Outside the Beltway

Reports of at least up to sixty dead, a hostage situation, and attacks at multiple locations in Paris.

President Obama is set to sign a military spending bill that effectively guarantees that his 2008 campaign promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will go unfulfilled.

The investigation continues, but the consensus seems to be growing that Metrojet 9268 was taken out by a bomb.

American intelligence officials are saying that a Russian passenger jet that went down over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula was most likely brought down by a bomb.

A front page cover on yesterday’s murders in Virginia crosses the line from reporting to exploitation.

The people who continue to claim that the Confederate Flag is about anything other than hatred, racism, and a nation that celebrated slavery are lying to you and to themselves.

Andrew Sullivan, perhaps the man most responsible for putting the notion of marriage equality into the national debate, has come out of his blogging retirement to weigh in on yesterday’s historic ruling.

The debate is ultimately academic.

A well-founded fear of ISIS seems to be drawing many of the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia closer to Moscow.

Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.

The American people don’t believe that liberty should be sacrificed in the name of security, but their leaders largely don’t care.

The Senate passed a bill that renews, and modifies, the Patriot Act

The agency that runs Washington D.C.’s mass transit has banned all political ads after Pamela Gellar attempted to run an advertisement featuring a drawing of Mohammed.

Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

Many provisions of the Patriot Act lapsed at midnight, but apparently the world hasn’t ended.

Lindsey Graham says that, if elected president, he would summarily kill anyone thinking about joining ISIS.

The final episode airs tonight. How will Matt Weiner will wrap it up?

North Korea’s mercurial leader has apparently executed yet another high ranking official.

Jeb Bush told a group of supporters that his brother is his top Middle East policy adviser. This strikes me as being a bad idea.

Two men were killed last night before they could carry out what appears to be a planned attack on an anti-Islam event in Texas.

U.S forces in Afghanistan have been involved in missions that go far beyond the counterterror mission the Obama Administration said they would be limited to.

Pot, meet kettle.

An attack on al Qaeda outposts in January resulted in the death of two hostages, but also resulted in the death of two high value al Qaeda targets.

Conditioning an Iranian nuclear deal on recognition of Israel is foolish, unrealistic, and very bad diplomacy.

Unlike most world leaders, Pope Francis is wiling to call a genocide a genocide.

As expected, Republicans have caved in the showdown over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Yet another attack on religious freedom in Europe.

Daniel Larison is far less ambivalent about our war on ISIL than me.

I don’t Think that Means What you Think it Means (Huckabee Edition)

Pope Francis has earned a reputation as a liberal in comparison to recent predecessors but he’s no liberal.

Even with a House and Senate majority, the GOP is unlikely to get what it wants in its current immigration battle with the President.

The terrorism wave that began with the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices has not ended with the killing of the perpetrators. A follow-on attack has occurred in Germany and there are reports of “sleeper cells” being activated in France.

The men responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre are dead, but the problems for France, and the rest of Europe, may just be at the beginning.

The terror attack in Paris seems likely to undercut GOP efforts to use the DHS budget to attack the President’s immigration policies.

At least 11 are dead and 10 wounded in an attack on free expression.

Reversing a previous decision, Sony will allow The Interview to be screened in a small number of theaters.

There’s not a whole lot the United States can do to respond effectively and proportionally to North Korea’s hacking attack against Sony.

In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on C.I.A. torture, some have suggested that eight years of Jack Bauer helped make torture more acceptable to the American public.

The U.S. Government has formally charged North Korea with responsibility for the hacking attack on Sony. How to respond to that attack is a more complicated question.

Hackers who have divulged embarrassing secrets from deep within Sony Pictures are now threatening violence if a film about a plot to kill Kim Jong Un is released.

Was Man Haron Monis a terrorist, or just a lone nut who had latched on to the rhetoric of ISIS to justify his own delusions? In the end, it hardly matters.

A hostage crisis has been unfolding overnight at a cafe in Sydney, Australia that has apparent links to international terrorism.

A dark and regrettable time in American history is finally seeing the light of day.

Next week, the Supreme Court will be asked to determine the line between free speech online and criminal threats

In the end, there appears to be very little, if anything, the GOP can do to stop or roll back the executive actions the President will announce Thursday evening.