Outside the Beltway

There must be a predisposition against war and we should only engage in just wars.

U.S. officials are making clear that the current mission in Libya may not lead to the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule. If that’s the case, then why are we there in the first place?

There are many opportunities to go to war. Here’s a guide for choosing between them.

This letter from legendary music journalist Lester Bangs is making the rounds

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is the latest Republican to reject the idea that America is a secular nation.

If you believe Minnesota Vikings’ Running Back Adrian Peterson, the NFL is a modern-day plantation and he’s a slave.

Experts say the phone call is a relic of the past.

Republican budget cuts to this point have been less than serious.

So far, the Republican House’s effort to cut back Federal spending isn’t very impressive.

It looks like things are underway in Libya, with French President Nicholas Sarkozy confirming that French jets are already in the air above Libya.

What are the limits of Resolution 1973? Are there any?

The DON’T PANIC Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

Lawyers in US court case spent ten pages of transcript arguing what a photocopier is. “Do you have machines where I can put in a paper document, push a button or two, and out will come copies of that paper document, also on paper?”

Shailagh Murray becomes the latest reporter to join the Obama White House.

Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State, has died at 85.

Evolution is falsifiable and biology is a science. Economics might be.

Earth’s moon will seem bigger Saturday night than it has since 1993. It’ll still be the same size as usual, however.

Apparently, being named after the sitting president wasn’t enough to keep Ashbury Park, New Jersey’s Barack H. Obama Elementary School open.

Simplest possible NCAA Tournament bracket

Did President Obama pull off a diplomatic masterstroke? Or is he muddling through?

The NPR vote was nothing more than political theatrics–and it violated a GOP campaign promise to boot.

America is about to enter a third war in the Muslim world with no clear idea of the end game.

With minor exceptions, all of the potential candidates for the GOP nomination in 2012 seem to have accepted the idea that defense spending, and the Bush-era interventionist foreign policy, are off the table when it comes time to talk spending cuts.

The Obama Administration is asking the U.N. Security Council to authorize direct military intervention in Libya. The question is, why now?

Ru Paul for President 2012 bumper sticker

While complaints that there’s too much information for intellectuals to sort through, much less read, are constant, they’re not new. Harvard historian Ann Blair argues in her new book Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age that this stress goes back at least to Seneca’s time.

In less than two weeks, much of the content of The New York Times will go behind a paywall.

Regardless of one’s preferences in terms of endgame in Wisconsin, democracy will win out.