FP alum Josh Rogin, now plying his trade over at the Daily Beast, had a scoop yesterday: The White House has requested that the Pentagon draw up plans for implementing a no-fly zone in Syria. While President Barack Obama hasn't made any decisions yet, an administration official affirmed, "the planning is moving forward and it's more advanced than it's ever been."

Rogin knows his stuff, and I have no reason to doubt the story is true. But this leak, suggesting America's policy on Syria is poised to change radically, sounds eerily familiar. Here is a trip down memory lane:

May 3, 2013: "U.S. Considering Arming Syria Rebels." -Radio Free Europe

April 5, 2013: "The White House ... is reviewing a new set of potential military options for assisting rebels in Syria." -Wall Street Journal

March 15, 2013: "CIA begins sizing up Islamic extremists in Syria for drone strikes" -Los Angeles Times

Feb. 26, 2013: "U.S. moves toward providing direct aid to Syrian rebels" -Washington Post

Feb. 7, 2013: "Pentagon leaders favored arming Syrian rebels" -Washington Post

Dec. 3, 2012: "The White House has been loath to make a direct intervention in Syria but clearly indicated Monday that the use of chemical weapons could change the equation."-AFP

Nov. 28, 2012: "The Obama administration, hoping that the conflict in Syria has reached a turning point, is considering deeper intervention to help push President Bashar al-Assad from power." -New York Times

Feb. 22, 2012: "Shelling of Homs resumes as U.S. signals possibility of arming Syrian opposition" -Al-Arabiya

Feb. 8, 2012: "International 'militarisation' in Syria growing closer, warns US official" -Telegraph

To be clear, none of these stories is inaccurate. They all quote Obama administration officials' remarks about the options currently on the table to respond to the Syrian crisis. They always note that the White House is considering its options -- not that the president has made a decision yet.

But just because these articles aren't wrong doesn't mean they shed much light on what the Obama administration is thinking on Syria. It's the job of large swathes of the U.S. defense establishment to prepare options in the event that Obama decides to intervene more aggressively. Roughly 24,000 people work in the Pentagon alone -- if one team in the building is mulling efforts to arm the rebels or implement a no-fly zone, it's fair game for a newspaper to write that the Defense Department is in the planning stages on those options. But that doesn't mean the possibility will ever become a reality.

Collectively, all these articles suggest that U.S. policy toward Syria is in a state of flux -- any moment now, the blaring headlines suggest, Washington could jump headfirst into this conflict. In reality, U.S. policy has been fairly constant: The Obama administration provides humanitarian and non-lethal aid to the opposition, but largely is opposed to entangling the American military in the conflict. Like anything else, that could change. But more than two years into this war, the picture should be pretty clear. 

After clandestinely slipping into Syria on Monday for a series of meetings over fresh juice and cherries with rebel commanders, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became the highest-ranking U.S. official -- besides the U.S. ambassador to Syria -- to enter the country since the start of its civil war.

According to the trip's organizers, McCain's visit was approved by Secretary of State John Kerry, but his decision to meet with rebel commander Salim Idris and engage in some foreign-policy freelancing probably won't be drawing praise from the White House anytime soon. Accused of standing by and tacitly watching Syria burn, the Obama administration is currently engaged in a diplomatic offensive to bring the conflict to a negotiated end -- a campaign that is complicated by senior American politicians traveling to Syria to gather information on the weapons systems rebels believe they need to turn the military balance in their favor.

Then again, freelancing by members of Congress is far from a new phenomenon -- especially by legislators unhappy with the sitting president's foreign policy.

Rep. Charlie Wilson, the man almost singlehandedly responsible for arming the Afghan mujahideen during their fight against the Soviet army, is something of the godfather of foreign-policy freelancing by members of Congress. During the 1980s, Wilson, a playboy Democrat from Texas and staunch anti-communist, worked hand in glove with the CIA to funnel weapons to Afghan insurgents, including the anti-aircraft missiles that proved decisive in countering Soviet air superiority.

Though McCain's embrace of the Syrian rebels carries overtones of Wilson's support of the Afghan rebels, the Texas Democrat went to absurd lengths to secure arms for the mujahideen. In 1984, for instance, Wilson traveled with CIA agents to Egypt to inspect weapons for possible purchase and transfer to Afghanistan. At a test firing on an Egyptian range, the missile doubled back on the congressman, who had to throw himself to the ground to avoid being struck. "We decided not to buy any of those," he gamely recalled. (Some of the individuals Wilson armed would later orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.)

In recent years, similar diplomatic initiatives have been less spectacular -- if no less controversial. In 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Syria for a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in an effort to re-engage the country after relations soured in 2003. That meeting produced little progress, and the image of Pelosi seated next to Assad is probably one she wishes she could erase.

McCain is himself no stranger to the dramatic overseas tour -- even if the move hasn't always turned out as he hoped. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he embarked on a trip to Iraq to burnish his foreign-policy credentials and paint the Democrats as intent on cutting and running from the war. But that effort backfired when the senator mixed up which extremist group Iran was supporting inside Iraq (no, not al Qaeda).

Then there's Curt Weldon, a former Republican representative from Pennsylvania. In 2004, Weldon led a congressional delegation to Libya in support of Muammar al-Qaddafi's decision to abandon his nuclear program. Weldon left Congress after his defeat in the 2006 midterm election. But when the uprising in Libya broke out in 2011, Weldon promoted himself as a potential broker in the conflict and traveled to Libya with the intention of convincing Qaddafi to step down. The effort failed.

Weldon could have suffered a worse fate. In 2012, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was denied entry into Afghanistan as a result of a long-standing feud with President Hamid Karzai. Surprisingly well-acquainted with Afghanistan, Rohrabacher first traveled to the country while working in the Reagan White House during the 1980s -- and in 1988 he even fought alongside the mujahideen in Jalalabad. But after launching an investigation into the Karzai family's personal wealth as a member of Congress -- one in a string of aggressive actions against Karzai and his political clique -- Rohrabacher found himself less than welcome in Kabul.

By that standard, McCain's visit this week appears to have gone pretty well.

A year after the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia, a new scandal involving U.S. officials may be brewing in Venezuela. The Associated Press is reporting that two officials from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas were injured in a Tuesday morning shooting "inside or outside the Antonella 2012 nightclub" in the capital. The AP identifies the locale as a strip club:

Police said the two U.S. officials were shot following a brawl inside the club, which is in the basement of a shopping center in the upper-middle-class Chacao neighborhood.

The club's Twitter account features racy photos of nude or scantily clad women pole dancing, posing inside cages or reclining on beds. The text under one photo invites visitors to come and watch the club's "sexy show."

"Apparently it was a fight originating in a nightspot where these people were attacked and shots were fired at them and they suffered gunshot wounds," police spokesman Douglas Rico told TV channel Globovision at the health clinic where the victims were taken. He said one was shot in the leg and abdomen and the other was shot in the abdomen.

A police official identified one of the victims as military attache Roberto Ezequiel Rosas. She said he was shot in the right leg during an argument outside the night club in Chacao, which is east of the city center.

The AP appears to be referencing this Twitter feed, which does not make any mention of the shooting in its recent tweets (instead, they mention raffle winners and thank Twitter users for following the club). But the account's images do indeed scream strip club:

Bloomberg has more details on the club:

The shooting took place at the Angelus night club at 4:25 a.m., according to the police report. Angelus, which changed its name to Antonella recently, is a strip club, said Hermando Herrera who has worked as a car park supervisor in the mall for more than 20 years.

"Lots of famous people come here," Herrera, 42, said. "You get a bit of everything - baseball players, basketball players."

Outside the club there are signs prohibiting entry to couples, unaccompanied women and anyone under the age of 30. Inside the club, which was shut today, a wall had black-and-white images of pole dancing women wearing platform heels or knee-length boots.

U.S. officials, not surprisingly, have been far more tight-lipped about the episode. Speaking to reporters today, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell did not identify the embassy employees, referring to them as "other agency personnel" rather than Foreign Service officiers (the Venezuelan press has identified the two men as Roberto Ezequiel Rosas and Paul Marwin). Ventrell said only that the incident took place in "some sort of social spot," though he wasn't sure whether it "was a restaurant, or a nightclub, or what the actual establishment was." If these early reports are accurate, Ventrell won't like the answer.

As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney famously leafed through "binders full of women" who were qualified to join his cabinet. As prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe has a massive database. Or at least that's the plan.

As the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Tuesday, Abe's government is planning to launch a database of female candidates who are qualified to become corporate executives:

The database will be available for businesses after they register with the government. If these firms want to recruit people in the database, they will negotiate directly with them.

The government hopes listed firms will hire women from the database as nonregular outside board members....

According to the Cabinet Office, the number of female board members at listed companies stood at 505 as of May 2011, accounting for 1.2 percent of the total number of executives.

The percentage is far short of the government's target of boosting the proportion of women in leadership roles to about 30 percent by 2020, observers said.

Romney may have been tarred and feathered for his inartful comment, but the binder-full-of-women approach to gender equality does have its supporters. As Amanda Hess wrote in Slate during the U.S. election:

I agree that Romney's positions on health care, contraception, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will do nothing to help women in jobs across America. Binders stocked with intelligence on top-shelf female candidates, though? I'm cool with those. In a rush to discredit Romney's position entirely, commenters are strangely spinning his underlying point-when female candidates don't apply for jobs, employers should find them, and hire them about half the time-as somehow anti-feminist.

The database proposal, in fact, is just Abe's latest effort to make gender parity in the workforce a central pillar of his economic-growth strategy, known as "Abenomics." "Women are Japan's most underused resource," the prime minister declared in June, while urging business leaders to hire at least one female executive per company. 

But some see Abe's proposals as superficial reforms that do little to address structural barriers to closing the gender gap in the Japanese workforce. Here's William Pesek over at Bloomberg this weekend:

Abe's proposals hardly match his rhetoric. He has talked about extending child-care leave, expanding day-care facilities and asking companies to hire female board members. He's merely scratching surface and reinforcing stereotypes about the role of women in society.

The government is considering circulating "Women's Notebooks" to warn of the evils of postponing marriage and motherhood. Yes, career-oriented women are selfish. When Abe calls on companies to provide three years of maternity leave, he uses a Japanese expression that a child should be held by its mother until the age of 3. In other words, kids are women's work.

A database won't do much to root out that deeply entrenched perception. 

Slow down, Aussies: Australia certainly has plenty to be happy about, but the OECD's new Better Life Index didn't just declare living in the Land Down Under the best lifestyle in the world. Still, you wouldn't know that from this week's headlines, which include, "Australia Tops List of Happiest Countries," "Australia Tops OECD Better Life Index, Leading Sweden, Canada," "Australia is the happiest industrialised nation. But are you happy?" and the self-congratulatory "Australia: Happy is as happy does."

You can chalk the misunderstanding up to lies, damn lies, and subjective statistics. Apparently, news outlets missed the part in the index's FAQs where, in answer to the question "Which country is #1?," the OECD explicitly states, "The OECD has not assigned rankings to countries."

It's easy to see how the report could be misleading. The Better Life Index ranks the quality of life in OECD countries based on 11 categories of metrics -- housing (including data on "rooms per person," "dwellings with basic facilities," and "housing expenditure"); environment ("air pollution" and "water quality"); and work-life balance ("employees working very long hours" and "time devoted to leisure and personal care"), among others. The default index (shown below) weights each of these 11 categories equally, and Australia does rise to the top of the list. But the OECD's goal is to learn what quality-of-life indicators matter to you.

The Better Life Index, in other words, is designed to be toyed with. The OECD's interactive chart allows you to weight the metrics to your liking and then compare your index to those of others. As of right now, the average user-submitted weighted index emphasizes education, health, and life satisfaction, and deemphasizes civic engagement, bumping Switzerland up a notch to the happiest country, narrowly beating out Canada, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Australia. That could change, though, as more people submit their weighted indices. You can make your own index here.

Glee, the hit U.S. TV show, has won fans the world over for its ability to tackle the hard issues of adolescence -- homosexuality, bullying, teen pregnancy -- through the ever-accessible music of Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. And it seems Pakistani television producers have taken note. As AFP reports today, the country will release its own version of the show, Taan, this fall. The news agency has more on the 26-episode series, which will include music from artists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (the photo above shows a rehearsal for the program):

'Taan' follows the lives and loves of a group of young people who regularly burst into song. But this time they attend a music academy in Lahore, instead of an American high school.

Taan - which is a musical note in Urdu - tackles subjects considered off limits in Pakistan's deeply conservative Muslim society.

For example, a love affair "between a Taliban extremist and a beautiful Christian girl" promises to give Rachel and Finn's tortured romance a run for its money. And even more controversial is a planned storyline depicting a gay relationship.

The show's creators have come up with creative ways to avoid angering authorities. Take the aforementioned plotline of two male lovers. "Let's say in a certain scene, there are two boys talking to each other, they are not allowed to show their physical attachment to each other," explains director Samar Raza, particularly since homosexuality is illegal in Pakistan. "So I bring a third character who says: 'God designed Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.'" This third conservative character will theoretically enable Raza to discuss homosexuality while evading censorship.

Concern about censors isn't the only factor distinguishing Pakistan's version of Glee from its U.S. inspiration. As the Telegraph points out, Taan will include a dark side that isn't exactly applicable to the lives of U.S. tweens:

One of the characters, Annie Masih is described as losing all her family in the 2009 attack on a Christian enclave in the town on Gojra, a real episode in which seven people were burned alive.

Another storyline involves Fariduddin, a member of the Pakistan Taliban intent on blowing up the academy before he is eventually seduced by music.

Then again, Glee hasn't shied away from the dark side of life either.

Joe Biden is on a six-day swing through Latin America, with stops in Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil. And judging by his visit to Colombia, the vice president is in fine form, dispensing his trademark head-scratchers and hyperbolic praise.

Coming amid news that Colombian negotiators in Havana had reached a preliminary land-reform agreement with the FARC rebel group, Biden's stop in Colombia turned into something of a love-fest with President Juan Manuel Santos, whom Biden praised for his stewardship of the peace process, ongoing efforts to end the country's half-decade-long civil war, and work to deepen economic ties between Colombia and the United States.

But Biden also found time to inform one Colombian woman that she was a pretty mother, and to tell the press that he needed to get his wife Jill some flowers (the two comments appear to be unrelated). Here's how the Colombia trip has played out so far -- in Bidenisms:

Yamile Cárdenas, 26, a single mother of three working at a flower farm Biden visited, described her conversation with America's Don Juan-in-chief as follows, according to a press pool report:

"It was very exciting and he was very nice. He asked about my kids and he said I was a very pretty mom."

And here's Biden on why he visited the flower farm:

And personally I want to make clear to the press, I'm going to the flower farm, and I'm mainly going to get my wife some flowers. I just wanted to make it clear because in my household if I go anywhere near a flower shop, let alone flower farm and don't come home fully armed with flowers, I will have a very unhappy trip to Colombia.

Biden, speaking with President Santos, also referenced his thwarted career ambitions:

And it's great in particular to see you again, my friend. You pointed out -- as the President pointed out, last time I was -- I think we were in Cartagena if I'm not mistaken. When Plan Colombia was announced, you were finance minister and I was a United States senator. Now you're President and I'm Vice President. It's obvious who did well.

And compared this moment in Latin American history to ... something:

And, folks, the one thing the President and I agree on is that the promise not only for our relationships but for the hemisphere are close to limitless. They're close to limitless, and we genuinely believe that if we work together, we can provide what we hope will be the case that -- when the Berlin Wall went down in Europe, we started to talk about a Europe whole and free, which has never occurred. And now it's on the verge of being fully realized. The President and I believe that our children will look to a hemisphere that is middle class, democratic and secure for the first time in the hemisphere's history. And with the leadership of men like President Santos I am confident that our children's future is in very, very good hands.

In Santos, Biden has apparently found another leader equally bad at golf:

So again, thank you, Mr. President. And we were commiserating how we used to each have a relatively good golf game before we got the respective positions we're in. So since we're both playing very badly, let's play together.

Never change, Joe.