MEGAN MCARDLE ON AMAZON VS. HACHETTE:

The first thing to remember about the Amazon/Hachette Book Group dispute is that this sort of thing happens all the time in business. When two big companies negotiate, it’s like Mothra and Godzilla: Each party can throw around a lot of weight, which means some collateral damage. It’s not exactly unheard of for a company that doesn’t like a supplier’s price to stop carrying the product, or to deny the supplier valuable end-cap space, or otherwise deprioritize the sales of the contested items.

The second thing to remember about the Amazon/Hachette dispute is that writers are categorically unable to see what they do as in any way akin to, say, selling potato chips. Writing is special and sacred! The sight of our product being treated like Chef Boyardee spaghetti is more than our tender souls can bear. And unlike grocery suppliers, writers have access to column space in which to pour out our anguish. That’s why so much ink has been spilled over this contretemps.

Heh.

TWO FEMALE POLITICIANS, two entirely different media narratives. Try to guess the difference.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: New Degrees Challenge “Time Served” Model. “The University of Michigan is now on course to become one of the first public higher education institutions to offer a degree that can be achieved not through credit hours but on demonstrated proficiency in the subjects studied.”

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

AT AMAZON, deals on Trick or Treat favorites in Grocery.

Plus, take 20% off Coats, Sweaters, Scarves & More. Winter is coming.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How We Won In Vietnam, And How We’re Losing At Home.

WHAT WOULD THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS SAY? States stand firm on Ebola quarantines despite White House pressure.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

ACADEMIC ELECTION “RESEARCH” THAT looks like electioneering.

FEMINISM IS A LUXURY GOOD; AS THE COUNTRY GOES FURTHER DOWN THE TUBES, OTHER ISSUES TAKE PRECEDENCE: Gender gap closing among 2014 voters; Shared concerns reign at ballot box.

UPDATE: Pollster: Issues Transcend Gender.

HEH. I’D MISSED THIS PIECE BY SONNY BUNCH: Gawker: It’s Cool to Punish OTHER People for Their Words, Just Not Us.

They don’t quite understand the world they’ve created. They think it’s the worst thing in the whole world for Internet Tough Guys to make death and rape threats* and also that it’s cool to joke about Bristol Palin actually being physically assaulted by a man. Because stoopid Rethuglicans, you know? Most amusingly, they don’t even seem to understand the contradiction. So they get really butthurt when someone else whips up an Internet rage mob against them. “Don’t you understand?” they seem to be crying. “We’re the good guys here! We only take on bad people! Those Other people. That aren’t good. Like us!”

This is how you get to a place where Gawker Media is forced to talk out of both sides of its mouth, on the one hand callowly apologizing to readers (and, let’s be honest, advertisers) for one of its writers launching a disgusting pro-bullying attack on a marginalized group while simultaneously apologizing for the apology and denouncing anti-Gawker campaigns as little better than “fascism” in order to maintain their street cred with their bros. It’s a genius move, in a way, one that allows Gawker to tell the companies it relies on for revenue that it’s really and truly sorry while also doing nothing to alienate its core readership of angry progressive know-nothings.

But I can remember a time when Gawker Media was perfectly happy to take part in “fascist” campaigns to ruin the lives of those they disagreed with—or just, like, made a joke they didn’t like.

Gawker doesn’t like the world they made. I think a lot of other media folks are going to find out the same thing.

THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS: They’re Baaaaaack!

JOEL KOTKIN: R.I.P., NYC’s Middle Class: Why Families Are Being Pushed Away From The City.

As the cost of living has skyrocketed while pay has stagnated except for those at the very top, New York has shifted from a place people go to make it to a place for those who already have it made, or whose families have.

And once here, the rich are indeed getting richer even as the rest of the city is barely holding on.

So, kinda like the rest of Obama’s America, then.

ROGER SIMON: The Big ‘Lone Wolf’ Dodge.

Related: Police: Canadian terror attack driven by ideology.

THERE’S NO I.Q. TEST FOR SENATE: Sen. Mark Udull Strikes Again.

CHARLES C.W. COOKE: Do Black People Have Equal Gun Rights?

So the fact that one of the seminal Second Amendment cases in American history is named for a black plaintiff is a beautiful and moving thing indeed. McDonald v. Chicago, argued in 2010, was brought by Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old black man tired of watching his neighborhood give way to crime and gang warfare. The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the Second Amendment applied not just to all people, but to the states as well as to the federal government, and that Chicago was therefore not permitted to prohibit Mr. McDonald from keeping a handgun for his defense.

Yet African-American activists typically refrain from involvement in the issue of gun rights. In October 2013, Shaneen Allen, 27, a black single mother of two, was arrested in New Jersey for carrying a firearm without a license (she was under the impression that her Pennsylvania concealed-carry permit was accepted across state lines), and threatened with a prison sentence of up to 11 years for her mistake.

But it was conservative publications, such as my own National Review, and the N.R.A. that came to her defense. The N.A.A.C.P. and the usual champions remained unusually quiet. (There was no news conference featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton.) They have been largely absent, too, from the case of Marissa Alexander, a black Florida woman given a 20-year sentence for firing a warning shot near her abusive husband.

It’s a problem of perception, an assumption that the Second Amendment is the province of whites, that cuts both ways. In 2009, as the first Tea Party rallies swept the country, Contessa Brewer of MSNBC showed a video of a man at an anti-Obamacare rally with a pistol on his hip and suggested that “there are questions about whether this has racial overtones … white people showing up with guns.” Later, it came out that the man in the video was actually black.

Yes, MSNBC carefully edited the video to keep that from being clear, since that would threaten the narrative. Meanwhile, I recommend Prof. Nicholas Johnson’s Negroes And The Gun: The Black Tradition Of Arms. Also, Prof. Charles E. Cobb, Jr.’s This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required.

For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000. The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report. . . . “How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

The federal government does.

I spent the weekend at an Institute for Justice conference, where I did a panel on journalism and partied wildly (er, wildly for me)) with Charles Murray, Dave Barry, and John Stossel. As mentioned in the NYT story, IJ is doing a lot of work on civil forfeiture abuse.

Related: Another Example of Government Thuggery – and another Reason Why Decent and Moral People Are Libertarians.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 7 things the middle class can’t afford anymore.

YEAH, I’M GUESSING WE WON’T HEAR MUCH ABOUT THIS: Those Ebola Vaccines in Testing Now? You Can Thank Dick Cheney for That.

WILL BAUDE: Free speech vs. voting rights and abortion rights.

Lithwick’s basic point is that the right to vote and to obtain an abortion ought to get, but do not get, the same strong protection from the Court as free speech does. She suggests that this is because the Court doesn’t “see the poor and the powerless,” “the hundreds and thousands of voiceless voters and abortion-seekers” or belittles their claims “because they are poor or minorities or just women.”

But I can’t help but noticing one interesting and important difference between the right to free speech, and the rights to vote or to obtain an abortion. The right to free speech is enumerated in the text of the Constitution. The rights to vote and to obtain an abortion are not — at least not as explicitly.

It’s true that the right to vote is mentioned in a series of constitutional amendments that protect the right from discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, etc. But there’s no textual provision that just protects the right in and of itself. And while the voter ID laws that Lithwick writes about have been challenged as discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act, the main constitutional claim against them is that they burden the unenumerated right to vote. Similarly, while there are arguments to derive abortion rights from various textual provisions, I think everybody acknowledges that they aren’t as explicit as the right to freedom of speech.

That makes me wonder if it’s possible that there’s a different explanation for the pattern Lithwick alleges. Maybe it’s not that the Court lacks sympathy for the poor or the vulnerable, or that the other rights are not “sexy.” Maybe the Court thinks that rights that derive from the constitutional text are more powerful, or less subject to common-law doctrinal balancing, than rights that are derived from judicial precedent.

Nah, if lefties don’t get what they want, it’s always because of racism or sexism.

FEELING THE HOPE AND CHANGE: 2014 on Pace for Record Number of Americans to Renounce Their U.S. Citizenship.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): When female teachers prey on male students, it’s no teenage fantasy.

But notice by the time Post columnist Petula Dvorak is done, the real victims are women.

YEAH, BUT THEY’RE NOT JOURNALISTS NOW, THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Bob Woodward: Today’s Journalists Should Investigate The IRS Scandal Like Watergate.