Outside the Beltway

With the voting now seemingly a mere formality, the question becomes what kind of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will become.

Yes, Ben Carson’s comments about the debt ceiling are silly, but it’s the fact that a lot of Republicans agree with him that’s dangerous.

Another political earthquake in Washington as Kevin McCarthy drops out of the race for Speaker, and the House GOP doesn’t seem to know which way to go.

Surely it’s time to put a woman on American currency again, but why go after Alexander Hamilton?

ISIS apparently now has a foothold in Libya, and is making inroads in Yemen.

The U.S. Government has formally charged North Korea with responsibility for the hacking attack on Sony. How to respond to that attack is a more complicated question.

An inevitable outcome for the head of a once proud agency.

The security lapses at the Secret Service just continue to mount.

Your tax dollars, not at work.

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

The IRS’s claim that it lost some unknown number of Lois Lerner’s emails doesn’t really add up.

There’s a potentially fatal legal argument looming out there for the PPACA.

The federal government lost $10.5 billion on the GM bailout. Was this a good investment?

Signs of some progress in the talks over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Would you trust the men and women in this building?

If Congress isn’t able to reach a deal, the big problem going forward would be uncertainty.

The House wasted a day yesterday, now it’s crunch time.

The deal emerging out of the talks between Senator Reid and Senator McConnell is about what you’d expect, but it’s probably the best we can expect right now.

Are these four men our last, best hope for a deal that will end the shutdown and avoid breaching the debt ceiling?

Talks between the two Senate leaders haven’t exactly gone so well.

Harry and Mitch to the rescue?

There seems to be at least some hope for a temporary deal in Washington to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, but don’t count your chickens just yet.

Signs that investors are starting to get nervous about the lack of action coming out of Washington.

Contrary to the White House’s arguments, negotiating over the debt ceiling is not at all historically unprecedented.

They’re back…….

There’s a way for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to talk out a deal to resolve the current crisis, but they have to want to do it.

Speaker Boehner told his caucus members that he will not allow a default over the debt ceiling but don’t look for a change in strategy.

The IRS will allow all married gay couples to file joint returns, but that still leaves couples in most of the country with more hoops to jump through.

On a slow news day, a major concession on Obamacare

Without full transcripts, the excerpts released by the House Oversight Committee are worthless.

Inside the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration investigation into the IRS scandal.

What happened at the IRS looks a lot more like deliberate political bias than simple incompetence.

Partisan targeting by the IRS should not be permitted to stand.

The days of tax-free online shopping are coming to an end.

New rules mandating full-time benefits for instructors teaching 30 hours predictably led to their hours being cut.

Once again, the House GOP is risking sending the economy into the tank to prove a political point.

The White House has shot down an idea that never deserved to be taken seriously.

President Obama is taking some heat over the fact that his Second Term cabinet selections have been very white and very male.