Things you should read

• Ryan Lizza's New Yorker profile of Barack Obama. Fascinating stuff about both Obama and the Chicago political scene. Far more than the rehashed stuff you get in the NYT's "The Long Run" series and elsewhere. It's a shame the cover overshadowed Lizza's story.
• This WaPo piece on the future.
• This Washington City Paper piece on the Post's Chandra Levy series. I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, the series has been fantastic. On the other hand, this is totally true:

  Pierre wrote that he found it “unconscionable” that the paper would devote a year and 12 chapters to the murder of a white woman, when around 200 people per year are murdered in the District–most of them male African Americans.

  The analysis by Erik Wemple is also good. I hope the series takes a harder turn soon, and really starts critiquing the media, the police, or someone and becomes more than a shortened John Grisham book. Or it ends with "BLANK... killed Chandra Levy.
• 10 most amazing ghost towns. Simply cool.
• This brief NYT profile of Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested for war crimes yesterday.
• This NYer piece on "Obama's" email. How did they find this guy?