Good morning — and a happy 79th birthday to baseball legend Sandy Koufax! On this date in 1922, the USSR was established, and in 2006, Saddam Hussein was hanged in Baghdad.

Defining down “victory” –> The Christian Science Monitor’s Dan Murphy writes that as the US celebrates the end of combat operations in Afghanistan (a “residual force” will continue fighting the remnants of al Qaeda), “none of the claimed long term objectives for the war in Afghanistan, either from the Bush or Obama administrations, have been achieved.”

Tragedy –> ABC News reports that bodies and floating debris discovered in the Java Sea have been confirmed as coming from AirAsia flight 8501, which went missing on Sunday. AND: Before the discovery, Slate’s Jeff Wise looked at the similarities — and differences — between AirAsia flight 8501 and Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which has never been located.

LAPD –> In Los Angeles, police are still searching for a suspected gunman they say fired unprovoked shots at two police officers as they sat in a patrol car. KABC News in LA has details. AND: Under pressure, officials released an autopsy report in the police shooting death of Ezell Ford, an unarmed, mentally ill black man they claim struggled for an officer’s gun during an encounter two days after the Michael Brown shooting. The autopsy found that Ezell had been shot three times, including once in the back at very close range. Eyewitnesses have disputed the police department’s narrative and multiple investigations are underway. Kate Mather, Richard Winton and Ruben Vives report for the LAT.

NYPD –> A NYT editorial rips NYC’s police union for urging officers to turn their backs to Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio, the Times writes, “has spent weeks expressing his respect and admiration for the New York Police Department,” but “with these acts of passive-aggressive contempt and self-pity, many New York police officers… are squandering the department’s credibility, defacing its reputation [and] shredding its hard-earned respect.” AND: At AlterNet, Max Blumenthal obtained emails between “NYPD union bosses and local Republican activists allied with Rudy Giuliani” that appear to show that the rift is part of a coordinated political campaign to “take down de Blasio.”

The white hoods should have been a tipoff –> Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House majority whip, is in hot water over revelations that he spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002, but WaPo’s Robert Costa and Ed O’Keefe report that his spokesman “emphasized that the then-state lawmaker was unaware at the time of the group’s ideology and its association with racists and neo-Nazi activists.”

Accidental activist –> Tara Lohan has a terrific #longread at TAP about a man who “didn’t set out to be an environmental activist” until a fracking company announced a plan to run “bomb trains” carrying 3 million gallons of tar-sands crude per day “within feet of his family business.”

Two smart people –> Ezra Klein’s wide-ranging interview with Paul Krugman — they cover everything from artificial intelligence to disease pandemics — is worth a read.

Getting it wrong –> At National Journal, George Condon, Jr. writes that 2014 was a bad year for political experts, whose predictions consistently failed to materialize.

Hunger amidst plenty –> A new report finds that for the first time since World War II, the poorest ten percent of Britons cannot afford to consume sufficient calories. Harry Readhead reports for the British edition of Metro.

“A Ground Invasion of the Capital Is Imminent” — Foreign Policy reports that Libya is careening toward an “all-out war” as “as rebel militias and a government-in-hiding” vie for control of the country’s future. Bel Trew has details.

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