By Lingfeng Li
New York Magazine just published an excerpt from the book Game Change about the rise and fall of John Edwards.  It also reveals a different side to Elizabeth Edwards, who is often portrayed in the media as the “sainted” wronged woman.
From NY Mag:
Many of his friends started noticing a change—the arrival of what one of his aides referred to as “the ego monster”—after he was nearly chosen by Al Gore to be his running mate in 2000: the sudden interest in superficial stuff to which Edwards had been …

By Aaron McGuire

Jay Cost is one of my favorite writers. He’s a professor of political science, and writes about politics in a manner more akin to V.O. Key than Jim Geraghty or Eleanor Clift (or any of that crowd, really). This week, he wrote an exquisite piece highlighting the popular conception that Obama has “let us down” and noted how that shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s a very good piece, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Hope you do too.

In case you weren’t following political news this first week of the new year, we’re starting a new weekly summary series to help you catch up.

Top Democrats drop out of 2010 election races
Dorgan (D-ND), Dodd out (D-CT) (Politico)
Democratic majority still looks safe (Politico)
CO Governor Bill Ritter (D) drops out (WSJ), CO Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will not run for Governor (Washington Post)
NJ State Senate rejects gay marriage proposal in a 20-14 vote.  The bill’s supporters had hoped it would be passed before Governor Corzine left office.  (NY Times)
Improvements in security policies ordered after …

By Vikram Srinivasan
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council, and Kenneth Klukowski of the American Civil Rights Union are out with a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal today on some of the major constitutional questions hanging over the health care legislation that just passed the Senate.  The key take-away is that the legislation breaches traditional balances between state power and individual liberty in ways never seen before:
America’s founders intended the federal government to have limited powers and that the states have an independent sovereign …

By Lingfeng Li
Happy New Year’s everyone!  Now that it’s another year and another decade, take some time to recap on the biggest events in recent history.

10 Biggest Political Scandals of the Past Decade (NY Post)
Biggest Political Winners and Losers of 2009 (USA Today)
Biggest Political Disappointments of 2009 (Huffington Post) … talk about the liberal media slant…
Top 5 Outrageous Political Videos of 2009 (Politics Daily)
Most Read Stories of 2009 (Wall Street Journal)
Top 9 Political Flubs of 2009 (ABC News)
Top 40 Political Quotes of 2009 (Fox4kc)
TIME’s Person of the Year: Ben Bernanke
Frank …