NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanotechnology making 3D transistors by directed molecular self-assembly.

QUESTION: Should The Punishment For Falsely Accusing People Of A Crime Match The Punishment For The Crime Itself? I think that if you make a false accusation and later admit its falsity, you should get off much lighter. If you get caught through other means, though . . . .

WAR ON WOMEN: Hillary Clinton Tries To Explain Away Her Office’s Sex Pay Gap. “During her nearly two terms as a U.S. senator, the median salary for women in Hillary Clinton’s office was much less than the median salary for men. As first reported by the Washington Free Beacon’s Brent Scher, women in Clinton’s office earned 72 cents to the dollar that men earned. That’s even less than the oft-cited (and highly misleading) 77-cent figure for all working women in the United States.”

But if the suggestion that Hillary was discriminating against women is “a ridiculous proposition,” as her spokesperson says now, then perhaps suggesting that such pay gaps result from discrimination elsewhere is also ridiculous.

MORE BIBI FALLOUT: Chappaqua, We Have A Problem. “Clinton refuses to say whether she agrees with President Obama’s notion that Iran should keep thousands of centrifuges and after 10 years be free from inspections and sanctions, even though last night he essentially conceded (and his national security adviser Susan Rice confirmed at an AIPAC conference) that he has given up trying to dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear program and instead will let Iran keep what it wants and be free of sanctions and inspections in as little as 10 years.”

RIGHT AGAIN: Flashback: Mitt Romney says Iran ‘will have a nuclear weapon’ if Obama reelected.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Google will test 90% internet service for parts of southern hemisphere via Internet Balloons by the end of 2015. “Google Loon has had tests with major cellular carriers. The internet balloons have provided high-speed connections to people in isolated parts of Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. Mike Cassidy, Project Loon’s leader, says the technology is now sufficiently cheap and reliable for Google to start planning how to roll it out. By the end of 2015, he wants to have enough balloons in the air to test nearly continuous service in several parts of the Southern Hemisphere. Commercial deployment would follow.”

6 WEIRD IDEAS For Finding Life in Our Solar System.

OUCH: Even MSNBC hosts shocked by Hillary email revelations: Maddow, O’Donnell appear stunned to learn Clinton used private account for sensitive messages.

BOB ZUBRIN: How Obama Is Giving Iran a Nuclear Arsenal.

MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT THEY COULD BOTH BE SYMPTOMS OF HEAVY DRINKING, BUT READING THE ARTICLE I’M NOT SO SURE THAT’S IT: Are Fatty Liver and Sleep Apnea Related?

SHOCKER: COMPETITIVE LABOR MARKETS GOOD FOR WORKERS! Why drivers are winning the labor war between Uber and Lyft.

WELL, THE GOAL WAS TO MAKE SURE HE DIDN’T APPEAR ON A 2016 REPUBLICAN TICKET: Petraeus reaches deal to plead guilty to misdemeanor but will likely not face prison time. Though now that Hillary has her own email-handling scandal. . . .

TWO THINGS PEOPLE ARE MISSING ABOUT NETANYAHU’S SPEECH: (1) He didn’t just make a case for why the U.S. should be harder on Iran. He made the case for unilateral Israeli military intervention too, sub silentio. (2) The most damaging thing to Obama here isn’t even the substance, but the contrast in style. Netanyahu, as someone said on Twitter, was better in his second language than Obama is in his first. And he presented himself as a leader who cares about his country, rather than one, like Obama, who makes excuses for its enemies.

UNFAIRLY DISPROPORTIONATE: Joint Tax Committee: The Top 1% Receives 19% Of All Income, Pays 49% Of All Income Taxes. “For 2015, the top 10 percent (in terms of income) of all tax returns receive 45 percent of all income and pay 82 percent of all income taxes. The top five percent of all tax returns receive 34 percent of all income and pay 71 percent of all income taxes. The top one percent of all tax returns receives 19 percent of all income and pay 49 percent of all income taxes.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 663.

THE POLITICS OF AGING:

The core problem of the welfare state is that it relieves people of the need for family to take care of them, but it does not relieve society of the need for caretakers. In fact, because there’s evidence that more generous social-security systems cause people to reduce their fertility, you can argue that these systems are undercutting the very actuarial basis upon which they depend.

The effect is what social-security systems are struggling with around the world: As the ratio of workers to retirees declines, it gets harder and harder to raise the tax revenue to cover benefits. Though Americans talk anxiously about the fiscal health of our systems, international pension-reform wonks actually look enviously at our system, which contains fewer of the incentives for earlier retirement that plague many countries.

But our demographic transition is not just a problem of pension math. There’s also the problem of what it does to economic growth as society ages. As workforce growth slows, so does gross domestic product growth. In theory, this can be made up with greater productivity growth. But productivity growth is moving in the wrong direction — and because older people tend to be more risk-averse as workers and investors, that too may be a natural result of an aging society.

And, of course, there is the question of who will provide the actual hands-on care that people need. Here, the usual solution proposed is immigration. There are a couple of problems with that. The first is that everywhere else is undergoing the same demographic transition as we are, so the limitless supply of young foreigners may dry up as aging parents require them to be nearer to home and family capital gets concentrated upon a few people rather than dispersed among many children.

But there’s another problem, which is that old people are often vulnerable. This is why stories of abuses in nursing homes are so common; it is not that the state doesn’t care about the people in its charge, but that “the state” does not actually provide the care — individual people do, some of whom are badly motivated. And incentives get very tangled when strangers are in charge of caring for frail people who may be experiencing cognitive decline.

Yep. Even in fancy, expensive places, the staff doesn’t have nearly the incentive to look after you that family does, something that’s being demonstrated right now in my own life and family.

USING FEAR TO LIMIT CIVIL RIGHTS IS AN OLD GAME: WaPo Tries to Stir Up Panic to Reverse Constitutional Carry Momentum.

ANDREW KLAVAN: The Republican who can win the general election is whichever one realizes that he is running against the news media. That’s right. They’re not fair or professional. Heck, they’re not even biased. They’re actively working to help Democrats win, and to make Republicans lose.

OVER AT PJ MEDIA, liveblogging Bibi’s speech.

YA THINK? Byron York: Scott Walker is headed for trouble with the GOP establishment. They’re worried he might win, and with GOP majorities in Congress actually try to do something.

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L’ETAT C’EST MOI: President Obama Is ‘Very Interested’ in Raising Taxes Through ‘Executive Action.’ Taxation without representation is the very definition of a tyranny, no?

LIFE IN THE DEBLASIO ERA: Murders up 20% in 2015 in year-to-year comparison, NYPD says.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: EXPOSED: Department of Justice Shut Down Search For Lois Lerner’s Emails.