Outside the Beltway

With the Vermont Senator holding a seemingly insurmountable lead in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders and HIllary Clinton clashed last night in their most contentious debate yet.

Ben Carson cut his campaign staff drastically just a month after raising more than $22 million. Another sign of a dead campaign.

Get ready for an expansion of the war against ISIS into Libya, because it’s probably not far away.

Ted Cruz won, Marco Rubio surged into a stronger than expected third place, and Donald Trump was humbled just a little bit, but he was hardly a “loser.” The race for the GOP nomination has begun for real.

Fundraising in the final three months of 2015 largely reflected the state of the race itself, but some candidates are better positioned going forward than others.

More email headaches for the Clinton campaign, but it remains unclear if any wrongdoing occurred.

Without Trump, the seventh Republican debate largely focused on Ted Cruz, who doesn’t seem to have done himself any favors. Donald Trump, meanwhile, will likely not pay any price at all for skipping the last pre-Iowa debate.

Last night’s Republican debate had a different feel with the absence of a certain bloviating narcissist.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen are leaving after a dispute with their chief investor.

With less than a week to go before voting starts, Donald Trump continues to dominate the GOP race, with Ted Cruz the only candidate even close to looking like a viable challenger.

Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio have won the endorsement of the Des Moines Register, but it’s unclear how much this will help their respective campaigns.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed in the final debate before the Iowa Caucuses in the context of a race that has appeared to become tighter than it was before Christmas.

Another hopeful step forward, thanks to diplomacy.

Good news for Jason Rezaian and four other Americans, and another example of how diplomacy can help resolve disputes that seemed irresolvable.

Ten American sailors detained by Iranian forces late Tuesday were released early today, something that seems to clearly demonstrate the value of diplomacy.

President Obama’s final State Of The Union Address was largely a recognition of the fact that his time on the world stage is quickly coming to an end.

David Bowie has passed away at the age of 69 after a long battle with cancer.

In response to questions from reporters, Donald Trump suggested that Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth could pose problems for the GOP if Cruz won the party’s nomination.

The gun control regulations to be announced later today by President Obama later today amount to far less than the hype would lead you to believe.

Donald Trump is out with his first television ad, and it’s about what you’d expect.

Further signs that Ben Carson’s Presidential campaign, which has been in a death spiral in the polls for some time now, is in real trouble,

Donald Trump is drawing large crowds in Iowa, but at least some of his supporters aren’t sure if they’ll be showing up for the caucuses.

As we head into Christmas, there doesn’t seem to be much peace on Earth or good will toward men among Ben Carson’s advisers.

In a new Gallup poll, Republicans say they want a “conservative” as their Presidential nominee, but they may regret what happens if they get the kind of hard-right conservative they seem to be thinking of.

A political cartoonist for The Washington Post crossed a line and, rightfully, got condemned for it.

Last night, SpaceX successfully launched a rocket to the edge of space, deployed cargo, and returned to Earth. A huge and potentially revolutionary accomplishment.

People don’t much care whether information supporting their prejudices is true.

If you were looking for evidence that the race for the Democratic nomination is basically over, you need look no further than last night’s Democratic Debate.

After making a big deal about voting against the budget bill passed yesterday by Congress during the last debate, Marco Rubio ended up missing the vote altogether.

A setback for prosecutors in the Freddie Gray case.

In a move it had been telegraphing for the better part of a year, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since July 2006.

A new poll shows that a majority of Americans oppose a ban on so-called ‘assault weapons,’ a marked change from two decades ago.

The Fifth Republican Debate, and the last of 2015, was marked by expected clashes between the candidates, and one that never happened.

Previewing the fifth Republican debate, and the last Republican debate of 2015.

Heading into another Presidential debate, a new poll shows that Republicans are very receptive to Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslim immigration to the U.S.

Representatives from 195 nations reached an agreement supposedly devoted to addressing global climate change, but it’s really more hype than anything else.

Ben Carson threatens to leave the GOP over recent reports about plans for a brokered convention, but with his poll numbers collapsing one wonders why anyone would care if he did.

The quadrennial fantasy of a brokered convention, which American politics has not seen since 1952, is rearing its head again, and it’s no more likely now than it was when we talked about this four years ago.

Notwithstanding the hopes of many Republicans, Donald Trump continues to be the person to beat in the race for the party’s 2016 Presidential nomination.

The Director of the F.B.i. told Congress today that the San Bernardino shooters were apparently radicalized much earlier than previously believed.

Donald J. Trump continues to turn the dial higher and higher on his fascist demagoguery.

No, there really haven’t been 355 ‘mass shootings’ since January 1st. Not unless you’re relying on completely unreliable data.

Mass shootings rightly grab our attention. But the obscure the overall picture of violent crime.

A new report finds that the problems at the Secret Service are far deeper than previously known.

A leaked memo from a top Republican adviser tries to tell vulnerable Senate candidates how to deal with the possibility that they’ll be stuck with Trump on the top of the ticket.

For good reason, many Republicans are worried about the prospect that Donald Trump could end up winning the Republican nominee, but they don’t seem to have a plan to stop him.

We still don’t know very much about Robert Dear, the man who shot and killed three people at the site of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, but that hasn’t stopped the usual suspects from politicizing the case.

The 2016 election cycle is seeing “scientific” online polling become more prominent, but it’s unclear just how reliable it is.