Outside the Beltway

Ellen Page is gay. So is Michael Sam. Shouldn’t we be aiming for the day when the response to news like this is “So what?”

Once again, Rush Limbaugh panders to the most pernicious of the right side of American politics.

Michael Sam is gay.It didn’t matter to his University of Missouri teammates. Will it matter to the NFL?

Time to watch a bit of true American exceptionalism in action.

Much like the guy who’s afraid to talk to girls in High School, Republicans don’t seem to know how to talk to women. But their problems are actually bigger than that.

Nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted for default. They lost.

Much like the Tea Party, David Frum wants to make the GOP tent smaller.

Is U.S. planning against Syria moving beyond just chemical weapons?

Rather than asking whether it was “worth it,” the important historical question regarding the Civil War is whether it could have been avoided.

Tax analyst Martin A. Sullivan finds that 1/3rd of “potentially political applications” approved by the IRS were from non-conservative groups.

The wacko fringe of the GOP is increasingly finding room in the mainstream of the party.

Southerners lie about their weight–but not as much as those lyin’ Yankees.

A case from Missouri provides an excellent example of why it matters that states forbid people who love each other from being married.

Bill McClellan calls for ending military funeral honors for most veterans.

Passengers may soon be able to use approved electronic devices during all phases of airplane flights.

The Cowboys’ first equipment manager and designer of the iconic blue star logo has died.

We’re having trouble counting Hispanics. Should we be trying?

Chuck Hagel will be confirmed, but the campaign against him tells us much about the current state of Republican foreign policy

40 years after Roe v. Wade, support for the decision is still strong, but the effort to restrict it continues apace.

More people have been to space than have flown in a B-2 stealth bomber.

Last January 1, some of us made a series of predictions. Here’s how we did.

The Blues began a century ago yesterday, with the release of WC Handy’s “Memphis Blues.”

Guess who’s back?

Fareed Zakaria declares “America’s election process an international embarrassment.” He’s right.

There’s been a bit of buzz of late about the fact that people in several states have filed petitions to secede from the Union. There shouldn’t be.

Some people on the right apparently want to return to this map.

Any chance that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed died with the re-election of Barack Obama. But, there are other fights to come.

Republicans are trying to figure out what went wrong. Will they learn the right lessons from their loss?

The impact of outside spending on the election turned out to be far less consequential than many had feared.

The GOP’s hopes of taking over the Senate in 2012 have all but slipped away, but there is another option.

OTB bloggers give their best guesses on the House and Senate races.

Yet another in a long line of critiques of the electoral college.

Mitt Romney has gotten a bump in the polls from Wednesday debate, but it’s still too early to say if it means anything.

Now that he is on the ballot for good, Republicans seem to be giving Todd Akin a second look. That seems unwise.