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Plus, bestsellers in Mysteries, Thrillers & Suspense.

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PICKING UP FOOD STAMPS IN A MERCEDES.

SCIENCE: Does Birth Control Coverage Pay for Itself? Maybe Not. Huh. I thought the science on this was settled.

SCIENCE: Murder rate drops as concealed carry permits rise, study claims. The science is settled. Don’t be a science-denier.

SADLY, FOR TSA “ISN’T AS STUPID AS IT SOUNDS” IS A MAN-BITES-DOG STORY: The TSA’s Ban on Uncharged Cellphones Isn’t as Stupid as It Sounds.

SPYING AND LYING: DEA Gets Unchecked Access To Call Records; Taught To Lie About Where They Got Them.

SPYING: The airborne panopticon: How plane-mounted cameras watch entire cities.

AT AMAZON, deals on bestsellers in Kitchen & Dining.

Also, coupons galore in Household Supplies.

BASE POLITICS: Obama aims to keep Democrats happy while he coasts to 2016.

DIVERSITY PROBLEMS: It’s not good for students — even girls — to have only female teachers.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Calculating Your Mate With Moneyball.

15 THINGS THE NEXT WAR WILL TELL US ABOUT AMERICA.

FARMING THE APOCALYPSE: When my life came crashing down I took shelter on my farm, surviving with 11th-century tools like the sickle and scythe. “Blackberries, spreading beneath the ground, erupted, their briars making familiar pathways impassable. The first emergence of an invader is the time to catch it – something I failed to do. This year’s seedling pines are next year’s forest covering a portion of a favourite meadow.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 428.

ANOTHER AUDI REVIEW: So, following up on my A8 review, a while back the Audi folks gave me an RS7 to play with for a week, and it’s taken me a long time to put together a review because I really couldn’t find much to say beyond “Awesome!” and “Fast!” But here goes.

First, it’s awesome and fast. The key is this turbocharged V8 engine, producing 560 horsepower, and 516 lb/ft of torque, delivered through an 8-speed tiptronic transmision.

A couple of years ago, I test drove an Audi A7. It was pretty awesome, and pretty fast. The next step up in awesomeness and fast-ness is the S7. The RS7 is the fastest and most awesome version that Audi makes. And it’s really awesome and really fast.

Top speed is 174 miles per hour. Zero-to-60 time is 3.7 seconds. (Bear in mind that this is a four-door sedan). When you mash the throttle down, stuff in front of you gets closer really fast, and stuff in your rear view mirror gets much smaller, really fast. I’ve driven other really fast cars with rapid acceleration, but the combination of all this torque with the Quattro all-wheel drive and sticky rubber means that it’s a weird combination: At one level, it’s a snarling beast. At another, it’s super-smooth. Tootling around town, it’s a four-door luxury car. Stamp on the accelerator, and it’s . . . well, a snarling beast, but one with terrific grip and surefootedness. The engine note goes from barely-there to rip-roaring, and the sense of being shoved back into the driver’s seat is deeply physical. Also fun: Involuntary grins on driver and passenger are almost unavoidable.

But, of course, the seat you’re being pressed into is fine, quilted leather, heated and cooled, nicely bolstered, and ultra-comfy. Take it out on twisty roads and it handles like a sports car. Okay, a 4500-pound sports car with adaptive cruise control, a heads-up display, and power soft-door-closers, but on some known segments I was able to achieve speeds similar to what I could do on my much lighter RX-8. At some subliminal level, you can tell that the car is a lot heavier, but in terms of how it goes through the turns, it’s as fast. Steering feel through the electromechanical steering isn’t as good as the RX-8’s, but it’s not bad at all. The car feels totally surefooted, even when you’d think it would be working at the limit. (Interestingly, there’s also a mild backfire-sound on lifting off the accelerator that reminds me of the Mazda.)

When you’re not roaring through the turns, there’s a $5900 Bang & Olufsen sound system, which I liked but thought — as with the A8 I reviewed last year — that the upper frequency ranges were perhaps hyped a bit to compensate for aging Baby Boomer ears.

Unlike the A8, this is a car that you can drive like a sports car, but like the A8, you could also take it on a family road trip. The trunk is surprisingly large.

The backseat, on the other hand, suffers a bit from the swooping roof line that looks so cool and provides a .30 drag coefficient. I’d be comfortable riding there for a short distance — say going out to lunch — but not on a road trip. The A8’s cavernous back seat is a clear winner here, but the A8 won’t go zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds, or reach a top speed of 174 miles per hour.

One place where RS7 outdoes the A8 is price. As tested, the RS7 was stickered at $122,545, while the A8 squeaked in at just below a hundred grand. But did I mention it goes zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds, and has a top speed of 174? On the other hand, the A8 was a TDI model that could make it from Knoxville to Palm Beach, over 800 miles, on one tank of fuel. The RS7, meanwhile, slurped gas mightily when driven hard — but, then, those 560 horsepower have to come from somewhere. And if you can lay down $122,545 for a car, you can probably spring for the fillups.

Is it worth it? Well, that depends. An A7 gives you a lot of the bang for a lot less buck. But if you want a four-door sedan that outperforms the supercars of my youth — and has fancy features they never dreamed of — well, it’s not so expensive, really.

And it’s really awesome. And really fast. So much so that it actually gave me writer’s block for a bit — and nothing does that.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: The atomically precise manufacture of quantum dots.

AT AMAZON, save up to 60% on Automotive Parts.

Plus, 25% off of select Scott’s Lawn Care Products.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: There Are Now 50 Colleges That Charge More Than $60,000 Per Year.

Good grief.

RACISM IN ELIZABETH WARREN’S SIGNATURE AGENCY: Staffer: CFPB Run Like A “Plantation.” “A former employee of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Wednesday compared the workplace atmosphere to a ‘plantation,’ because of how black employees such as himself were treated. In the third House Financial Services subcommittee hearing to address claims of discrimination against the CFPB, Kevin Williams, a former quality assurance monitor at the agency, painted a picture where black employees were constantly belittled – even to the point where they were stereotypically offered fried chicken at company lunches.”

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney . . . oh, hell, you know the rest.

RANDALL PARKER IS KIND OF PESSIMISTIC ABOUT THE NEXT 20 YEARS.

I prefer Kurt Schlichter’s vision. Which is more plausible? That depends on what you do.

YOU CAN ALL GO TO HELL — I’M GOING TO TEXAS! Connecticut-Based Mossberg® Announces Expansion of Texas Manufacturing Facility.

HMM: Roll Call: No Criminal Charges in Miriam Carey Shooting at Capitol.

No federal criminal civil rights or local charges will be filed against Capitol Police and Secret Service officers who were involved in a fatal shooting just blocks from the Capitol, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced Thursday.

After a review that included interviews of more than 60 witnesses, detailed examination of all crime scene evidence, ballistics reports, videos and photos of the events that unfolded on Oct. 3 between 2:13 p.m. and 2:20 p.m. — plus a review of the autopsy report for Miriam Carey — officials concluded that no criminal prosecutions would follow.

“After a thorough review of all the evidence, the U.S. Attorney’s Office concluded that the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers who were involved in the shooting used excessive force or possessed the requisite criminal intent at the time of the events,” the office said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

The report came as “no surprise” to Eric Sanders, an attorney representing the Carey family in a civil suit against the Capitol Police and the Uniformed Division of the U.S. Secret Service.

Following a chat with Justice Department officials, Sanders told CQ Roll Call he intends to proceed with the wrongful death claim filed on behalf of the woman’s sister, Valarie Carey, seeking $75 million to compensate the family for its loss.

“They’re not saying it was justified,” said Sanders, who had called for immediate identification and termination of all officers, supervisors, managers and other related employees involved in the shooting.

The whole thing seems fishy.

GEORGE LEEF: Law Schools Peer Into The Abyss But The American Bar Association Blocks Serious Change.

I SENSE A CERTAIN LACK OF EMPATHY AND SELF-AWARENESS: Do Gun Owners Have Any Rights Which Liberals Are Bound to Respect? Opponents of gun rights underestimate what’s at stake. They usually do.