Republican strategist and former Romney campaign spokesman Kevin Madden and David Gergen, CNN's  senior political analyst, discuss the GOP presidential race now that Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump aren't running.

Michael Scheuer, an expert in Islamic terror movements, says the democratic facade of the Arab Spring threatens Israel as demonstrated by clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces along Israel's borders and occupied territories on Sunday.

ONLY ON THE BLOG: CNN’s Leinz Vales asks former Haitian Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph about Haiti’s new president, Michel Martelly. FULL POST

Journalists Chrystia Freeland and Christopher Dickey discuss the sex charges against IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. FULL POST

Linda Fairstein, former head of Manhattan District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit, examines the case of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. FULL POST

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today's five OFF-SET questions is Laura Kipnis, author of "How To Become a Scandal, Against Love: A Polemic" and "The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability," which have been translated into fifteen languages.

She is a professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and has contributed to Slate, Harper’s, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine.

The head of the International Monetary Fund was in court Monday to answer allegations that he chased a housekeeping employee down the hall of his swanky New York hotel suite and sexually assaulted her. Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arraignment was delayed a day after he agreed to forensic testing requested by police, said his attorney, William Taylor. The IMF chief's other attorney, Benjamin Brafman, vowed Sunday to vigorously defend him in court, insisting his client is innocent. Police allege Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted the 32-year-old woman Saturday at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan, and then quickly headed off to a New York airport to board a Paris-bound flight.

Based on your definition and your research, what level of scandal is the Strauss-Kahn?

It's world-shaking, literally, if it changes the terms of the next election in France, which sounds likely.

Also we've been reading so much about Berlusconi recently–in fact, the DSK story broke the same day as the Italian elections, with everyone wondering how Silvio's going to fare, given his own sexual seaminess. It's hard not to link the two–European politics seems saturated with images of aging plutocrats groping young women at the moment. FULL POST

Today’s number of the day is $14.294 trillion.

That’s where the debt ceiling is set - the cap set by Congress on the amount of debt the federal government can legally borrow to pay all of the country’s bills.

Welcome to Monday, May 16…today is the day the federal debt hits its legal limit.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress that he estimates the U.S has 11 weeks or so before it begins defaulting on its legal obligations, unless that ceiling is raised.

On Sunday, House Speaker John Boehner said he’s ready to “lock arms” with President Obama to raise the federal debt ceiling. The deal, though, would be tied to serious budget cutting, which means more wrangling over lifting those Bush-era tax cuts and what to do about Medicare and Medicaid. Remember, just last week, Boehner said no way to tax increases, but let’s talk about trillions in cuts, to which the Democratic response was basically: get serious.

Boehner said he has told Obama: “Come on, you and I, let’s lock arms and we’ll jump out of the boat together."

Now there’s a picture. I hope they wear life preservers.

OK, one more number: 37. FULL POST

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s OFF-SET questions is Tiffany Smalley, the first Wampanoag Indian to graduate from Harvard in nearly 350 years.

According to an article in The Boston Globe, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck received his degree in 1665. His classmate, Joel Iacommes was killed in a shipwreck just before graduation, and Harvard will soon grant him a posthumous degree.

Smalley is scheduled to receive her degree on May 26 from Harvard, which was originally chartered to educate Puritans and Indians.

First of all, congratulations. What have you been studying at Harvard and what kind of degree will you receive?

Thanks! Well, I'm a political science nerd but I've focused specifically on American Indian Policy. I'll receive a Bachelor of Arts in Government with a secondary in Ethnic Studies. FULL POST

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today's OFF-SET questions is Steve Kornacki, the news editor for Salon.com.

He’s previously written about politics for the New York Observer and Roll Call, and his work has also appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and on the Daily Beast. And he's a frequent In The Arena guest.

On Friday, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) announced that he will run for his party's presidential nomination in 2012. He has run twice before. What do you think he has learned from those two experiences?

From his first run in 1988 (as the Libertarian nominee against George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis), he learned that he's not bigger than the two-party system. As a Republican, he'd served in Congress for four terms and had run for the Senate in Texas in 1984, but as a third party presidential candidate, he was treated as an absolute nobody and he made zero impact on the race.

Moreover, the experience left him in the political wilderness for a decade; it was a minor miracle that he managed to win back a seat in the House in 1996 (when he defeated Greg Laughlin, a Democrat-turned-Republican congressman who ran with the national GOP's full backing). From that point on, Ron Paul has never hesitated to speak his mind and buck the GOP leadership - but he's done so as a member of the party. FULL POST

DEADLY CLASHES ALONG ISRAEL’S BORDERS – Clashes between pro-Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces erupted along Israel's borders Sunday, leaving at least 12 dead on a Palestinian mourning day marking the birth of the Jewish state. The conflicts broke out on "Nakba Day." Nakba - Arabic for "catastrophe" - marks the period when more than 700,000 Arabs were displaced from their homes during fighting that followed the creation of Israel in 1948.

COURT WANTS TO ARREST GADHAFI – The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is today expected to formally seek the arrest of Moammar Gadhafi for crimes linked to the brutal suppression of demonstrations against his 42-year rule. The Independent reports that the court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is expected to issue warrants against Colonel Gadhafi and at least two other leading members of the Libyan regime on charges related to killing unarmed protesters and displacing civilians. FULL POST