The Democratic Party found out this week that two of its stars will be setting: Senators Christopher Dodd from Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota – who’ve served a combined 46 years in the Senate. Both announced they will not seek reelection in 2010.

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter followed their lead and also announced yesterday he’s ending his bid to keep his seat. These retirements come on top of a string of party defections and seem to weaken the Democrats... With us this morning to look at the political landscape and history, as well as what’s at stake for both Democrats and Republicans, is Jeff Zeleny from The New York Times.  We're also joined by Ron Kaufman, former White House political director; Republican National Committeeman for Massachusetts, and a close friend and advisor to Mitt Romney. Kaufman talks about what Republicans' strategy should be for the 2010 midterm elections.

• Business Takeout: New York Times finance reporter Louise Story brings just-released minutes from a meeting of the Federal Reserve; she says the members disagree about how best to shore up the economy.
• Sports Takeout: Sports contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin previews college football's CITI BCS National Championship Game between no. 2 Texas and no. 1 Alabama.
• Listener Takeout: We got all kinds of responses from our listeners when we talked about Elvis Presley's favorite comfort foods yesterday – the King would have been 75 this week.

In the wake of attempted and successful suicide bombings on an airplane and at a CIA base, American attention is riveted on how to identify potential terrorists and cope with the costs of attacks.  But conventional wisdom about these attackers and their attacks is often wrong, and the costs can significantly add up even when far from the site of a potential blast. Our friend Stephen Dubner, co-author of “SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance” and the Freakonomics blog on nytimes.com joins us to talk about how we frequently let terrorists succeed ... even when they fail.

One month after being convicted for embezzling about $500 in gift cards intended for the poor, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon resigned Wednesday after three years in office.  Marc Steiner, host of "The Marc Steiner Show" on WEAA in Baltimore, originally broke the news.  He joins us to talk about what's next for the disgraced mayor and what he's hearing from the people of Charm City.

The Christmas Day almost-bomber has left a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering: why didn't the airport in Amsterdam know he was a terrorist, when his father had already reported to the CIA that he was acting like one? Should there be an overarching international security database in place to alert airports to such passengers? Why aren't they in place everywhere now? And if such systems ever become the norm, what will it take for them not to fail?

We're joined by Michael Tanji, Senior Fellow at the Center for Threat Awareness and Wired.com Danger Room contributor, and Dr. Nelson Ludlow, CEO of Intellicheck Mobilisa (which designed an international security database system now being used at Andrew's Airforce Base).

Can a checklist save a life? Dr. Atul Gawande thinks so. He talks with us about his new book, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right,” and about how the simple act of checking items off a well-designed list can transform healthcare, workplaces, and our response to life’s disasters. 

• Washington Takeout: President Obama has taken sides in a debate over one aspect of health care reform: whether to tax high-cost insurance coverage, sometimes called "Cadillac plans." Many labor unions oppose the idea, but the president is backing it. Todd Zwillich has the details.
  
• Sports Takeout: Sports contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin talks about Andre Dawson's induction into Baseball's Hall of Fame, and the NBA's suspension of Gilbert Arenas.
• Personhood Takeout: We've known for a long time that dolphins are very smart creatures. Our guest says that's an argument for giving them legal rights as "non-human persons." We're joined by Lori Marino, neuroscientist and senior lecturer in the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Program at Emory University. [Read "Are Dolphins People, Too?", from The Week]

Later today, the government agency tasked with international development gets a new boss. Rajiv Shah, the new administrator for USAID, will begin with a mandate to fix an agency that has received a lot of criticism in the past few years. Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the Center for Global Development in which she described a new vision for the nation’s international development efforts. We're joined by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to talk about what this means for American efforts overseas.

A federal court in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle has overturned a Washington state law that said convicted felons had no right to vote. The case turned on questions of racial bias in Washington's justice and penal systems, and could have wide-reaching implications for other laws involving prisoners.  To unpack the decision, we're joined by Dale Ho, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which has been working on this case for the past 6 years.

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter recently announced he won't run for reelection in 2010, leaving wide speculation about who will succeed him. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper was in the midst of recording an interview with The Takeaway Wednesday afternoon when Ritter called Hickenlooper to talk about what the job entails.  Hickenlooper took the call, called us back, and strongly implied that he's considering running for governor.

Fox News analyst Brit Hume ruffled hundreds of millions of feathers last weekend when he suggested Tiger Woods should switch from Buddhism to Christianity for moral redemption. We spoke with Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University, to talk more about religion and redemption.