Outside the Beltway

The Sky News leadership is taking a novel approach to charges that it illegally hacked emails: Claiming a right to break the law when they think it’s in the public’s interest to do so.

The student-athlete fairytale is true. Except where you would reasonably expect it to be a lie.

Sometimes, art imitates life rather than the reverse. And sometimes reality seems stranger than fiction.

Reebok is rushing to sell Tim Tebow merchandise before its NFL rights expire. Nike is crying Foul.

Roger Ebert and I don’t agree on much, from politics to movies. But share a fondness for Samuel L. Jackson and a contempt for George Zimmerman.

Tebow on the block.

Dear Bill Maher and Alexandra Pelosi: The plural of anecdote is not data.

Sure, he routinely uses gender-specific slurs against conservative women. But he’s not a misogynist!

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.

Movie theater snacks are expensive. This is not cause for a lawsuit.

The New Yorker’s cover has Rick Santorum in a doghouse strapped atop Mitt Romney’s car.

Was Return Of The Jedi the best of all the Star Wars films? One writer thinks so.

CBS Sports’ Mike Freeman takes a new look at New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton’s bestseller Home Team in light of the bounty scandal that broke yesterday.

Barbara Boxer takes the Daily Show’s “The Vagina Ideologues” bit out of context and deconstructs it during the Senate’s Blunt amendment debate.

President Obama talks sports with Bill SImmons.

Davy Jones, the face of The Monkees, has died.

A discussion in the comments thread of my “Time Running Out For GOP?” post led me to a post from four-plus years ago by frequent commenter and erstwhile blogger* Michael Reynolds titled “Money, Bombs and Jesus.”

An object lesson in celebrity worship from the State of New Jersey.

Cal Thomas made a tasteless joke at Rachel Maddow’s expense. He describes the lesson in civility he learned.

Today’s the 20th anniversary of Wayne’s World

We can feel that we “know” athletes, entertainers, politicians, and others that we’ve followed, rooted for, or whatnot over a period of time and feel a genuine sense of loss when they’re gone.

Whitney Houston, once one of the biggest stars in American popular culture, has died.

Was Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler ad a political message, or just a well done commercial?

This week we learned that even breast cancer can become politicized. Is there anything that can’t at this point?

One wonders why any Republican politician would want to be associated with this image.

The last 14 coin flips in the Super Bowl have been won by the NFC.

Virtually everything Stephen Colbert is doing was legal before Citizens United.

Time to end a 41 year tradition?

The DC government’s incompetence knows no bounds.

Stephen Colbert’s super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, has raised a little over a million dollars.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated whom Newt Gingrich is said to have asked for an “open marriage.” It was an ex-wife, not his current wife.