Outside the Beltway

Phony wars on Stay At Home Moms, dogs, and Osama bin Laden. The Obama campaign is pointing at the shiny object, and the right is falling for it.

The outpouring from my Twitter stream yesterday on the news of the death of Adam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys, surprised me.

Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign stumbled badly this week.

When Dan Drezner tweeted “I’m not going to read anything dumber than this today,” my inclination was to scoff. He actually undersold it.

The blind Chinese activist who daring escape from house arrest set off a diplomatic brouhaha that grabbed the world’s attention is about to get his wish to come to America.

Once again, the jobs market appears to be slowing.

Obama has an advantage in what is likely to be one of the most important states in November’s election, but the race is far from over.

The argument that Barack Obama hasn’t been vetted is simply absurd.

The price of a DC cab ride went up big time recently and neither riders nor cabbies are happy.

What seemed like a diplomatic success has begun to unravel very quickly.

Ruthlessly avoiding fights that aren’t worth the risk is shrewd leadership. But Romney still needs to show he can fight and win.

A series of shocking revelations about Barack Obama’s past have not changed my view of the man who’s been in the White House three-plus years.

College football will get a four-team playoff. What it’ll look like is anyone’s guess.

HBO’s Game of Thrones is violent and full of sex. Is it too much?

[FAIR WARNING: SPOILERS]

Based on the postmortems, it certainly seems like the Romney campaign threw Richard Grenell under the bus.

The GOP’s response to the Obama campaign’s Osama bin Laden ad has not been helpful.

My first piece for The New Republic, “Why the Obama Administration’s Drone War May Soon Reach a Tipping Point,” is up.

Parties are in politics primarily to win the vote of the median voter, not to join together and sing Kumbaya.

Richard Grenell’s time as Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman lasted less than a month. The fact that he’s gay appears to be the reason it ended.

Osama bin Laden’s death provides Barack Obama with an important political shield during the upcoming campaign.

Wolf Blitzer just observed that the fact that the president has to take these “extraordinary security precautions” to enter Afghanistan proves how far we still have to go in Afghanistan.

Some Navy SEALs are weighing in on the brouhaha.

Is the world ready for a post-Kim North Korea?

Five suspects have been arrested in a plot to blow up a Cleveland bridge.