Pentagon Is Ordered to Expand Potential Targets in Syria With a Focus on Forces  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad …

Why America Is Saying ‘No’  —  Syria and Obama: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.  —  It is hard, if you've got a head and a heart, to come down against a strong U.S. response to Syria's use of chemical weapons against its civilian population.

Iran Plots Revenge, U.S. Says  —  Officials Say Intercepted Message to Militants Orders Reprisals in Iraq if Syria Hit  —  WASHINGTON—The U.S. has intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria …

Obama: I'm Bypassing the ‘Hocus Pocus’ of the United Nations  —  President Obama said that the U.S. talk of military action in Syria is bypassing the “hocus pocus” of the U.N.:  —  “Frankly, if we weren't talking about the need for an international response right now, this wouldn't be what everybody …

Rep. Alan Grayson: Syria Intelligence Manipulated  —  Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who is aggressively lobbying against a military strike on Syria, says the Obama administration has manipulated intelligence to push its case for U.S. involvement in the country's two-year civil war.

Years of Tragic Waste  —  In a few days, we'll reach the fifth anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers — the moment when a recession, which was bad enough, turned into something much scarier.  Suddenly, we were looking at the real possibility of economic catastrophe.  —  And the catastrophe came.

Jobs Day: Tapering Is Still Insane  —  For reasons that are a bit unknown to me there was a surge of enthusiasm this week about the likely state of the American labor market, a surge that's been popped by today's mildly disappointing jobs report that shows a continuation of the long-term trend …

Did Obama even have a war plan for Capitol Hill?  —  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday voted 10-7 to approve President Obama's request for an authorization to use military force in Syria.  The Boston Globe reports the vote gives “more momentum to the White House plan.”

The Right Vote  —  The statesmanlike case for voting Yes on the congressional resolution to use force against the Assad regime has been made widely and well by conservative foreign policy thinkers.  At the end, the case boils down to this: As a policy matter, a Yes vote may be problematic in all kinds of ways.

N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web  —  The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy …

New Inquiry for Bachmann on Her Presidential Race  —  Representative Michele Bachmann's presidential hopes ended 20 months ago, but her brief and chaotic campaign continues to be the focus of ethics investigations.  —  The latest is a federal inquiry into whether an outside “super PAC” …

Bad Bet: Why Republicans Can't Win With Whites Alone  —  Obama lost key groups of white voters by the largest margins since the 1980s, but that doesn't mean Republicans can rely on whites to retake the White House.  —  This much is undisputed: In 2012, President Obama lost white voters …

The Bush Burden  —  He's there in every corner of Congress where a microphone fronts a politician, there in Russia and the British Parliament and the Vatican.  You may think George W. Bush is at home in his bathtub, painting pictures of his toenails, but in fact he's the biggest presence in the debate over what to do in Syria.