Outside the Beltway

Republican politicians have largely avoided the topic of same-sex marriage since President Obama’s announcement. Why?

For years, I’ve used Loretta Lynn as an example of how fast societal mores have changed. It turns out that her marriage at age 13 may be a bit of myth making.

Since Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón began an all-out assault on drug cartels in 2006, more than 50,000 people have lost their lives across the country in a nearly-continuous string of shootouts, bombings, and ever-bloodier murders.

Here’s why nobody in Washington will allow the Bush Tax Cuts to expire.

Eduardo Saverin has become a political whipping boy.

Americans Elect is dead. This should surprise nobody.

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin denies that his motivation for renouncing his US citizenship was tax avoidance.

With Facebook’s huge IPO in the news, Megan Garber takes a look at how much the Internet has evolved since Thefacebook came on the scene.

Your tax dollars should not be paying for this.

All the available evidence suggest that the Occupy movement has fizzled away into virtual nothingness.

White babies now constitute slightly less than half of American births.

Thoughts on tradition, church, and state.

A pro-Republican SuperPAC may be bringing the Jeremiah Wright story back. That would be bad news for the Romney campaign.

Time for the Thursday OTB Caption Contest^TM

Larry Bird has been named NBA Executive of the Year. Is there any basketball-related honor he hasn’t won?

An object lesson in the problems with our intellectual property laws

Common Cause has filed a specious lawsuit alleging that the filibuster is unconstitutional.

A new poll finds that adding Chris Christie to the ticket would fail to deliver New Jersey to the Republicans.

Trayvon Martin’s autopsy shows injuries to his knuckles, which bolsters George Zimmerman’s claim that there was a fight, a Florida television station reports.

The battle lines are being drawn for another showdown over the debt ceiling.

Marriage has always been an evolving institution.

Thomas Friedman is like a goldfish who only sees China, jobs, and the Internet.

A man named Carlos killed a woman named Wanda Lopez. Texas executed a different man named Carlos for the crime.

In office less than a day, Francois Hollande has already been forced to admit he can’t withdraw French forces from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

The Oval Office is nothing like a corporate boardroom.