Outside the Beltway

With just over a week to go before the 112th Congress convenes, battle lines are already being drawn in battle over the defense budget.

The National Football League’s decision to postpone last night’s Eagles-Vikings game due to weather is receiving a lot of criticism, but they made the right choice.

Red States should gain 10 seats while Blue States should lose eight.

Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News is a must-read for NFL fans, always offering sharp insights into the game garnered over decades of experience. But, like anyone else, he can develop silly theories from anecdotal evidence.

Some DC based hipsters want to know why America doesn’t have good pubs like in London. It turns out, they’re everywhere.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Tuesday in London on a Swedish warrant.

Let’s keep our eye on the ball, people.

The U.S. Postal Service is warning Congress that it could run out of cash next year without a government bailout. Meaning that this is the perfect opportunity to reform an organization that has been out-of-date for a decade now.

New details are out about the upcoming Defense Department report on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

An incident at a school in England provides us with an object lesson in why the often derided concept of separation of church and state is an important part of protecting individual liberty.

World Politics Review has published a special issue on “NATO’s Identity Crisis” ahead of next month’s Lisbon summit and the unveiling of a new Strategic Concept. I contributed the lead essay, “NATO in an Age of Austerity.”

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party aren’t as clueless as their detractors think.

If the Republicans win back Congress in November, it will be largely unearned. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no incentive for change in American politics.

Thirty-two years after the first “Test Tube Baby” was born, the doctor who pioneered the procedure that created her has been recognized with a Nobel Prize.

Apparently, riding in a gilded carriage with footmen does not preclude one from seeking welfare funds in the United Kingdom.

The Delaware GOP primary continues to get more intertesting.

Both the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, impressive as they are, must be understood in terms of not just applied political philosophy, but practical politics as well.

Is our Federal system a mere political compromise? Or were the Founding Fathers visionaries with a plan?

If you think Jimmy Carter is the Worst Figure in American History, you really need to read more.

Under pressure from the Feds, the NCAA is cracking down on colleges who put women’s games ahead of men’s games, which some say relegates them to “warm-up act” status.

Three different ways they’re viewing the leaked “war logs” across the Pond.

Depending on which papers you read, the British NHS is undergoing minor restructuring, secretly planning major cuts in basic services, or doing nothing of concern.

There are some lessons for the blogosphere in this week’s Andrew Breitbart dust-up.

My latest for The National Interest, arguing that the talk of crisis in Europe is overblown, is up. Naturally, they’ve titled it “Crisis in the EU.”

As if the Gulf Oil Spill weren’t enough, there are now allegations that BP played a role in the release of the only man convicted in the murder of 190 Americans.

The Iroquois lacrosse team has been caught in a classic Catch-22. The U.S. government won’t recognize their passports and they won’t use U.S. passports as a matter of principle.

Is Ann Coulter’s defense of Michael Steele’s Afghan War skepticism the beginning of conservative split, or just an attempt to pile on President Obama ?

It turns out that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi isn’t dying after all, at least not any faster than any other human being.

The federation governing international soccer joins a long list of international institutions — NATO, the G-8, the UN Security Council, and the EU come readily to mind — that need to be brought into the 21st century.

Magazines routinely run great pieces by highly biased writers. Why can’t newspapers do the same?

A group of oceanographers suggest that the oil from the Deepwater Horizon explosion will leave the Gulf in a few months. What happens then?