Author: Andrew Sullivan

That's McArdle's verdict:

Amazon reports that sales of e-books have finally surpassed sales of hardcovers.  That's a pretty momentous development.  I think it not only means that e-books are entering the mass adoption phase, but also that the price-discrimination model that publishers have used for decades may be on its way out.  There's no significant benefit to buying most disposable mass-market books in hardcover; people do it because they don't want to wait for the paperback.  In theory, they should be willing to pay extra to get a "new release" rather than wait a year, but in practice, people are surprisingly resistant…

And her devious dogsitter:

Radley Balko and Les Bernal are debating the legality of gambling this week. Here's Balko, who wants it legal:

Gambling is no different from any other consensual crime. Prohibiting it does not make it go away. It merely pushes it underground, where it is impossible to monitor for cheating and fraud, where the stakes are likely to be higher, and where problem gamblers stand to lose quite a bit more than merely their pay packet. When you make a popular activity illegal, you also create new sources of funding for career criminals. It is fairly well known that America's experiment with alcohol prohibition gave rise to the mob. But Al Capone and his rivals also brought in big money from the numbers racket.

Consensual crimes like gambling also produce no aggrieved victim to report or provide evidence of the crime. All parties to a sports wager or illegal card game participate willingly. So in order to enforce these laws, police must go out and search for criminal activity. This creates a number of problems.

Les Bernal's argument against gambling is near what you would expect.

Michael Roston wants to know why the WaPo isn't making more money off the series:

Maybe the Washington Post wants to preserve some modicum of purity in its Pulitzer Prize-grade coverage of duplication and mismanagement in the intelligence community. If that’s why the ‘immersive reading experience’ is ad-free, it’s reminiscent of the ‘news under glass in a museum‘ approach that I’ve criticized before. If you spend all this time and effort preparing a big story that isn’t controlled by the vagaries of the meme-chasing internet news cycle, and even come up with an innovative way to deliver it, you should also find a way to pay for it. If shows prepared in the public interest for PBS can have underwriters, surely the Post could have selected a suitable, conflict-of-interest-free advertiser for the scores of repeat visitors reading this story yesterday, today, tomorrow, and in the weeks ahead.

Susan Gardner makes a compelling argument with some truth to it:

The fact is, men are living less than three years longer, women about five. Yes, there are more people living longer because they didn’t die at age 3 of whooping cough or polio, but the life expectancy for an individual has not been extended very much at all once age 65 is reached. Disturbingly, pushing the retirement age out five years as is currently proposed actually means an individual male retiree today is at risk of being cheated of two years more retirement than our supposedly drastically shorter-lived forebears received more than half a century ago.

Joyner carefully explains why this overstates things:

For those born at the turn of the 20th Century, less than fifty percent could expect to see one dime from Social Security.   But the vast majority could expect to pay into the system, supporting existing retirees, for twenty to thirty years. For those born in 1949, though, more than 70 percent expect to live to 65. For those born in 2006, it’ll be more than 90 percent.

Yes, those who retire will only get benefits longer.   But vastly larger numbers will actually draw benefits.   From a purely actuarial standpoint, that makes a huge difference.

Pete Guither isn't buying Mark Kleiman's argument:

So… the federal government, unhappy that marijuana profits have stopped going to murderous Mexican drug cartels, and instead are going to California citizens, will start cracking down on marijuana trafficking?

It's not his editing. He doesn't have the full video.

The AP:

In endorsing Republican candidate Kelly Ayotte (AY'-aht), Palin also strayed a bit from the facts in praising her for having "won" a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. As state attorney general, Ayotte defended a law requiring parental notification for teenagers seeking abortions. But it was repealed after the U.S. Supreme Court sent it back to a lower court.

Bernstein guesses that epistemic closure on the right will cost Republicans Senate and House seats.