TOMORROW IS CYBER MONDAY, the online shopping world’s equivalent of Black Friday. I wonder, though, if the greater penetration of home broadband means that people will be doing less of their shopping at work. I note that Amazon did a big Black Friday sale, but I’m not seeing anything on their site about a Cyber Monday sale. Does this mean they agree?

JEFF JACOBY: “Blind opposition to war that seems lost is understandable. But can Democrats be so invested in defeat that they would abandon even a war that may be winnable?”

Tom Maguire smells another flip-flop coming.

RIAA SCARED OF HARVARD? They should be. Harvard could literally buy and sell them. Except that its portfolio managers wouldn’t make such a poor investment.

IT’S EASIER TO GET SPOTTED DICK THAN YOU THINK, even in America. Consider yourself warned!

Sorry, I ran across that and couldn’t resist.

FIRST-CLASS PRISON ACCOMMODATIONS — IF YOU PAY: A symposium on “Pay to Stay” prison programs in First Impressions, the online companion to the Michigan Law Review.

THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE CATO SUPREME COURT REVIEW is now available for free online.

GREENHOUSE UPDATE:

While he had been invited long before being named co-winner of the 2007 Nobel peace prize, the tabloid daily Oesterreich claimed it had acquired a copy of the contract laying down generous conditions for Gore’s 40-minute talk to 800 invited guests.

Not only would the organisers make a private jet and luxury limousine plus bodyguards available to Gore, they also agreed to cover his entire travel costs and his hotel, restaurant and telephone bills, the newspaper said.

I guess commercial air tickets and a Prius were out of the question.

A TORT LAW POEM from Stuart Buck.

THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD:

Few have been granted permission to see these marvels.

Indeed, the Italian government was not even aware of their existence until a few years ago.

But the ‘Temples of Damanhur’ are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.

(Via Brian Micklethwait, who comments: “This reminds me of that thing about how if you owe the bank very little it’s your problem but if you owe them a lot it’s theirs. In this case, if you want retrospective planning permission for a patio extension, you lose. But, if you want it for several miles of ornately decorated underground caves illuminated with fabulous stained glass windows, no problemo.”)

MORE UNREST in Paris.

CHEAP SPACESHIPS in New Zealand.

I’LL BE ON ROB PORT’S Say Anything podcast in just a minute.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL on the Second Amendment:

The phrase “the right of the people” or some variation of it appears repeatedly in the Bill of Rights, and nowhere does it actually mean “the right of the government.” When the Bill of Rights was written and adopted, the rights that mattered politically were of one sort–an individual’s, or a minority’s, right to be free from interference from the state. Today, rights are most often thought of as an entitlement to receive something from the state, as opposed to a freedom from interference by the state. The Second Amendment is, in our view, clearly a right of the latter sort.

As a practical matter on the Court, the outcome in D.C. v. Heller might well be decided by one man: Anthony Kennedy, the most protean of Justices. However, in recent years he has also been one of the most aggressive Justices in asserting any number of other rights to justify his opinions on various social issues. It would seriously harm the Court’s credibility if Justice Kennedy and the Court’s liberal wing now turned around and declared the right “to keep and bear arms” a dead letter because it didn’t comport with their current policy views on gun control. This potential contradiction may explain why no less a liberal legal theorist than Harvard’s Laurence Tribe has come around to an “individual rights” understanding of the Second Amendment.

Indeed. It will be very hard for the Court to maintain its unenumerated-rights jurisprudence if it attempts to explain out of existence an enumerated right in which most Americans believe.

A BAR EXAM SCANDAL in South Carolina.

UPDATE: More here.

HEALTH CARE: Embrace the fantasy!

THE DECLINING DOLLAR: Good news?

TERRORIST SPEAKS: From his Turkish jail, a senior terrorist claims a key role in atrocities around the world.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON offers a history lesson for the risible Rowan Williams.

RETRO-FUTURISTIC ART: Visions of a future that never happened.

SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE: The Gucci line of baby gear. “Sure, you could save $750 by going with a Baby Bjorn instead of the Gucci baby carrier, but you’d be risking serious damage to your fashionista cred.” Uh huh.

WHO DO YOU TRUST: A.P. or Wikipedia?

UPDATE: Jawa may have more useful information than A.P., too. . . .

FRED THOMPSON unveils his tax plan.

GREAT COUNTERINSURGENCY, KID — don’t get cocky: “I had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with General Petraeus. Very interesting series of helicopter flights to several bases. Bottom line is that progress is clear and real, but there are tough days ahead and al Qaeda, for instance, is far from dead. The mood is of cautious optimism, with a concern that some of the very positive media lately might set expectations too high. (That’s right: many military leaders are concerned that the media lately might be too positive.)”

CLAUDIA ROSETT: “You might suppose that with inquiries underway into the scandals surrounding the UN Development Program activities in tyrannies such as Burma and North Korea, the UNDP would be at pains to preserve its records for investigators.” Well, some people might expect that. I’d expect just the opposite, myself.

IS REDACTED Hollywood’s biggest bomb ever? It makes Heaven’s Gate look like a hit.

UPDATE: Panned by Kurt Loder at MTV.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch: “You had better odds of being struck by lightning than seeing this bomb.”

OUR FRIENDS, THE SAUDIS: “In Saudi Arabia, a 19-year-old woman is sentenced to 200 lashes. Her crime? She had been sitting alone in a car with a man who was not her husband when the two were abducted and raped by a gang of seven men. Had she not been raped, her “crime” would not have been prosecuted. Were that not obscene enough, now it seems her attorney will lose his law license for handling her defense too aggressively.” Remember this, whenever the Saudis pretend to be part of the civilized world.

IN WIRED, a review of the Canon HV20 HD camera.

THE CRANKY PROFESSOR isn’t convinced that springing for a big TV is the way to go.

On the other hand, there’s this observation: “Whenever you watch TV on your non-HD refrigerator, do you think to yourself, ‘Man, I wish this was in high-def’? I know I do.” But does it offer 6.1 surround sound?

I KNOW THAT A GOOD CHRISTMAS RETAIL SEASON IS IMPORTANT, but this headline kind of bugs me: Increased patrols aimed at keeping shoppers moving.

DOING WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.

IN THE MAIL: Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin’s novel, Kill Zone. He’s also the author of Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper.

TAKING THOSE Internet political quizzes.

THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE CONTINUES TO OUTPERFORM EXPECTATIONS: “The nation’s retailers had a robust start to the holiday shopping season, according to results announced Saturday by a national research group that tracks sales at retail outlets across the country. According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets, total sales rose 8.3 percent to about $10.3 billion on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, compared with $9.5 billion on the same day a year ago. ShopperTrak had expected an increase of no more than 4 percent to 5 percent.”

Plus, praise for consumers.

HILLARY CLINTON learns from experience.

CANADA cools Kyoto.

I’M OKAY WITH THAT: The gangs of Iraq are killing each other off.

Related item here. And an item on reporting, here.

“LAUDABLE AGITPROP” against the troops. Well, it’s agitprop, anyway. Of course, since my high school football team attracted bigger crowds than Redacted got nationwide, it’s also ineffective agitprop.

NEW YORK TIMES: “AIDS has peaked.”

MARK STEYN has thoughts on diversity.

A POST-SPIN ELECTION?

PATENTING second-rate service.

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT: “Really, the only thing worse than killing a bear is explaining why you didn’t kill the bear that killed a 3-year-old child.” It’s a David Baron problem. I’ve had some thoughts on this before.

UPDATE: Okay, this passage is too good not to quote:

A little later, we were in the woods above the field when we encountered a bear grazing along a path. It looked up at us and licked its mouth, a long strand of saliva dripping nearly to the ground. We were 20 feet away — in Homstol’s opinion, too close for comfort — so she whispered to turn and walk slowly toward the field. This we did, and when I looked back, the bear was 15 feet behind us, frozen in place. Once again, we walked toward the field, and when I turned again, the bear had closed the gap — it was 10 feet off, still making eye contact, still caught in that strange stop-motion pose. Like an image raised in a microscope, the bear kept getting closer and closer, though we never once saw it move. When I asked Homstol what that behavior meant, she said, walking swiftly toward her truck, “I have no idea, and I don’t want to stick around to find out.”

I think I have some idea.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So this guy was attacked by a bear while deer hunting. But why didn’t he — or one of the other hunters — you know, shoot it? The story doesn’t say.

FRED THOMPSON in Paradise.

UPDATE: The Tennessean reports that, contrary to the “lazy” charge, Thompson is campaigning hard.

KILLING SNAKES.

LIBERTARIANS: Redirecting politics, according to this piece in the Washington Post. I will say that although poll-spamming and email-spamming gave Ron Paul an astroturf image with a lot of people (including me) early on, it seems clear that there’s plenty of grassroots enthusiasm for him in my neck of the woods.

UPDATE: Ron Paul won’t do Glenn Beck’s show? That’s kind of weird.

THOUGHTS ON JOHN HOWARD’S DEFEAT, from Tim Montgomerie.

IS THE DOLLAR TOO LOW? Or is the Euro too high?

Related thoughts here.

HMM: “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally.” Not sure I trust the poll. But then, I’m not sure I’ll trust the vote-counting in eight days, either.

UPDATE: Thoughts from Rand Simberg.

HERE’S MORE on the Kasparov arrest.

SORRY, Mary Katharine!

MICKEY KAUS: “L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas have apparently ‘ended their romantic relationship.’ And here we all thought it was a great love!”

MCCLATCHY IN BAGHDAD: “It’s like journalism’s F Troop.” Only without Forrest Tucker. I guess he was too real!

DON’T shoot the dog.

“HEY, HEY, HO, HO, Western Civ Has Got to Go!” So say its beneficiaries. So much of “progressive” politics looks like the behavior of spoiled adolescents.

MEGAN MCARDLE IS DEAD SERIOUS about Social Security.

“NAMED AND SHAMED:” Yes, they should be. But the political culture that produced them may well be beyond salvation, regardless. Watching the decline of Europe and Britain isn’t pleasant. I certainly hope that the current trends are not irreversible. Related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry! (bumped)

DEMOCRATS backpedaling on Iraq: “As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.”

UPDATE: I guess this is why. It’s no good if you can’t call it a defeat.

THOUGHTS ON COMBATING ANTI-AMERICANISM IN LATIN AMERICA: Despite media efforts in the other direction.

VIETNAM IN REVERSE: There was a time when I would have trusted this defense of a reporter more than the military’s version. That time is past, and it’s past because of the frequent dishonesty I’ve seen from A.P. and other media outlets in Iraq. That’s too bad, but when you lose trust, you’ve lost it. And I just don’t trust them like I used to. But then, perhaps my trust was too high all along.

UPDATE: It’s not just me.

FAT, HAPPY, AND COWARDLY: The silence of the artistic lambs.

“THOSE CREATIONISTS, THOUGH — they’re way out there.”

CARTOON ANTISEMITISM AT THE BRADY CAMPAIGN? It’s certainly better-founded than some other cartoon accusations.

KNIGHTS IN RED SATIN: “In my own opinion, the only really dangerous government is an efficient, effective one. The best judgment of a particular democracy is how well it keeps the busybodies occupied while the rest of us get on with running things.”

HILARIOUS NEW World of Warcraft commercials, featuring William Shatner and Mr. T. Well, they’re pretty funny, anyway. And Shatner looks good as a shaman.

COMMENT-DELETION TRICKERY at the San Francisco Chronicle? If this is real and not some kind of bizarre caching problem, I’m torn between disgust and admiration for their cleverness . . .

Charles Johnson feels something similar, and has to resist temptation.

UPDATE: More here.

MORE ON THE Goose Creek terrorism case.

SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ON PETRAEUS AND PROMOTIONS, from Abu Muqawama.

HOUSTON POLICE secretly test unmanned aircraft.

INTERESTED IN SOUND ENGINEERING AND EQUIPMENT? My brother recommends the GearSlutz discussion board.

ALLISON ALVAREZ on maiden names and married names.

WHAT THE ISRAELIS BOMBED IN SYRIA: Not a reactor, but something worse?

MARK STEYN on the new Shakers. Only the modern ones don’t make nice Gomer Bolstrood-like furniture.

KASPAROV arrested in Russia.

FOR CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS, I recommend the new issue of Consumer Reports. I have my complaints about some of their priorities, but I generally find their recommendations quite good. They recommend this LCD HDTV and this 58″ plasma TV. 58″ — wow. And they liked this cordless drill.

Or you can just head over to the American Digest home shopping guide, for some rather different priorities . . . .

DON SURBER: “We are winning in Iraq. Will someone please inform the Democrats?”

STILL MORE ON VIDEO: I got this direct-burning DVD recorder to go with the Sony HD camcorder, and yesterday I burned DVDs from the Thanksgiving videos. It works fine — easy setup, simple menus, etc. You can direct-burn an AVCHD disk that will play on Blu-Ray players, or you can burn ordinary DVDs that will play on any player. But to do the latter, as best as I can tell, you have to go through the video out/in rather than a USB connection. My guess is that Sony didn’t want to spring for the processor horsepower necessary to turn AVCHD files into MPEGs on the fly, since it’s already in the camera. Not a major flaw, but a minor irritant. If anyone out there has one and I’m wrong about this, please let me know. I’ve scoured the not-especially-friendly manual.

THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE CONTINUES TO EXCEL: Despite Economy, Malls and Stores Jammed. I admire their courage and self-sacrifice. But will this continuous hard service produce a broken consumer army? There are already ominous signs of strain . . . .

MICKEY KAUS: “When you’ve got Nixon, make Nixonade!”

A LOOK AT THE INFLUENCE OF LIBERTARIANS IN AMERICAN POLITICS:

Card-carrying Libertarians are few and far between. Yet, seen as the guiding philosophy of a bloc of dissatisfied, independent-minded voters whose views align with Republicans on economics and Democrats on social issues, libertarianism is palpably gathering steam.

My favorite part is the reference to libertarians as “the Sith lords of American politics.” That wouldn’t be my first choice of Star Wars comparisons, but it’s better than “the C3POs of American politics,” which people would have probably said a few decades ago.

IT’S ROUGH OUT THERE, in the Iranian blogosphere.

IN AUSTRALIA, John Howard has conceded. Here’s a big roundup.

UPDATE: An observation: “Bush is now a rare survivor of the pre-9/11 western leaders’ club. Of his allies and opponents on the Iraq war, the latter have gone – Schroder, Chretien, Chirac – but so have the former – Aznar, Blair, Howard.” Well, a lot of time has passed, and Howard, like Blair, was in office well before Bush.

IS REP. ALLAN MOLLOHAN GETTING WORRIED? He’s certainly lawyered-up.

HEH: Of turkeys and pardons.

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST on the Nokia tablet PC, various readers suggest this from Asus, but it’s currently unavailable. Looks cool, though.

THE NEW SHAKERS: Jeez.

On the other hand, this explains why some people canonize Stalin, et al.

DAN SOLOVE: My impressions of Rachel Paulose.

NOW THAT’S JUST MEAN: “Eliot Spitzer of New York backpedaled like a Jets defensive back on his scheme to offer driver’s licenses to illegals, and the NY Times almost covered it.”

REPORTING ON black Friday shopping in New Jersey.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Adams complains:

That Amazon Black Friday sale looked great. I moved three items into my shopping cart. But when I returned to actually pay for them at 9pm, same day, sale still running — I was informed that one item had been repriced 25% higher, the other 40% higher, while sitting in my cart.

Imagine going to a department store for a sale, picking three items, and then having them repriced by a guy with a sticker gun while you were in the checkout line (though assured the sale is still running, just not so good for the items you chose anymore.)

Since there was no physical guy with a sticker-gun I could fell to the ground in my rage, I just deleted all items in my cart. “Saved” items from past days too. But of course Amazon will never know or feel the slightest discomfort.

Unless you let people know this is going on.

Consider ‘em informed — er, assuming they read InstaPundit. I have had stuff in the cart go down before, but never up. But I seldom leave things there for longer than it takes to check out.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A bunch of shopping-disappointment complaints, involving Amazon and many other merchants. The “lightning deal” thing seems to be leaving some people unhappy — not sure if that was Bill Adams’ problem.

FRITZ SCHRANCK on air travel and congestion.

“HOW DARE YOU QUESTION HER!”

LAHOUD OUT in Lebanon.

BACK WHEN I REVIEWED THE NOKIA N800 INTERNET TABLET, I thought it was nice, but not quite there, adding: “This device is a generation or two away from being what it really wants to be. Give it a slide-out keyboard, more stable software, a slightly bigger screen, and WWAN capability and you’d have a go-anywhere Web device that would let me leave my laptop behind. The N800 isn’t there yet.”

Well, the Nokia N810 is looking a lot closer. More here. And a further review here. Still no EVDO, just wi-fi, but otherwise it’s pretty much a go-anywhere surfing and blogging tool. And it has GPS.

The iPhone kind of meets my description, too, but with no actual keyboard. I haven’t heard much about its use as a go-anywhere blogging tool — I know when Brendan Loy tried that, he found it very awkward.

UPDATE: Stephen Green emails:

Don’t worry about the keyboard on the iPhone. After a couple weeks of use it does what any well-designed input device does–it just disappears into a cloud of habit and muscle memory. But that doesn’t make the iPhone a blogging tool. Until Apple figures out how to add cut’n'paste to the multi-touch screen, then the iPhone isn’t for blogging. Period.

Not that you need new ways and places to blog, of course.

Well, no. Seems like adding cut and paste would be easy, though. And reader B.P. Monaco emails: “I own an iPhone (first version) and spend a lot of time blogging. It’s a great tech device, wonderful if you’re just surfing the net. However, when it comes to blogging on it, I found it to be an absolute nightmare.”

And a customer review — posted via the N810 — says that the N810 is an “iPhone killer.” Well, possibly. I think they’re different devices, with some overlap.

D.C.’S HANDGUN BAN AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ARMS: One hard question, and an answer.

WIRETAPPING UNIVERSITY NETWORKS for the MPAA.

TURNING THE TABLES ON AL QAEDA: Read the whole thing.

APPARENTLY, THEY SET THE BAR PRETTY LOW THESE DAYS, if these are supposed to be “blackmail photos.” Good grief.

THE CANDIDATES AND THEIR FOOD ISSUES, plus the New York Times’ photo editor’s preferences.

ILYA SOMIN on Ron Paul, racism, and federalism.

RUMSFELD TORTURE CASE thrown out.

CENSURING DIANNE FEINSTEIN? Somehow I had missed this.