Outside the Beltway

Thoughts after reading Part 2 of the Reuter’s series, “Slavery’s Descendants”

The Democrats have lots of problems. Salesmanship is pretty far down the list.

People failing to treat emergencies as emergencies make matters worse.

The political calculus of Arizona’s senior Senator is unclear.

An accomplished racist will no longer be honored by the university.

The reports of the the North Korean dictator’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

New reports indicate that the North Koreans never took any of the steps to reduce their research programs that President Trump claimed they did.

A new poll has a majority of respondents saying the President is a racist. He won’t care.

The former #2 official at the FBI is trying to sell a book.

Thoughts on politics and constitutional powers.

The efforts by Speaker Pelosi and President Trump to leverage their institutional powers raise interesting questions.

Nancy Pelosi is “suggesting” to the President that the State of the Union be rescheduled for a time after the government shutdown ends, but it clearly seems like more than just a suggestion.

One hundred years after the end of World War One, the forces that led to it are waking up from a long slumber.

My latest for War on the Rocks.

President Trump got his revised version of NAFTA, but Canadians are less positive about the United States than they have been in at least twenty years.

The Kavanaugh fight is just another indicator of our national divide.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment has been in the news a lot lately, but what would it actually take to use it to remove a President from power?

A new poll shows that most Americans believe that race relations have gotten worse under President Trump.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a bombastic speech on Iran yesterday that reveals just how empty and dangerous the Trump Administration’s policy toward Iran actually is.

Best known as a television host, he served in the Reagan administration and chief economist of Bear Stearns.

Nine years later, at least one member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee is admitting what seemed at the time a rather obvious fact.

By threatening to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran, Donald Trump is making it far less likely that any upcoming talks with North Korea will succeed.

Do yourself a favor and skip the State Of The Union Address tonight. You won’t be missing anything important.

It’s not the time away from the White House that matters, it’s the hypocrisy.

Donald Trump is unlikely to ever be a popular President, but that may not matter.

The FARC have disarmed. Now to the hard part.

President Trump says he’d be willing to testify under oath in response to former F.B.I Director Comey’s accusations. That would be a mistake for several reasons.

A Constitutional coup d’etat is not the way to solve the Donald Trump problem.

The president’s skinny budget would eliminate most funding for science and the arts to fund more Defense spending.

Reports of the demise of the Democratic Party have been greatly exaggerated.

Much like their predecessors, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have released only limited information about their health. It may be time for that to change.

The effort to stop Donald Trump seems likely to set off a civil war inside the Republican Party.

It didn’t take long for the political battle over the seat held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia to become another part of the 2016 political battle.

As Michael Bloomberg flirts with the idea of running for President, a poll finds very little enthusiasm for the idea.

Protests by students at Princeton are causing some people to finally pay attention to some inconvenient truths about America’s 28th President.

Some on the right are suggesting that Congress retaliate against the President’s executive action on immigration by refusing to invite him to give the State Of The Union Address.

The latest ISIS video is horrible and barbaric but we should not take the bait they are offering before considering the consequences of our actions going forward.

Rick Perry and Rand Paul are highlighting what looks to be a coming battle inside the GOP over foreign policy.

A century later, the shots fired in Sarajevo 100 years ago still echo.

The Kentucky Senator and former Vice-President are at the front of a battle that will unfold inside the GOP as we head toward 2016.

Middle East peace talks are apparently in such bad shape that the U.S. is thinking of releasing Jonathan Pollard as an incentive to Israel.

Tonight, the American political system stops to engage in the biggest waste of time ever invented.

Dr. Alexandros Petersen, a scholar of Eurasian energy and a former colleague at the Atlantic Council, was killed in a bomb blast in Kabul.

A third term for any of these guys? Don’t count on it.

A top House Republican suggested today that only Governor’s should be President. His argument has both practical and historical merit.

Sometimes it seems like all John McCain does is appear on Sunday morning news shows. The problem goes deeper than that, though.

General Petreaus is now Dr. Petraeus and will be teaching a 1-1 load a the City University of New York.