Outside the Beltway

Best holiday wishes to you and yours

Could Rick Perry recover from his disastrous 2012 campaign to become a viable candidate?

On a slow news day, a major concession on Obamacare

Apparently, some people don’t want to let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

If you want to understand contemporary politics, the last thing you should do is reference an Andrew Sorkin project.

Not surprisingly, television and reality don’t really coincide.

The front page of Sunday’s NYT profiled Valerie Jarrett, the power behind the throne at the Obama White House.

Alex Pareene’s quip that “Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals” has gone viral.

Picking the wrong target.

If you listen to the punditocracy, you’d think that there’s actually a doubt as to who the GOP nominee will be.

The January jobs report was the best we’ve seen in more than three years.

We won’t have Rick Perry to kick around anymore.

The Orange Ya Glad I Didn’t Say Banana Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

Yes, it’s time to talk about that again.

Could the GOP go into Tampa next August not knowing who their nominee will be? It’s possible, but not probable.

The health care battle is formally joined in the Supreme Court.

Barack Obama’s biggest enemy in the debt negotiations has been himself.

A Presidential candidate’s medical condition is entirely relevant to their fitness for office.

Austan Goolsbee is resigning as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to return to the University of Chicago.

You don’t often see a candidate for President tell Iowans that he wants to eliminate ethanol subsidies, but Tim Pawlenty did.

The “debt ceiling” is phony, contrived, and needs to be eliminated.

Stephen Walt doesn’t expect Obama’s foreign policy to change along with the names on the org chart.

Paul Krugman is disappointed with the President, but it’s really his own fault for being so naive.

Why did then-Governor Mike Huckabee’s office destroy all its office hard drives shortly before leaving office?

As the night of the State Of The Union Address approaches, the silliness in Washington has been taken up a notch.

President Obama’s selection of Bill Daley as Chief of Staff is being seen as a sign that the White House is moving to the center and gearing up for 2012.

Why is the press gushing over routine movement in White House team?

The new year will bring major changes to the White House Staff.

For the first time in 35 years, the Senate may finally be on the verge of reforming the filibuster.

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley wants to fix the filibuster by making Senators actually filibuster. It’s a good idea.

Unless there’s an emergency, is it proper for representatives who have been defeated in a mid-term election to be voting on controversial legislation?

Changing economic realities led to a role reversal: television is where you turn for smart entertainment, whereas the movies have become lowbrow.

If Republicans regain control of Congress, you could be seeing a lot of scenes like this on your television for the next two years.

House Minority John Boehner is getting a lot of attention for calling for mass firings at the White House. The real news, though, is that his speech is shifting the focus of the political conversation back to the economy. Which is just what the GOP needs.

Senior staffers are already leaving the Obama administration due to burn-out. But are 18-hour days really necessary for running the White House?

Democrats have not figured out how to use President Obama during the upcoming Mid-Term campaign, if at all.

According to Maureen Dowd, Barack Obama’s biggest problem is that there are too many white people in this picture.

There’s really only one story in Washington, D.C. today, and Stanley McChrystal is the star player.