Several academic studies show that the investment portfolios of congressmen and senators consistently outperform stock indices like the Dow and the S&P 500, as well as the portfolios of virtually all professional investors. Congressmen do better to an extent that is statistically significant, according to [a 2004] study . . . The trading is widespread...

If the law passes in its current form, insider trading by Congress will not become illegal. I predict such trading will increase because the rules of the game will be clearer.

Even Congress’s Insider Trading Reform is a Scam | The Big Picture

Allan Lichtman, the American University professor whose election formula has correctly called every president since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election, has a belated birthday present for Barack Obama: Rest easy, your re-election is in the bag.

“Even if I am being conservative, I don’t see how Obama can lose,” says Lichtman, the brains behind The Keys to the White House.

Never-Wrong Pundit Picks Obama to Win in 2012 - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)

I think its important for Twitter users to understand that their accounts can be suspended for weeks or more without reason or explanation.

I've been using Twitter since 2008. I have over 400 followers and nearly 600 posts. Over the years I've started to rely on Twitter as a way to communicate with other people.

On November 23rd, Twitter suspended my account. I logged in and was informed of this by a banner across the top of the site. Today, December 6th, my account was reactivated.

No explanation for this has ever been provided to me. Twitter's documentation claims that if you've been suspended you'll have received an email explaining why. I never received any such email. I appealed, and the appeal produced a rather paternalist automated response:

If you didn't receive an email indicating why your account was suspended, please take a minute to review the Twitter Rules. If you suspect you've been suspended for another reason, please reply to this email with a short explanation.

I did respond to this message, and explained that I had no idea why my account had been suspended, and no one responded to that appeal.

A week later I filed a second appeal.

A week after that, my account was reactivated, in response to my second appeal. No specific explanation was provided, but, again, there is a strong implication that I must have broken some rule:

misspenny_lane, Dec-06 11:17 am (PST):

Hello,

It looks like this issue has been resolved. You may wish to review the Twitter Rules, located at twitter.com/rules.

Thanks,

misspenny_lane

I suspect that Twitter's processes may be broken enough that they do not understand or cannot explain why they chose to disable my account.

In Googling around I have found similar stories of Twitter users whose accounts have been suddenly deactivated without explanation. Some are recovered after a month, or never.

I certainly have a more sour view of Twitter after this experience.

This year's National Defense Authorization Act so far has been a missed opportunity for the Executive branch and Congress to work together and put U.S. detention policy on sounder footing for the long term. President Obama should have followed through on his pledge in his May 2009 National Archives Speech to work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime for detention of terror suspects who cannot be prosecuted or released, and Congress should have been more responsive to the concerns of counterterrorism officials in the Executive branch. Many of the hard long-term questions this administration inherited--such as who may be detained, where they should be held, and pursuant to what legal processes--remain unresolved. This legislation, if enacted, will make it even harder for this and the next president to achieve lasting solutions.

A Problematic Terrorist Detention Bill - Council on Foreign Relations

With all the moral panic about child predation, its worth noting that there are real monsters out there. This is the worst case scenario child abduction.

It was a Friday afternoon like any other. School was out, the weekend was ahead, and 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera was playing outside with friends at the River Ridge apartment complex in Canton where she lived with her mother. She told her friends she was thirsty and she headed inside for a drink.

Shortly after noon Monday investigators decided to empty a metal trash bin packed so tight it could not be searched. When they did, they found the child's body. She had been beaten and sexually abused, GBI Director Vernon Keenan said.

Keenan described the girl's death as a "very, very horrendous crime."

She was playing in the playground in the apartment complex where she lived. There was a teenager supervising the kids on the playground. She got nabbed walking back to her apartment in broad daylight. She was dumped in the complex's trash compactor.

This sort of thing takes ones faith in humanity down a notch.

"I'm scared to death to walk into my apartment right now." Johnston's 11-year-old son was playing with Jorelys on Friday and said she helped search for the girl. Now Johnston fears for her family's safety. "I'm packing my stuff tonight," she said. "I'm moving."

Unsolved killing of 7-year-old girl grips Canton  | ajc.com

I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it; they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way...

Alan Moore on Frank Miller's unhinged Occupy rant - Boing Boing

Every once in a while this song still finds itself playing in my head.

Dinosaur Jr. - Out There - YouTube

I can't imagine how scandalized those critics who were relieved to have something that was mild enough to not excite their kids would've been if they'd stopped for a second and realized what was actually going on. The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it's up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn't through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think.

Scooby Doo is the reason you question authority.

Ask Chris #81: Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews

In Atlanta, which had the most favorable values for owning versus renting, the monthly payment on the average home was $539 assuming a 20% down payment during the third quarter. The average asking rent stood at $840, according to the data.

Relative to rent, Atlanta's home values are now the cheapest in the nation. Saving this for the next "housing prices are still too high" thread on Ritholtz.

Own vs. Rent: A Growing Reason to Buy - WSJ.com

Islamists appear to have taken a strong majority of seats in the first round of Egypt’s first parliamentary vote since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, a trend that if confirmed would give religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military and ultimately reshape a key U.S. ally.

Conservatives who have condemned the Arab Spring as a prelude to religious totalitarianism have mostly been vindicated by the outcome of this election. The power of the majority only equates to liberal democracy if that majority respects the rights of the individual.

Salafis had flourished for years in Egypt, but under Mr. Mubarak most had turned away from politics because they believed that law should come from God and not man.

But after the president was overthrown in February, opening the possibility of democratic change, some Salafis began to argue that by seeking office they could carry out God’s law through Parliament.

Nothing pisses me off more than this sort of lie. That government should come from God. That government could come from God. Governments are institutions of men. Men govern. Men who claim to carry out God's law presume themselves to be the embodiment of God's will. How arrogant is that? These men are just men and the government they create will be a government of men, with the special feature that criticism of its policies will be considered heresy, a feature this lie is designed to evoke, to place the liar's corruption beyond question - a reality that no healthy democracy can sustain.

And when they did turn to politics, they were able to rally an existing and organized network of as many as two million to four million Egyptians, said Shadi Hamid, a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Doha, Qatar.

“The Salafis have been underestimated from day one, because it is hard to imagine how this guy with a long beard and some aggressive ideas can actually gain much support,” Mr. Hamid said. “But elections are about organization and manpower, and they have a core group of supporters that is very mobilized.”

In Egypt, “liberals don’t have two million core supporters,” he added, “and they never will.”

The mistake that our culture has made is to emphasize democracy when our own Constitution and our civil liberties are massive caveat to it. The desire for democracy is a dangerous oversimplification.

Egypt’s Islamists poised to dominate parliament, expected to clash with army over control - The Washington Post