Feed: Outside The Beltway | OTB - AggScore: 64

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, widely touted as an Attorney General candidate, has instead been tabbed to be Barack Obamas Homeland Security secretary. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has been chosen to be secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security. Photo: AP Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) has been chosen to serve as secretary of the vast and troubled...

The dating site eHarmony is now opening a separate but equal site for gays. The Pasadena-based dating website, heavily promoted by Christian evangelical leaders when it was founded, has agreed in a civil rights settlement to give up its heterosexuals-only policy and offer same-sex matches. EHarmony was started by psychologist Neil Clark Warren, who is known for his mild-mannered television and...

The gang at Reason is concerned about the appointment of Eric Holder as the Attorney General, with both Dave Weigel and Jacob Sullum noting that hes been a big advocate of harsher penalties for drug offenders, including marijuana users.  Sullums right that the choice is strikingly at odds not only with Obamas signals regarding marijuana but with his opposition to long...

Sen. John McCain has won the state of Missouri. John McCain has won Missouris 11 electoral votes, CNN declares.  Missouri hasnt actually made that official yet, mind you.  But the election was a mere sixteen days ago. According to the unofficial results, McCain won the state by 3,632 votes . The unofficial count shows McCain with 1,445,812 votes, or 49.4 percent, and Obama with...

Time for the Thursday OTB Caption ContestTM (Issei Kato/Files/Reuters) Winners will be announced Monday PM

The Federal Reserve is lowering its forecasts for economic activity. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Reserve on Wednesday sharply lowered its projections for economic activity this year and next, and signaled that additional interest rate reductions may be needed to help combat the worst financial crisis to jolt the country in more than a half-century. With the economy forecast to lose traction,...

Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladins deputy, called Barack Obama a house negro. Al-Qaidas No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites. The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a...

Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, speaking at the Atlantic Council today, declared that Russias justification for invading Georgia, that it was defending its friends abroad, is one that has been used by Russian autocrats for centuries to justify a doctrine of imperialism. Saying that we need a doctrine for a doctrine, Sikorski declared that, Any further...

In a NYT op-ed entitled Let Detroit Go Bankrupt, Mitt Romney argues that Congress should let creative destruction do its job. IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed. Without that bailout, Detroit...

My OTB teaser post yesterday afternoon, Should Obama Hunt Osama?, has thus far generated 30 comments.  My much more substantive New Atlanticist post, Hunting Bin Laden, has only one. Is there a barrier that Im unaware of thats depressing commenting at the latter site? Were getting quite respectable traffic but having difficulty generating much...

Senator Ted Stevens, who looked to have narrowly won re-election to the Senate weeks after being convicted on felony corruption charges, has now apparently lost as absentee ballots are slowly counted. Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history, narrowly lost his re-election bid Tuesday, marking the downfall of a Washington political power and Alaska icon who...

When I was 8 years old, I got a compilation album in my Santa Claus presents called Star Trackin 77  one of those Ronco-style collections. The cover was a picture of a guy in a spacesuit on the lunar landscape with a microphone (which he was holding, inexplicably, outside his helmet; I knew even at 8 that wouldnt work in a vacuum). This song is the only one I can...