Look on their works, ye mighty, and click

Today Spencer leaves for Afghanistan to report for the Washington Independent. Again for the Indy, Laura McGann is in Alaska doing the vice-presidential vetting that John McCain never did. Yglesias has a rebuttal in the Washington Post to a Matt Continetti op-ed. Phoebe Connelly has a pair of book reviews on the long history of newly fashionable agribusiness reform and the "dwindling disease" roots of colony collapse disorder in Bookforum. (Bees need labor protections! Who knew?) Megan McArdle has written possibly the most irritating Palinalysis to date. And Jeffry Cudlin's review of Martin Puryear at the National Gallery is handsome and thoroughly researched, hitting high notes on the contrast with Picasso.

I call all these writers friends so I feel a twinge of namedroppingly nepotistic guilt for advertising them together, but these are all among the more interesting things I'm reading this week.