John Sides and friends on whether or not GOP primary voters care about electability.

Seth Masket explains why all the cultural-divide-predicts-election stories are worthless. Jordan Ragusa follows up.

This Nate Silver forecast post for Iowa is a good read for thinking about how to forecast, although a bit out of date in those fast-changin’ Hawkeye polls.

Ta-Nehisi Coates shoots down all your fantasies about how you would behave if you were a slave or a poor black kid. He then reacts to some Megan McCardle comments here.

Andrew Sullivan gives his GOP primary endorsement to Ron Paul. It’s kind of a left-handed endorsement but — hey —  I’m left-handed and I agree with more of it than I don’t!

Meanwhile, some idiots are arguing that being left-handed doesn’t make you smarter. yeah, right.

Jon Bernstein on why there ain’t gonna be a new candidate in the GOP race. And here with a great reminder of why democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s still the best.

What does Santa’s workload profile look like?

Matt Yglesias had a couple of nice posts (here and here) on online piracy. And he models a Skyrim shock to the economy here.

Ezra Klein offers some preliminary thoughts on the Ryan-Wyden Medicare plan.  A wider roundup from Sullivan here. I expect we’ll be hearing a ton about this in the coming weeks.

Glenn Greenwald is as depressed as I am that Obama is going to sign the NDAA that includes indefinite detention. Balko mocks POTUS and Congress for their behavior on Bill of Rights Day.

How drunk can you get at your office Christmas party?

Stephen Griffin is starting a series of posts about war powers, based on his forthcoming book.

Randy Bachman describes how the first chord of A Hard Day’s Night is actually played.