REALITY IN THE AGE OF PHOTOSHOP: The Sad Truth About Angelina Jolie and George Clooney.

MORE DHS QUESTIONS: Mohamed Elibiary: Alleged Homeland Security Leaker, Confirmed Tax Scofflaw. “While Janet Napolitano continues to stonewall questions about how, when, and why Elibiary was given access to this (including questions posed by my colleague Erick Stakelbeck of CBN News), I can report exclusively here that the organization that Elibiary founded and has operated and headed since 2002, the Plano, Texas-based Freedom and Justice Foundation, had its 501(c)3 tax-exempt status revoked by the IRS in May 2010 for failing to file the required annual IRS Form 990s.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Weekly Jobless Claims Jump Back Over 400,000 Mark. “Claims for unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose last week, climbing past the psychologically important 400,000 mark as the jobs market showed signs of more weakness. . . . Applications would need to stay below 375,000 consistently to push down the unemployment rate significantly. They haven’t been at that level since February.” Unexpectedly! And note that, as usual, the previous week’s number was revised upward.

INSTAVISION: The Higher Education Bubble And What To Do About It, with Virginia Postrel.

CHANGE: BILL TO BAN INSIDER TRADING IN CONGRESS IS SUDDENLY POPULAR.

UPDATE: Somebody needs to look at the SEC. Probe of hedge fund chief derailed by SEC official’s alleged action, report says. “A federal probe of possible market manipulation and insider trading by a hedge fund manager was derailed when Securities and Exchange Commission officials found that an agency supervisor had improper contact with the fund manager, according to a report released Wednesday by the SEC’s inspector general. The report did not identify the employee, who worked at the agency’s headquarters, or the hedge fund manager, and it described the case in elliptical terms. . . . The report also described other improprieties by unidentified SEC employees.”

MICKEY KAUS: The Emerging GOP Dilemma.

THEY TOLD ME THIS WOULD HAPPEN IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Defense bill will allow President to indefinitely detain American citizens.

HOWARD LOVY: FDA: Regulate Nanotech First, Learn what it is Later? “The FDA, in cautionary mode, has come up with a meaningless nanotech threshold of 1,000 nanometers. The genius who decided on that number in a draft guidance on nanomaterial regulation has the biotech industry scratching its collective head over this new math. . . . There are many materials in existing pharmaceuticals that already are smaller than this threshold, such as liposomes, emulsions and suspensions, that are already proven to be safe and may contain nanoscale particles, but are not the new, spooky, scary, magical nanomaterials that has regulators around the world worried. It’s surprising, because the FDA has been studying nanomaterials for a long time and I’d have thought that they would at least know what it is they want to regulate, before they begin regulations. Not a good start to government oversight of nanobiotech.”

JOEL KOTKIN: Is Suburbia Doomed? Not So Fast!

Perhaps no theology more grips the nation’s mainstream media — and the planning community — more than the notion of inevitable suburban decline. The Obama administration’s housing secretary, Shaun Donavan, recently claimed, “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.”

Yet repeating a mantra incessantly does not make it true. Indeed, any analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census would make perfectly clear that rather than heading for density, Americans are voting with their feet in the opposite direction: toward the outer sections of the metropolis and to smaller, less dense cities. During the 2000s, the Census shows, just 8.6% of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6% represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4%.

That’s because more-dense cities are in the hands of community-organizer types. Which is also, of course, why Obama et al. want to force more people to live there. As P.J. O’Rourke noted:

Cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the pointy-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.

They want you to surrender. But as Kotkin notes, they’re surrounded: “In the past decade, suburbia extended its reach, even around the greatest, densest and most celebrated cities.” I think technology, by facilitating telecommuting and small business, will promote that tendency.

TODAY ONLY: Cheap vacuum cleaners.

GOOGLE’S RIGHT, THE BILL SUCKS: Google rips Senate’s online piracy bill: ‘This is what is wrong with Washington’.

Google is exhorting senators to oppose an online piracy bill, arguing it would threaten national security, shackle the Internet with regulations and imperil free speech, according to a document obtained by The Hill.

The memo that is being circulated on Capitol Hill lists five reasons not to co-sponsor the legislation. It argues the bill puts at risk “the ability for free speech and the ability of political parties to spread their message” while creating a “thicket of new Internet regulations similar to the administration’s net-neutrality rules.” It also calls the legislation “a trial lawyer’s dream” and claims it seeks to “regulate the Internet.”

Google also argues in the document that the measure would damage the nation’s cybersecurity.

“This is what is wrong with Washington,” the memo says. “Legislation just to regulate and not allowing the private sector to solve the problem.”

The search giant has been among the most aggressive opponents of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) Protect IP Act, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year.

The bill would require search sites, online ad networks and other third parties to cut ties with websites deemed “rogue” or dedicated to copyright infringement.

Lamar Smith’s bill in the House is even worse, and Lamar Smith should be ashamed of himself.

TOM BLUMER: The Cain Scrutiny.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Will the EPA Choke Off Shale Oil Production? If they can.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: We Know Who Lost Egypt.

THE FDA’S UNHEALTHY SALT OBSESSION: “Is too much salt bad for you? That used to be the conventional wisdom, but more recent scientific research has suggested the emphasis on salt is misplaced. No matter. As Walter Olson notes, the Food and Drug Administration appears to be moving ahead with plans to force gradual reductions in the salt content of processed foods.” Are tar and feathers regulated?

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Lines Grow Long for Free School Meals, Thanks to Economy. “Millions of American schoolchildren are receiving free or low-cost meals for the first time as their parents, many once solidly middle class, have lost jobs or homes during the economic crisis, qualifying their families for the decades-old safety-net program.”

I guess things aren’t living up to those 2008 expectations.

ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Second Establishment ‘Liberal’ Calls for Violent Death to Florida Governor. Does Dave Neiwert know about this?

PATRICK RICHARDSON: MSM Targets Gingrich for … His Ethical Behavior? “Two hit pieces claim Gingrich made money as a private citizen legally and ethically, but ‘the optics are bad.’ . . . Gingrich seems to be upfront about disclosing where his money comes from. Meanwhile, two other groups which do not receive such scrutiny from the MSM have not been as transparent as Gingrich — indeed, his group filed the disclosure form which gave ABC and the Washington Post the data for their articles. John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, which figured prominently in the 2008 transition for current President Barack Obama, is anything but transparent.”

PERRY DE HAVILLAND: Soviet-Style Psychiatry in Norway? “I cannot help wondering if the only reason this coldly calculating man is being deemed ‘insane’ is that is the only way the Norwegian state never ever have to let him out, given that Norway apparently has no ‘life sentence’ in which ‘life means life’… so the only way to put him away forever is to declare him insane and thus lock him up in a loony bin until he dies. He may well belong in a small room for the rest of his life but using the much loved Soviet, Russian and Chinese approach of expedient psychiatric assessment to achieve it may reveal a lot about modern Norway.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: OWS Website Releases Official Goal: “Stomp out Capitalism.” Hey, Obama endorsed ’em. #Obamafail?

HOW’S THAT ARAB SPRING WORKING OUT? Disaster: Early returns show Islamists on track to win “dominant majority” in Egypt elections.

OBAMA/ALINSKY: Newt “Goes There.” This is why he’s polling so well. Romney take note.

CHANGE: U.S. Nears Milestone: Net Fuel Exporter. “U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and other oil-based fuels are soaring, putting the nation on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years. A combination of booming demand from emerging markets and faltering domestic activity means the U.S. is exporting more fuel than it imports, upending the historical norm.”

This would be good news, if it weren’t for the “falling domestic activity” part. That really just means that our economy is falling behind.

UPDATE: Note the difference between “oil” and “fuel.” We’re still importing a lot of oil. But if we get the shale-oil going, that’ll change.

AT AMAZON, post-Cyber Monday sales in Kitchen, Home & Garden.

POLITICS: “I’m fascinated by a few things: how Democrats close ranks around one of their own, how much these people drink together, and the hypocrisy about feminist matters.” It’s like Penn State. But then, anywhere the powerful gather is like Penn State.