Santino is being very, very naughty.

My only tweak here would be that in order for a gun mandate to be effective, you’d want most laws to be concealed-carry, as opposed to open-carry, since you want to create strategic ambiguity as a deterrent to would-be lawbreakers. A gun mandate under an open-carry regime would probably just cost-shift the problem.

Galley Friend Mike Russell passes along this very funny / kind of damning clip-job on Aaron Sorkin’s self-plagiarism(s). Worth your 7 minutes.

That said, I kind of love Sorkin’s work. Most of the criticisms of Sorkin qua a writer are valid. And yet, his voice is so distinctive and strong that, for me, it’s kind of hard not to love. For me, anyway, though I tend to enjoy strong authorial voices in my TV writing (see Amy Sherman-Palladino, Joss Whedon, etc.)

My enjoyment of Sorkin’s work may be aided by the fact that I’ve never paid much attention to his off-screen self.

Pursuant to our discussion yesterday, Galley Lawyer X sends in the following thoughts:

I have a hard time seeing how targeted pricing would be illegal in and of itself.  Your African-American zip code hypothetical could be in violation of the Civil Rights Act or something (although that’s just a guess), but generally speaking ultimate price discrimination is fine without some other factors present.  So, for example, if Amazon used Mac OS info in such a way as to maximize Kindle marketshare against the iPad through discriminatory pricing (I don’t know how, just say they do), then the FTC might start asking some questions.  It goes without saying, but this is a much riskier thing to do now than in 2 years if Romney wins.

Now, this kind of flexible price attribution in a basically oligopolistic market like, say, airlines might open the companies up to civil Sherman Act claims on a signalling theory.  “They say they’re targeting zip codes, but they’re really telling each other what the new fixed price will be.  So pay me my treble damages.”  These cases take forever to resolve even when entirely frivolous.  So some companies might not want to take the risk.

This might make a pretty interesting law review article if it hasn’t been done yet.

Update: Galley Friend G.R. writes in with a note that CA has a law that’s close to on-point in regards to auto insurance.

Over at The Daily I make the following argument:

When Democrats lose, however, they tend to place the blame a little higher. The Supreme Court is rigged. The election was stolen by Diebold voting machines. After John Kerry lost in 2004, Democrats snickered about an electoral map showing the “real America” being composed of the West Coast and Northeast. The rest of the map — the red states Bush carried — was dubbed “Jesusland.” The inference being that the real problem was with the American people.

All of which is why, facing the prospect of losing the Obamacare case, the left’s first instinct hasn’t been to blame a bad law. Or bad lawyering. Or even just bad luck. No, to the liberal mind there are no bad outcomes; only broken systems.

A future New York Times rising star provides another data point.

How’s this for counter-intuitive: “RIM is a more formidable player than either Google or Apple.”

First blush reaction: Isn’t this more of a Slate piece?

The Transom flags an fascinating WSJ piece today on how Orbitz presents Mac users with different, pricier, results than it does PC users.

I’ve long suspected that the internet is allowing retailers to do lots of this sort of thing–and more. It would not surprise me to learn that some e-commerce sites even use intentionally elastic pricing, so that an item is slightly more expensive if the prospective buyer is on a Mac or located in a wealthy zip code, or some other thing.

If websites did this sort of thing, it would be really, really hard for consumers to find out about it. I can’t even keep track of price stability in my own life: I suspect that I’ve seen Amazon raise the price on certain items that I’ve window-shopped, so that they’re more expensive the second or third time I look at them. But I couldn’t swear to it.

But the larger question is, would it be legal to price identical goods differently for different internet users? On the face of it, you’d think yes. Brick-and-morter stores achieve elastic pricing through the use of coupons and sales.

Yet that’s a little different than targeting individuals for different prices, the way a website might.

I suspect it would come down to the criteria being used. It might be legal to charge people using, say, the Safari browser, a higher price. But it would surely be illegal for a retailer to charge a higher price to a zip code because its population was predominantly African-American.

Maybe this is a world like employment discrimination, where a certain degree of latitude is allowed, depending on who’s being discriminated against.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who knows the law on this.

My friend Roger Kimball has a new book out, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia. I haven’t read it yet, but everything Roger writes is gold. I just ordered my copy; I hope you will, too.

The highest compliment I can pay this Maggie Gallagher essay on David Blankenhorn is that it, in addition to everything else, it serves as a devastating argument against Twitter: Slower reaction, lots of words, and infinitely more thoughtful.