Outside the Beltway

Randy Barnett will be giving a lecture at Boise State on the 28th. If he were a real lawyer, he’d lecture instead at a school in the SEC, Big 12, PAC 10, or ACC. I mean, where’s the challenge in lecturing in the WAC?

Jack Conway’s “Aqua Buddha” ad has come back to haunt him in the polls, and may become the act that seals his fate on Election Day.

The 9th Circuit has struck down an Arizona law requiring people to show proof of citizenship to vote. No, this doesn’t open the floodgates to illegal alien voting.

After months of media reporting on the Republican advantage in outside spending, NYT reports that Democrats retain a sizable advantage at the campaign level.

Washington City Paper editor Michael Schaffer has put out a satiric memo mocking the policies NPR and others have issued to reporters regarding this weekend’s Jon Stewart – Stephen Colbert rallies

Police in Turkey have arrested 12 people suspected of links to Islamist militant network al-Qaeda in Istanbul and Van province.

Sharron Angle’s attorney is charging that “Harry Reid intends to steal this election if he can’t win it outright.” She touts various “shenanigans” in a fundraising letter.

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.”

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen argues that it’s time to put the debate over the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill mess to rest. He’s right.

Reports of voting irregularity in precincts across the country are threatening to further undermine voter confidence in the legitimacy of election outcomes. There’s a simple solution.

It’s apparently legitimate to call Sarah Palin a liar without producing any evidence or bothering to check facts.

Paul, World Cup ‘psychic’ octopus, dies in Germany.

The PL issues a statment on immigration policy.

A poster at RedState demonstrates how not to approach the issue of race in politics.

Political pundits love centrism and moderate candidates. But political movements are built on desire for broad change.

It’s unlikely that the Chinese yuan will replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency any time soon.

Has Uncle Sam got a deal for you: Lend the Treasury money for five years and it will only cost you negative 0.55 percent!

The GOP looks likely to win substantial victories next Tuesday, and may even take control of both Houses of Congress, but they’ve already made their own failure inevitable.

Republicans are promising two years of gridlock and obstructionism if they take control of Congress, but is that really what the people who are likely to vote for them next week really want?

Is angry and violent language which dominates blog comments sections a sign of broader trends in our political culture?

Political columnist John Heilemann thinks he’s come up with a scenario that would put Sarah Palin in the White House, but his assumptions don’t add up.

Tumblr called “Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things” shows that there’s no such thing as “Muslim garb.”

Automated constructive blog comments cartoon fro xkcd.

If you’re like me, you think of William Shakespeare’s plays as being rendered in an archaic but decidedly upper crust British English. It turns out that this is an artifact of modern theater.

Merle Haggard is not gay. But he’s been retroactively gay married — twice! — for want of a comma.

Mike Huckabee is the latest Republican to tack up the banner against the so-called “elites.”

Charles Murray argues that the Tea Party is right to complain about out-of-touch elites.

Instead of decades-old retreads like talking about abolishing the Department of Education, it would be nice if we had a real debate about the fiscal circumstances in the country.

The numbers coming out of the first few weeks of early voting confirms the enthusiasm gap that pollsters have been talking about for months.

The next generation of the Windows operating system is about two years away. Does anyone care?