The Rundown

• Fred Kaplan breaks down the parallels between the British withdrawal from India and a future US withdrawal from Iraq over at Slate.
• Peter Carlson pens a pretty entertaining farewell to the absurdist tabloid that was the Weekly World News.
• The quotes in this article from Idaho Rep. Bill Sali need to be read to be believed. Honestly.
• Atul Gawande has some words of wisdom on medical malpractice (via Overlawyered).
• Daniel Gross rips Rudy Giuliani’s health care plan to shreds. And rightly so. This thing is awful.

The Rundown

• Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff has an interesting piece on healthcare in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” feature.
• The Tenth Circuit held that Oklahoma may not treat out of state adoptions by gay couples differently than it treats such adoptions by straight couples.
• Senior Senator of my home state Arlen Spector, has a pretty level-headed editorial about immigration in today’s WP. Unfortunately, he is probably not doing himself any favors in his next contest with this stance.
• A challenge to the NSA wiretap program may have a chance, since the Department of the Treasury accidentally gave the defendant’s lawyers a copy of the NSA Call Log. Oops.
• Stephen Bainbridge, guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, demonstrates that the similarities between the president and his father are greater than they would seem, and not in a particularly flattering sense.
• Matthew Yglesias conveys some foreign policy wisdom Obama dropped re: China at YearlyKos.

The Rundown

• Foreign Policy‘ s Passport blog argues that Condoleezza Rice is well on her way to becoming a Powell-esque failure as Secretary of State.
• Newt Gingrich goes off on an amusing/frightening rant at an American Spectator breakfast.
• Anne Applebaum argues that Vladimir Putin benefits politically from doing nothing about corruption and criminality in Russia.
• More anthropogenic climate change evidence in Nature.
• The VA is being sued by a group of Iraq veterans claiming that mismanagement and incompetence has prevented them from obtaining medical care.
• Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon argue in the NYT that the CIA should take charge of the counterterrorism operations that the military has repeatedly bungled.
• Gene Sperling makes a case that stagnant/declining American funding for scientific research could spark a crisis in the near future.
• Greg Mankiw posts on a Becker-Posner Blog tip I emailed him, but doesn’t show me any love. Oh well. I got a thank you email at least.