Ahmed Chalabi, a con artist who spent a decade convincing America’s foreign policy establishment to topple a dictator so the Chalabi family could resume extracting their home nation’s wealth, died of a heart attack today, about 15 years too late. If you haven’t read it in a while (or at all), now is a good time to revisit Jane Mayer’s 2004 account of how long and how hard Chalabi worked to make regime change in Iraq the main foreign policy priority of a bunch of deeply stupid but powerful people, who grew to believe, despite of the overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary, that the deeply unscrupulous exile could be a credible leader of a secular and democratic Iraq.

Oh gosh, something to be concerned about: people now are just going to cheap gyms and working out and leaving, rather than indulging in the "community" of group classes and flirting and juice bars. Will gyms ever be annoying again?

Chris Oynes, associate director for offshore energy and minerals management at at the Minerals Management Service—a.k.a. "the guy in charge of making sure what just happened doesn't happen"—is resigning after 35 years of not doing his job.

Surprise! Seventy-five percent of Americans agree with you that 2009 was a horrible, awful year.