Foreign Policy: "The cost of all that despotism has been stultifying. Millions of lives have been lost, economies have collapsed, and whole states have failed under brutal repression. And what has made it worse is that the world is in denial."

Foreign Policy: "The 10 states that fill out the top ranks of this year's Failed States Index -- the world's most vulnerable nations -- are a sadly familiar bunch."

NY Post: "Forty years ago today, New York became the first state in the US where abortion was broadly legal. Since then, New York City has become the nation's undisputed abortion capital, with an overwhelmingly pro-choice political establishment -- and an abortion rate that's three times the national average."

Dana Goldstein: "The State Department has provided The Daily Beast with documents detailing how the $17 million to fight sexual violence have been allocated, mostly toward treatment programs for rape survivors. But human rights advocates hope for more. They believe the US should stop sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid--including military training--to Rwanda and … Continue reading Is Obama Failing Congo?

NY Times: "The Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision."

Paul Krugman: "We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will … Continue reading The Third Depression?

Washington Post: "Robert C. Byrd, an orphan from the West Virginia coal fields who served more than half a century in the Senate and used his canny, masterful knowledge of the institution to protect its rules, shape the federal budget and, above all else, tend to the interests of his impoverished state, died Monday. He … Continue reading ROBERT C. BYRD, 1917-2010

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Newsweek: "When the Taliban ran Afghanistan, they destroyed idols, refused to educate women, and even forbade kite-flying. After the Americans unseated them in 2001, Afghans slowly began recovering the basic freedoms that strict Sharia had denied them, though that liberty is still far from total."

AP: "Wary of slamming on the stimulus brakes too quickly but shaken by the European debt crisis, world leaders pledged Sunday to slash government deficits in the most industrialized nations in half by 2013, with wiggle room to meet the goal."