Friday linkage

Inner City Press, a quirky reported blog that covers the UN beat, questions former Foreign Minister and now UN Cyprus envoy Alexander Downer about a possible conflict of interest.
NY Times columnist David Brooks gets to the heart of modern America in a way few other observers do. This one's a keeper.
Will Wilkinson on Milton Friedman: 'His happiness, I think, was his rhetorical secret weapon. One doesn’t suspect a contented person of currying favor, seeking validation, or compensating for some unmet need. He makes it easy to believe in his good faith, and that makes him hard to dismiss.'
What constitutes victory: the Obama Administration's Afghanistan metrics.
Some revisionism on the legacy of Norman Bourlag, who I described earlier as 'the man who saved more lives than anyone, ever.'
As if the Cold War never ended: the Luftwaffe releases photos of its intercept of a Russian surveillance aircraft. (H/t Ares.)