Outside the Beltway

A new report indicates that Russian social media trolls are involved in spreading anti-vaccination propaganda in the United States and elsewhere.

Strong public records laws, not an excess of weirdness, has driven a sad meme.

This year’s graduating class at West Point includes a record number of African-American women.

Some 2020 Democratic hopefuls are turning to a surprising source for counsel.

Jon Bel Edwards is a reminder that our divide is cultural, not just partisan.

Not surprisingly, Chelsea Manning is headed back to jail for her refusal to answer questions before a Federal Grand Jury investigating Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

Yet another candidate joins an already crowded field for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination.

Chelsea Manning, who was being held in jail for refusing to comply with a Grand Jury subpoena, was released yesterday but it’s likely to only be a temporary freedom.

Sexual misconduct in the military continues to frustrate observers.

Avengers: Endgame earned $1 billion worldwide in its first weekend, but it will take a lot more to become the biggest grossing movie of all time.

Its explanation for why its paywall is coming down 3 days leads us to an obvious question.

I sense a great disturbance in the Force. As if a billion voices are crying out “No, not Chewie!!!!”

While street protests continue, the efforts to get the Venezuelan military to oust President Nicolas Maduro appear to have failed.

The ongoing apparent attempted coup in Venezuela is already leading to talk of American intervention in the event of a crackdown. That would be unwise and unjustified.

The narrow loser of the Georgia governor’s race has left open the possibility of running for President.

Counter-Intelligence officials are warning that Russia is preparing another election interference campaign for the 2020 election.

Blasts at Christian churches and tourist hotels appear to be a coordinated terrorist attack.

Donald Trump speaks largely just to his base, ignoring the nation as a whole. Whether this will be enough to win re-election in 2020 is an open question.

A major, destructive fire hits one of the most historic churches in the world.

Checking in after an extended absence.

The 2020 debate on Twitter does not represent ordinary Americans. Does that matter?

The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez edition.

It’s increasingly challenging to discuss media coverage because we’re all consuming a hand-selected bit of it.

The mea culpas and I-told-you-so’s are rather premature.

The principal findings of the Mueller report are now public. They’re good news for the President on Russia and a mixed bag on obstruction.

Predictably, news that the investigation has ended has people on both sides cheering. It’s unwarranted.

On one level, it is rather amusing; on another is it quite insidious.

Two-thirds want social media platforms to ban harassment and racist, sexist, and other offensive speech.

Free expression sometimes enables horrible crimes. How does a free society deal with that tension?

Another white supremacist attack raises disturbing questions about our information environment.

Why rational discourse seldom changes the minds of some people.

Mandatory vaccination laws raise personal liberty issues that ought to be taken seriously, but in the end, public health concerns weigh heavily in favor of laws mandating vaccination.

The relatively light sentence that Paul Manafort received is raising eyebrows. Hopefully it will lead to a long-overdue debate on sentencing reform.

A decade-long study once again establishes that there is no link between childhood vaccination and autism.

In what was basically a throwaway line, Joe Biden said something nice about Mike Pence. The reaction from his fellow Democrats says a lot about our current political culture, and none of it is good.

The President of the United States and the most-talked-about freshman Representative in ages could not be more different.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee is running for the Democratic nomination for President on a platform primarily focused on climate change. Whether that helps distinguish him from a growing field of candidates remains to be seen.

Breathless coverage of this freshman Congressman is getting tiresome.

Grammar and spelling errors abound at all but a handful of news sites.

After posting an image that clearly threatened a Federal Judge, Roger Stone walked out of court with a full gag order imposed on him. It could’ve gone a lot worse.

Actor Jussie Smollett is charged with staging an attack initially called a “hate crime.”

Tennis great Martina Navratilova is facing criticism for raising questions about how sports handles the issue of transgender athletes competing within the gender they identify with. She shouldn’t be.

While I’m sympathetic to his plight, he has no case.

Roger Stone is being ordered to Court after an Instagram post that appears to be a direct threat against the Judge presiding over his criminal case.

Gender bias is real. Most examples cited, though, aren’t.

It was only a matter of time before Trump’s rhetoric against the press would lead to something violent. Last night in El Paso, it happened.

The right has spent a seemingly inordinate amount of time focusing on relatively powerless Members of Congress.

A new poll shows that Virginians don’t necessarily believe their state leaders need to step aside in the wake of recent scandals.

After a week of scandal and chaos in Virginia politics, there’s no sign that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is going anywhere, and there’s very little that can be done to force him out of office.

Two more defections from the stable of writers at RedState provide further proof of the extent to which conservative media has become a pro-Trump echo chamber.