Jack Abramoff Spills the Beans

In a nutshell, here's an argument for term limits.

Generally, however, legal analysts say that Wall Street insider trading laws do not apply to Congress. As an open and public institution, the legal assumption has long been that any member of the public can have access to information about how Congress works. In practice, though, that's simply not true, as powerful members of Congress come into contact daily with market-moving tidbits. That gap between the law and the reality has made Capitol Hill a virtual free-fire zone for insider trading. Over the years, academic studies have found that members of the House of Representatives beat the market by as much as six percent per year and members of the Senate do even better than that.

Guess that explains why so many people start off with little personal wealth, and end up multi-millionaires. And it's not a partisan issue. Interesting that much of the research was done by the Hoover Institute, rather than, say, Brookings. Spending time in jail, a la Martha Stewart, is sooo 20th century, apparently.

Update: The Senate has passed a bill called the STOCK Act. It's about time. Now let's see the House follow suit.