Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2732

E-Books Come Of Age?

That's McArdle's verdict:

Amazon reports that sales of e-bookshave finally surpassed sales of hardcovers.  That's a pretty momentousdevelopment.  I think it not only means that e-books are entering themass adoption phase, but also that the price-discrimination model thatpublishers have used for decades may be on its way out.  There's nosignificant benefit to buying most disposable mass-market books inhardcover; people do it because they don't want to wait for thepaperback.  In theory, they...

Meet Meatwad

And her devious dogsitter:

Hosting - Web Design and Development - Free - Business - Sports Related

Placing Bets

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 itunderground, where it is impossible to monitor for cheating and fraud,where the stakes are likely to be higher, and where problem gamblersstand to lose quite a bit more than merely their pay packet. When youmake a popular activity illegal, you also create new sources...

Top Secret America, Ctd

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 purityin its Pulitzer Prize-grade coverage of duplication and mismanagementin the intelligence community. If that's why the 'immersive readingexperience' 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 andeffort preparing a big story that isn't controlled by the vagaries...

Face Of The Day

A US soldier of First Squadron, 71st Cavalry writes outside his tent at
a forward operating base in Dand district of Kandahar province in
Afghanistan on July 20, 2010. NATO and the United States have 143,000
troops in Afghanistan, set to peak at 150,000 in coming weeks as they
take a US-led counter-insurgency to the insurgents' southern
strongholds in an effort to speed up an end to the war. By Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty
Images.

Afghanistan - United States - NATO - War in...

Sanity On Social Security? Ctd

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 morepeople living longer because they didn't die at age 3 of whooping coughor polio, but the life expectancy for an individual has not beenextended very much at all once age 65 is reached. Disturbingly, pushingthe retirement age out five years as is currently proposed actuallymeans an individual male retiree today is at risk of being...

Can California Legalize Pot? Ctd

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?

California - Cannabis - Mark A.R. Kleiman - Health - Drugs

Breitbart's Skilled Editing, Ctd

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
















Andrew Breitbart - Business - Arts - Racism - Video

Fact-Checking Palin, Ctd

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.

Kelly Ayotte - Republican - Supreme Court of the United States - U.S. Supreme Court - Law

The Consequences Of The Feedback Loop

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

Republican - United States Senate - United States - Senate - Government