FROM BANKRUPTING AMERICA: The Story of Business: competing for a future.

INSPECTOR GENERAL: IRS Paid $130m in Fraudulent Tax Refunds to 50,000 Prisoners.

DANA LOESCH: Media Wants A Brawl Between Libertarians And Christian Conservatives In Tea Party. They sure do. So bad they can taste it.

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.

ANDY KESSLER: TIME TO SHUT DOWN THE FCC:

It’s time to close the Federal Communications Commission. This week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gave a speech outlining his push for net neutrality, the absurd notion that the Internet should be “open and free” when in fact it’s quite expensive to build. Net neutrality will straitjacket the U.S. economy’s single most important driver of productivity and transformation.

Besides the obvious question of whether the FCC even has the authority to regulate the Web—in April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said it doesn’t—the agency has a long history of restraining trade.

And, as Scot Powe noted in his American Broadcasting and the First Amendment, of targeting political speech by those out of power.

AT AMAZON, a one-day-only sale on select Melissa & Doug toys.

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES is skeptical about Chinese high-speed rail.

Nobody tell Tom Friedman.

JAMES JOYNER ON PASSPORT SNOBBERY. “Jetting between New York, Paris, London, Rome, and Barcelona and keeping company with people just like you can reinforce provincialism rather than breaking it down.”

I did a radio show with a German journalist a while back, whose response to my Tea Party commentary was to ask if I had a passport. She was surprised to hear that I lived in Germany as a child while my dad taught at Heidelberg. She was surprised because — despite the fact that she possessed a German passport and was living in the United States — she entertained uninformed cardboard stereotypes of Americans. So travel clearly hadn’t broadened her. It’s also worth noting that while the European upper-class travels a lot, middle- and lower-class Europeans travel less even within their own countries. Meanwhile, many red-state Americans travel all over the world via military service or missionary work.

BRUCE SCHNEIER: Close the Washington Monument.

WRIST, SLAPPED: House censures Rep. Charles Rangel in 333-79 vote. Of course, in D.C.’s culture of impunity, a wrist-slap feels like real punishment.

THAILAND: The generals are scared.

OH, GOODY: Delaying Tax Vote Could Crash Stock Market. “Failure by Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts, especially locking in the 15 percent capital gains tax rate, will spark a stock market sell off starting December 15 as investors move to lock in gains at a lower rate than the 20 percent it would jump to next year, warn analysts.”

We’re already seeing some actions taken in anticipation of higher taxes.

CHANGE: With Dems In A Funk, Obama Charts New Course.

MORE ON THE PROPOSED “REPEAL AMENDMENT,” from Ilya Somin.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Iran in Iraq. Today. “Read this. And weep. It tells the heartbreaking story of an Iranian university professor–Vahid Ebrahimi–whose family has been singled out for attack by the Iranian regime (I don’t know why), who crossed the border into ‘free Iraq’ to seek asylum. He was arrested and jailed in an Iraqi prison, within which there is an Iranian government office. So that officials of Iran determine the fate of Iranian refugees in Iraq.”

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH on the new “deficits don’t matter” crowd.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, we’d have a rerun of the Great Depression, with poverty-stricken Americans standing in line for hours in the cold for a chance at relief. And they were right!

Despite the freezing temperatures, hundreds fought for a place in line in Marietta to apply for federal aid to help pay their heat and power bills this winter. . . . Marshall said people in line were crying, afraid they would not even get a chance to apply.

“I never thought I would be in the line,” Marshall said. “It’s almost like being in a soup line during the great depression.”

Well, we were promised change.

Related: Joblessness rose unexpectedly. Again.

MEGAN MCARDLE: What Happened To U.S. Healthcare Costs? “You can argue that the employee health care deduction basically explains the entire cost differential between American systems and the others.”

MARK TAPSCOTT: Washington Is Why The Economy Is Not Growing.

A VICTORY FOR JUSTICE: Mississippi Supreme Court Grants Cory Maye A New Trial. (Via Rand Simberg, who comments: “In a just world, Radley Balko would get a Pulitzer for this.” True.)

A MILLION BUCKS AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE: “Achieving millionaire status is a noteworthy financial goal. But saving $1 million doesn’t necessarily mean you are ready to retire or that you will be able to afford a lavish retirement lifestyle. Here’s what it takes to save that amount over a working career and how much income you can expect a $1 million nest egg to provide in retirement.”

SOME WIKILEAKS security idiocy.

A JAPAN THAT CAN SAY NO TO KYOTO. The treaty, not the city: “Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances.”

FIGHTING OVER ACCREDITATION:

Ralph A. Rossum, chairman of the AALE board and Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism at Claremont McKenna College, told Inside Higher Ed that the agency decided to withdraw from the process of seeking renewed recognition because of the lack of time his agency was given by the Education Department to defend itself. He noted that AALE received the final report of Education Department staff members — which contained 45 citations of noncompliance — the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Rossum also said AALE officials believed department officials aimed to make an example of the tiny accreditor to prove to other, bigger agencies that the government is serious about holding them more accountable.

Hmm.

THE CHEVY VEGA: What went wrong?