Outside the Beltway

A mystery within a mystery . . .

The mysterious disappearance of long-time OTB commenters.

If you have a non-alphanumeric character in your name, your comment goes into moderation.

Overnight, we moved to content encryption. Here’s what that means for you.

Expect possible down time, site wonkiness.

You many have noticed the array of images and links under the footer of post pages. Here’s what it is.

On OTB’s subjective, inconsistent enforcement of its policies designed to promote civil discussion.

The microdevelopment of the site continues apace.

I’ve made the sad discovery that longtime friend of the blog John Burgess passed away on February 16, 2016.

Does OTB’s Quick Takes section still serve a useful purpose?

We’ve rolled out a few modest updates to the site design.

Rather than spamming every comment thread with issues, list any other issues here and we’ll see what we can do. 

The long-overdue redesign of OTB is now live.

Yesterday marked fifteen years since I launched Outside the Beltway on the old Blogspot service. 

We’re slowly fixing the site.

The redevelopment of the site that I posted about a few weeks back is underway in a phased approach.

We’re looking for reader input on site functionality and features.

As longtime OTB readers may have noticed, I’m not writing much these days.

Our profound condolences to Doug Mataconis on the loss of his father.

Today will be my first day at Marine Command and Staff College.

Your humble host is making a career move.

A decade ago. a certain New York Times columnist was more right than your humble host.

The OTB Reader Survey posted a week ago today generated a solid discussion.

We’re actually not speculating about who might be running any more than we used to.

We’re soliciting reader feedback on three related questions.

Katherine Applegate, long suffering spouse of frequent OTB commenter Michael Reynolds, has been awarded the Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children for The One and Only Ivan.

Challenge the ideas of those with whom you disagree, not their patriotism, decency, or integrity.

Andy Baio and friends have undertaken an interesting project: color coding political blogs to track bias.

Doug Mataconis’ Thursday posting “Herman Cain Releases Bizarre New Video Involving Apparent Goldfish Murder” got picked up on that night’s edition of The Colbert Report.

OTB is available on Google Currents.

As some have already noticed, we installed some new commenting plug-ins late yesterday adding some features that many have been requesting

Our patience with those who repeatedly hijack the discussion thread to detract from the topic at hand has ended, effective immediately.

Foreign Policy’s David Kenner has a reading list for President Obama to help him get read for his big speech to recast our relationship with the Arab world. Topping the Persian Gulf section is Crossroads Arabia, by our own John Burgess.