• Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, December 1, 2009
• Congress in a Nutshell: Understanding Congress, December 2, 2009
• Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process, December 3, 2009
• How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents: Going Beyond Thomas, with WiFi Classroom, December 4, 2009
• Advanced Federal Budget Process, December 7-8, 2009
• Advanced Legislative Strategies, December 9-11, 2009
• Research Tools and Techniques: Refining Your Online and Offline Searches, with WiFi Classroom, December 15, 2009
• The culture that is Italy – “The new (old) labor market idea — you can call it fifth best perhaps — is hereditary jobs:”
• Stop Picking on Fat People: Throughout history the rotund have made the world go ’round. – “It’s all well and good to say that excess weight puts a strain on the heart, leads to many premature deaths, and dramatically inflates our national health-care bill. But the very same arguments can be applied to workaholics, alcoholics or garden-variety idiots, none of whom violate any specific law by indulging in a lifestyle others deplore. And once a society starts down the slippery slope toward deciding which behaviors are acceptable and which are not, it’s time to assemble kindling for the funeral pyre of democracy. First they told people to stop smoking. Then they told them to lay off the hooch. Then they told them to stop eating between meals. And then they told them to stop being neurotic. Pretty soon, no one in New York City could be seen in public anymore.”
• Duke Professor Finishes Yale’s Job, Prints Mohammed Images in New Book; FIRE Co-signs Statement of Principle – “Duke University Professor Gary Hull has just published Muhammad: The ‘Banned’ Images, which dares to publish images that Yale University and Yale University Press censored from Jytte Klausen’s The Cartoons that Shook the World earlier this year. Hull calls the book ‘a statement of defiance against censors, terror-mongers, and their Western appeasers.’ FIRE joined with the National Coalition Against Censorship, the American Association of University Professors, and nine other signatories on a Statement of Principle stating that ‘The failure to stand up for free expression emboldens those who would attack and undermine it.'”
• Sweet Trade – “Here is a fun, easy and effective experiment that instructors can use to illustrate the gains from trade.”

• Best Books About Etiquette: No offense to other etiquette guides, but Laura Claridge says these are impeccable – “The great classical scholar of the Northern Renaissance, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, also had some thoughts about proper behavior. Teach manners early, Erasmus believed. To that end, he produced this small book addressed to children. It admirably commanded the attention of his young audience and remained popular for three centuries. ‘To lick greasy fingers or to wipe them on your coat is impolite. It is better to use the table cloth,’ he counsels. Also: ‘It is not seemly, after wiping your nose, to spread out your handkerchief and peer into it as if pearls and rubies might have fallen out of your head.'”
• Against Congressional Briefs – “I have occasionally criticized judges and Justices who use their official positions to try to influence the legislative process. In this post I want to criticize the mirror image: Legislators who sign on to ‘congressional briefs’ in the Supreme Court, such as the one David Kopel links to below, designed to influence the outcome of cases.

  Amicus briefs written on behalf of sitting legislators strike me as inappropriate. Of course, legislators can influence the judicial process in many ways. They write the legislation that the courts interpret; they control the rules that govern judicial hearings; they can control much of the Court’s docket; and they even control how many Justices are on the Supreme Court. Further, legislators take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and they have an independent (albeit sporadically exercised) duty to ensure that legislation they enact passes constitutional muster.”

• My Politicals Enemies are Idiots! – “It reminds me of when Hyman Minsky would go off on John F. Kennedy, noting that he was often presented as genius because he went to Harvard. Kennedy was a below average student at a time when Harvard had a lot of dopey legacies, and Minsky the Liberal was too independent to pretend he was some sort of genius.

  I consider politicians mostly narcissistic, smarmy, and unthinking. Those accidentally glommed onto my general disposition towards Friedmanism, I’m for. Ronald Reagan was often called an idiot while in office, but was a good politician because he changed the trend through his steadfast defense of smaller government. He wasn’t a Richard Feynman, but he was consistent, and a good communicator.
  . . .
  Most pundits, professional and amateur, consider a genius as someone who can articulate one’s platform more effectively than themself. An idiot is someone who effectively articulates the other side.”

• Another Broken Myth: Foreclosures and Crime Rates – ” Prince William County, Virginia, which has the highest rate of foreclosures in Old Dominion, nevertheless saw its violent crime rate fall by 36.8 percent between 2008 and 2009. Foreclosure-plagued Oakland, California has seen a 3 percent annual drop.

  Still, the perception that foreclosures are linked to the deterioration of law-abiding areas is not necessarily susceptible to statistics. Many intelligent people say they have a sense that crime is getting worse as more residences end up unoccupied. Again, my own experience contradicts this: I live in a not-so-nice part of Los Angeles County and spend plenty of time in less-nice areas (in California nothing ever goes below nice), yet I am absolutely certain I hear less gunfire and fewer police helicopters this year than I did in 2006. ”

• The Cost Of Additional Porsche (Li-ion) Lightness: $132/lb. – “Never one to shy away from expensive options, Porsche has announced that beginning in January 2010, a lithium-ion starter battery will be optional in the 911 GT3, GT 3 RS, and Boxster Spyder. Porsche is the first automaker to offer a li-ion SLI (starting, lighting ignition) battery, and given its cost, €1,904 (US$2,900), it may stay that way for a while. The new pack weighs 6 kg (13 lb), which is 10 kg or 22 (lb) lighter than a conventional 60 Ah lead battery. That works out to $132 per pound saved, based on European pricing. US pricing has not yet been announced. That sounds like a bargain compared to some of Porsche’s other pricing shenanigans. Ask the fellas in the paint booth to leave off the masking tape on a certain number of exterior and interior pieces to make them body colored, and they’ll ask you a mighty $13,545 for their (non)effort. Only a company that has the cojones to do that would to try to take over VW. I digress.”
• How worried should we be about the deficit? – “When water regularly overflows from your toilet, you want the toilet fixed, whether or not the water is doing harm.”