The Senate's Syria hearing: Live updates  —  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is hearing testimony Tuesday about the potential use of military force in Syria.  Testifying are Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Ariel Castro a suicide  —  (CNN) — Ariel Castro, who was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years for kidnapping and raping three women, as well as murder, was found hanging in his prison cell Tuesday night, the state's Department of Corrections said.  —  The cause of death was hanging with a bed sheet …

No good options for President Obama, Congress on conflict engulfing Syria  —  President Obama and Congress face no good options when it comes to taking action in Syria.  —  The case for launching a strike is that the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons should be punished …

Hillary Clinton backs Obama on Syria  —  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton backs President Barack Obama's move to urge Congress to back a targeted effort in Syria, in the first comments from her camp since the president unveiled his plan, POLITICO has learned.

Rubio: We Wouldn't Be At This Stage With Syria ‘If I Had Been In Charge’ (VIDEO)  —  Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said Tuesday that he's “very skeptical” that the proposed airstrike on Syria will deter the Assad regime from using chemical weapons in the future, while arguing that he'd have handled …

Cheney knocks Obama, papers  —  150 in Tea Party crowd hear candidate call for a ‘rebirth of freedom.’  —  Liz Cheney would not vote to attack Syria if she were in the U.S. Senate.  —  Speaking to an enthralled crowd of 150 Jackson Hole Tea Party members Tuesday night in her first public appearance …

AP Interview: Putin Warns West On Syria Action  —  NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (AP) — President Vladimir Putin warned the West against taking one-sided action in Syria but also said Russia “doesn't exclude” supporting a U.N. resolution on punitive military strikes if it is proved that Damascus used poison gas on its own people.

Public Opinion Runs Against Syrian Airstrikes  —  Few See U.S. Military Action Discouraging Chemical Weapons Use  —  President Obama faces an uphill battle in making the case for U.S. military action in Syria.  By a 48% to 29% margin, more Americans oppose than support conducting military airstrikes …

How Fragile Is the New Democratic Coalition?  —  Last December, Jennifer Duffy, an election analyst at the Cook Political Report, came up with a particularly tantalizing set of data points, the kind that demand further exploration.  —  In 1988, the Democratic presidential nominee …

Another Set of Questions About Syria  —  A few minutes ago I posted the six-step pattern of pro-escalation rhetoric that Eric Martin laid out two years ago.  That followed William Polk's lengthy and important 13-question examination of a strike on Syria.  —  Now on the Foreign Policy site …

Special report: We all thought Libya had moved on - it has, but into lawlessness and ruin  —  Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi  —  A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin …

Al Gore's Incredible Shrinking Climate Change Footprint  —  Illustration by John Gara / BuzzFeed; Joe Raedle / Getty Images; Saul Loeb / Getty Images  —  WASHINGTON — Last January, Al Gore took a boatload of scientists, donors, and celebrities to Antarctica to talk about climate change.

Arm and Shame  —  The Obama team has clearly struggled with its Syria policy, but, in fairness, this is a wickedly complex problem.  We need a policy response that simultaneously deters another Syrian poison gas attack, doesn't embroil America in the Syrian civil war and also doesn't lead …

Business Losing Clout in a G.O.P. Moving Right  —  How did corporate America lose control of the Republican Party?  —  From overhauling immigration laws to increasing spending on the nation's aging infrastructure, big business leaders have seemed relatively powerless lately …

65 Years Later, a Memorial Gives Names to Crash Victims  —  FRESNO, Calif. — A fiery plane crash here decades ago that killed 32 people, most of them unidentified Mexican farmworkers, inspired a protest song by Woody Guthrie that has been performed by Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, among others.

Introducing “Kindle MatchBook”: Soon Customers Will Be Able to Purchase Kindle Editions of Print Books Purchased from Amazon—Past, Present and Future—for $2.99 or Less  —  Over 10,000 books already enrolled from authors such as Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, Blake Crouch, James Rollins …

Bloomberg sues City Council to overturn law targeting stop-and-frisk profiling  —  Mayor Bloomberg kept his promise: He filed a lawsuit against City Council to overturn one of the two laws passed last month to curtail the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk program.

Obama seeks an accomplice for Syria action  —  Because Syria's convulsion has become as serious as Barack Obama has been careless in speaking about it, he is suddenly and uncharacteristically insisting that Congress participate in governance.  Regarding institutional derangements …