Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends. I miss the latkes and jelly doughnuts my roommates received for the holiday at college. [Their grandmothers were afraid they wouldn’t celebrate or couldn’t get “real” food at that terrible Baptist university.] It was a great break.

One of the nice things about Hanukkah is that there are established “gifts”, so you don’t have to rack your brains about what to get: a card and gelt covers just about everyone.

General background at Wikipedia’s entry for Hanukkah and even more at Chabad’s Chanukah page.

[Note: on the Jewish calendar the day changes at sundown, not midnight.]

When I last wrote about the 501(c)(4), ‘Social Welfare Organizations’ I noted that the IRS rules from 1959 were actually not in agreement with the clear wording of the 1954 law that they were based on. The rules allow for a lot more latitude in the conduct of the organizations, than the law, as written, allows.

After the faux-scandal of the ‘IRS targeting conservative groups’, the IRS was sued to get its rules changed to reflect the law.

CBS among others are reporting the changes as limits on non-profits. That is not correct, the IRS is being pushed to actually enforce the law, and this will cost a lot of the political action committees who have been hiding behind their wrongfully obtained 501(c)(4) status. The loss of the status means, they are going to have to report the names of their donors.

The rule-making process takes a long time, so nothing will actually change until the 2016 election. Even then, tracking the money will be a major task, because people with money tend to hire PR firms to keep their name out of the press.

The Pennsylvania bloggers, like Susie Madrak and Noz have been whooping about their governor, Tom Corbett, being rated the least popular governor in the US, beating out Florida’s fraudster-in-chief.

Hah, that’s nothing, Charlie Pierce notes the fraudster-in-chief is so unpopular with Republicans that he can’t find a running mate for reelection.

Lieutenant Governor in Florida is a $125K no show job unless the Governor decides to make you work. There are a lot of unemployed people in the state, so you would think it would be easy to find someone willing to apply. [/snark]