Outside the Beltway

Should bloggers be treated the same as “journalists” for the purpose of the protections granted by media shield laws?

A top IRS official will reportedly invoke her 5th Amendment rights rather than testify before Congress tomorrow.

The Virginia GOP’s nominee for Lt. Governor could pose a problem for the party.

A San Francisco bacon restaurant smells like bacon. Thankfully, a compromise has been reached.

A generation of kids with massive student loans and no prospects is bad news for the status quo.

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

Republicans are fighting over how best to deal with their demographic problems, but they seem to be fighting the wrong battle.

The noted wine critic Robert Parker recently forayed into reviewing bourbon and came under intense fire from enthusiasts of American whiskey.

With its most recent “upgrade,” Gmail has become much less useful to its best customers.

Yesterday’s hearings shed more light while also raising yet more questions to which we’ll likely never get a satisfactory answer.

Bill Clinton is on Twitter for reals.

Why does the stock market care if there is an explosion at the White House?

An American city was essentially shut down today. Was that the right thing to do?

A sensational story, little solid information, and instant analysis are a bad combination

Yesterday was not a good day for the Cable “News” Network.

Peter Bergen says government crackdowns since the Oklahoma City and 9/11 attacks have made getting bomb making materials harder.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about what happened in Boston, so maybe it’s time to stop speculating.

Officials in the Japanese city of Yokohama mistakenly announced the launch of a North Korean missile to 40,000 followers on Twitter.

Robert Farley takes a shot across the bow at the academy from the pages of one of his field’s most prestigious journals.

In one of the lamer April Fools’ jokes in a while, Twitter has announced Twttr

The “social web” was with us long before the rise of Facebook, Twitter and its kind and that the old style sharing is actually much more important than the new.

The man who played Captain Kirk is not amused by an IRS training video featuring his iconic character.

Matt Yglesias has a smart push-back against the lamentations of the decline of journalism.

Senator Rob Portman changes his position on same-sex marriage. Another sign of the times.