Hello tifarmer,
Your quoting Garner’s “Dictionary of Legal Usage” is interesting, and I thank you for doing so. However, that book strikes me as inappropriate in this case. Newsweek is a publication with a very broad and general audience, therefore, the magazine's contributors are not likely to be dealing with the concept of petitio principii in any legal sense. All the general dictionaries I consulted listed under ‘beg’ or “beg the question” the less specific sense of evading or sidestepping, most also included the sense of assuming as proved the very thing being argued. The excellent _Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage_ explained that the phrase “beg the question” is a direct translation of the Latin “petitio principii”, and discussed its stricter sense as it is used in the fields of logic and law. As for the questionable sense of “inviting the question”, see my reply to Bryan’s post.
