Robert Gates, former defense secretary, offers harsh critique of Obama's leadership in ‘Duty’  —  In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama's leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 …

In surprise, unemployment benefits advance  —  In a surprise, several Senate Republicans on Tuesday morning joined with Democrats to break the filibuster of a bill to extend unemployment benefits for three months.  —  By 60-37, Senate Democrats secured the votes needed to advance the bill …

Angry Dennis Rodman defends North Korea basketball game  —  (CNN) — Dennis Rodman defended his visit to North Korea with a team of fellow former NBA players in a combative exchange Tuesday, saying the trip was a “great idea for the world.”  —  In an exclusive interview with Chris Cuomo of CNN's …

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows  —  Stealing J. Edgar Hoover's Secrets: One night in 1971, files were stolen from an F.B.I. office near Philadelphia.  They proved that the bureau was spying on thousands of Americans.  The case was unsolved, until now.

Republicans Really Could Win It All This Year  —  A definitive guide to the 2014 elections from our new columnist. … Another midterm election beckons, and over the next 10 months we'll see headlines about a thousand supposedly critical developments—the “game changers” and the “tipping points.”

Spitzer caught sucking Lis Smith's toes in topless hot tub romp  —  Sleazy Eliot Spitzer turned a resort hot tub into a steamy love cauldron over the weekend — kissing and sucking the toes of his topless mistress, Lis Smith, in front of families with children, mortified witnesses told The Post.

Navy mistakenly sends FOIA plans to reporter  —  The Unites States Navy inadvertently sent a memo to a local NBC News reporter this week detailing how it intended to try and deter requests he had filed under the Freedom Of Information Act.  —  Scott MacFarlane, a reporter for NBC 4 in Washington …

What happened to US life expectancy?  —  Here's another chart from the JAMA study “The Anatomy of Health Care in the United States”:  —  Why did the US fall behind the OECD median in the mid-1980s for men and the early 1990s for women?  Note, the answer need not point to the health system.

Surprise!  Walmart health plan is cheaper, offers more coverage than Obamacare  —  WATCHDOG OBAMACARE HEALTH CARE ACCOUNTABILITY WALMART  —  New Obamacare health insurance enrollees may feel a pang of envy when they eye the coverage plans offered by Walmart to its employees.

2013 Guns Sales Set New Record  —  The FBI has released new statistics on NICS background checks showing 2013 gun sales hit a new record.  The total number of background checks conducted for gun sales last year add up to 21,093,273, beating the previous 2012 record of 19,592,303 by 1,500,970.

Dutch Soccer Team Leaves Star Israeli Player Behind  —  Star Israeli-national soccer player Dan Mori banned from Abu Dhabi due to nationality.  Dutch politician slams ‘cowardly’ decision.  —  The premier Dutch soccer team Vitesse left for training in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this year …

Senate Conversations: Paul Broun ‘Fighting For Liberty’  —  The primary race for Georgia's open U.S. Senate seat heats up in the first weeks of 2014 with the election looming May 20.  —  For Rep. Paul Broun (R-Athens), the race is all about liberty.  —  “What I'm fighting for is liberty.

What the heck is a polar vortex?  —  (CNN) — Americans in two dozen states from the Midwest to the Southeast and Northeast are shivering this week courtesy of a distorted polar vortex.  The rush of cold air it's sending southward is the biggest visitor from the North Pole since Santa Claus.

How value judgments cloud social thought.  —  City Journal's Kay Hymowitz weighed in over the holidays with a response to our Dec. 16 column, in which we faulted the premise of her earlier article titled “Boy Trouble.”  She maintains that the main body of the article (which we described as …

Rachel Maddow Is Crazy, Too  —  MSNBC has had a hard time lately.  The network fired Martin Bashir and Alec Baldwin for craziness, on-air and off-air respectively.  Melissa Harris-Perry was forced to apologize, first on Twitter and then, tearfully, on the air, for making political hay out of Mitt Romney's adopted grandson.

Why Women Aren't Welcome on the Internet  —  “Ignore the barrage of violent threats and harassing messages that confront you online every day.”  That's what women are told.  But these relentless messages are an assault on women's careers, their psychological bandwidth, and their freedom to live online.

McCain Thinks Obama Is The One Who ‘Blew The Whole Thing’ In Iraq  —  Rising bloodshed in Iraq has Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) convinced that failure of the American military effort there now falls on President Obama's shoulders.  —  McCain went on Fox News on Tuesday morning to once again blast Obama …

Agency rejects trademark of ‘Redskins Hog Rinds,’ calling term ‘derogatory’  —  The same federal agency that will determine whether Washington's professional football team gets to keep its trademark registration recently struck down a request for a company to sell pork rinds with the name “Redskins.”