Tea Party wing of the GOP is talking about taking out John Boehner.

As Sarah Palin and the Tea Party turn on Paul Ryan, they are making apparent their own lack of relevance in the political process.

Was there ever a more tepid endorsement than “Joe Scarborough for President? Sure, Why Not?”

Don’t expect much out of Congress for the rest of 2014, or for the two years after that either.

Big news out of the House of Representatives

John Boehner explains quite succinctly why nothing big is getting done in Congress.

Some good news, but also plenty of reason to worry about the future.

Republican leaders continue to say stupid things. They may still retake the Senate in November.

A surprisingly disappointing jobs report for December.

There are more self-identified Independents in the country than at any time in the past two decades, according to a new Gallup poll. And it’s mostly at the expense of the GOP.

There are some signs that there may be room to strike a deal on the extension of unemployment benefits, but it’s likely to require some drama on Capitol Hill before it happens.

Has Speaker Boehner breathed new life into immigration reform in the House? Maybe.

Ted Cruz continues to act as if he hasn’t learned his lessons from the shutdown debacle

So far at least, the 2014 elections do not appear likely to be a political earthquake on the scale of 2006, 2008, or 2010.

Once again, the Administration has unilaterally changed the Affordable Care Act.

For a year that seemed to start out so well, 2013 has been among the President’s worst of this five years he’s been in office.

Time to watch a bit of true American exceptionalism in action.