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 …

By Vikram Srinivasan
The Politico has a solid article out today on the political stakes of health care reform. Democrats seek nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of the citizen-state relationship, taking us towards an increasingly expansive role for government, not only in the health care sector, but in the economy as a whole. Americans should be concerned:
The real stakes of health care reform are ideological. They revolve around starkly different bets Democrats and Republicans placed on the success or failure of Barack Obama’s presidency, and the success or failure of …

By Lingfeng Li
Here’s another article related to the Duke Lacrosse incident and the need for more universities to follow due process in cases related to sexual assault.

Amanda Auerbach, a contributor for The Gothic Guardian, also wrote about sexual assault at Duke in our first issue for 2009-2010.

By Lingfeng Li
A grad student at Duke recently published a story on Salon.com documenting his experience living in a van to better afford tuition.  An interesting read for anyone that needs a break from studying during finals week!
http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/2009/12/06/living_in_a_van/index.html

By Chris Martin
http://www.ted.com/talks/allison_hunt_gets_a_new_hip.html
This is a funny story about how a woman resorted to volunteering in a hospital to move to the front of the line for hip replacement surgery.

By Lingfeng Li
Whoever said that Sarah Palin’s star was on the decline?
Apparently 1500 people showed up to Palin’s first book tour stop in Michigan — at 7 a.m. [Free Press]  The book is also #1 on Amazon right now, though admittedly at a 50% discount.
The New York Times also has a renewed interest in Palin.  Check out yet another article on her Election 2008 wardrobe.

By Lingfeng Li
White House Communications Anita Dunn’s (who is stepping down at the end of the month) recent attacks on Fox News for being the “communications arm of the Republican Party” have only helped fuel more conversation about mass media and its liberal/conservative slants.
Well, here is a report that claims Fox News is indeed fair and balanced.  Apparently, Fox is harsh on Obama during the election season last year, but the controversial network treated McCain with almost equal numbers of negative comments.  And now that Obama has been in power …