The Week

• Who would have guessed that Moammar Qaddafi would outlive America’s AAA rating?

• Wisconsin Democrats have gone to extraordinary lengths ever since Republicans introduced legislation to scale back the collective-bargaining privileges of the state’s public-sector unions. Each time their unprecedented efforts have been thwarted. First Democratic state senators left the state to deny a quorum, until Republicans found a procedural remedy for the problem. Then Democrats mounted a campaign to deny reelection to a justice on the state supreme court in the hope of getting a liberal majority that would strike down the new law — only to see the justice narrowly win. Now six recall elections against Republican state senators have concluded. The Democrats needed to gain three seats to take control of the body, but won only two. The Democrats’ next move is likely to be to try to recall the governor, but they would be unwise to extrapolate too far from their two victories: One of the defeated Republicans had left his wife for a younger woman, and Democrats made the most of it. It has been a long and bitter fight, but so far Republicans have successfully vindicated an important principle: that the government’s workforce should not also be its primary constituency.