ED MORRISSEY: “Senator Joe Biden writes an op-ed for today’s Washington Post that gets the entire war on terror fundamentally wrong — and demonstrates why the Democrats have entirely failed to provide any leadership on Iraq and the wider war.”

A USEFUL COLLECTION of urban legends about the Iraq war. (Via Rand Simberg). Also, here’s a look at the New York Times’ shifting editorial positions on Iraq. It’s almost as if partisan politics are behind them.

THE INSTAWIFE looks at vegetarianism and pacifism.

CHINA COVERING UP avian flu outbreaks among humans? Not implausible in light of the SARS experience.

UPDATE: Not implausible, but not necessarily true, either.

FRED LAPIDES sends a link to this cool French cooking site.

Also, Bill Quick’s weekend cooking thread is up.

In answer to his question, this book is probably my favorite cookbook of the moment. And in response to a reader recommendation I ordered this one, but I haven’t made any of its recipes yet. Just flipping through it, though, I can see why it’s considered a classic.

RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE SITREP:

More so than during last year’s post-Thanksgiving rush, people jammed stores early, with more than a few testy shoppers scuffling in a rush to grab coveted, limited-quantity bargains.

Several major retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT) – Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Macy’s (NYSE:FD) ‘ as well as mall operator Taubman Centers Inc. (NYSE:TCO) estimated they drew bigger crowds for the official holiday season launch compared with last year.

Lena Michaud, spokeswoman at Target Corp., which had a strong holiday season a year ago, said traffic was at least as heavy.

Online shopping seems to be picking up.

BIKING IN LOS ANGELES: “One day, I found myself biking down an empty little access road next to the notorious 405 freeway during the evening commute. The freeway, as usual, was paralyzed, and I noticed I was actually moving faster than the cars. That’s when the revelation hit: Over the past few months, I had discovered a different Los Angeles.”

Actually, I’d think that L.A. would be good bike territory: It’s mostly flat, it seldom rains, and it’s usually not dreadfully hot.

UPDATE: Much more on this, from The Cycling Dude.

I WISH I’d written that, too.

WELL, YEAH:

Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”

And the invasion of Iraq was all about securing control of a crashed alien spaceship that had landed in Saddam’s territory. Duh.

Then there’s the alien reality TV angle. Luckily, we haven’t thrown away our lead in orbital mind control rays.

And forget your tinfoil hats for stopping them. Those are worse than useless! (Note the use of Reynolds foil. Yes, I’m in on the whole thing! Bwahahaha!)

UPDATE: More on the conspiracy, here. And wait until we roll out America’s Secret Weapon. Are you seeing connections here? You should! I mean, do I have to spell things out for you people?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s an actual photo of the moonbase, which has apparently been there since at least 1999.

MORE: “I can’t wait to hear what Mark Steyn has to say.” Indeed.

SOMEBODY TELL WALTER DURANTY ABOUT THIS: “Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko wants the world to recognize the famine that killed one-quarter of the population as Soviet-sponsored genocide.”

TOM MAGUIRE is confused by Andrea Mitchell’s confusion.

IT’S FRIDAY BEER-BLOGGING over at John Cole’s. Beats catblogging, if you ask me.

BILL ROGGIO is now reporting from Iraq.

TIGERHAWK looks at the stock market, and press coverage thereof.

IN THE MAIL, a copy of Peter Menzel and Faith D’Ailuisio’s book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. The story is interesting, the photos are beautiful, there are recipes, and it’s a perfect Thanksgiving-weekend book.

And, speaking of food and cool photos, check out The Cook’s Cottage, an illustrated blog about Indian food. How can I be hungry again?

THIS SCANDAL over Korean cloning expert Dr. Hwang Woo Suk and his lab seems like pretty small beer to me. Yes, you don’t want egg donations to be coerced, but the fact that junior researchers donated eggs doesn’t demonstrate coercion to me. There’s a long tradition of scientists participating in their own experiments, and I wonder if there isn’t a trace of sexism in the notion that junior female researchers must have been coerced. Would we say the same thing if they had been male donors who had donated sperm? (Sure, egg donation is more intrusive, but that’s not what the “ethics” rule is about). I don’t see anything wrong with paying for donations, either — the rule against it seems more like a self-protective cartel on behalf of scientists who’d rather get things for free than anything involving actual ethics.

At any rate, this seems more like a strike at Dr. Hwang than a serious ethics problem. (What’s a serious ethics problem? The Tuskeegee Syphilis experiments.)

I also wonder how much increasingly elaborate “ethics” rules, often created by non-scientists and often having nothing to do with actual ethics, are holding back scientific progress today, at considerable if hidden social cost. I wish the discussions of this case paid more attention to that question. More on this subject here.

BILL QUICK, who has brought his CNN investigation to an interesting close, has posted some thoughts on the difference between mainstream and blogospheric reporting.

LOTS OF BLACK-FRIDAY FASHIONBLOGGING over at Almost Girl. Just keep scrolling. More here. And Virginia Postrel has thoughts, too, including this: “The bad thing about fashion markets today is how many empire-waist tops and dresses they sell. I don’t care how cute, young, and skinny you are. Those things make you look pregnant.”

UPDATE: A typically passionate black-Friday defense of Wal-Mart.

REPEAL THE CHARITABLE TAX DEDUCTION? I’m inclined to agree with this suggestion. The 501(c)(3) sector is bloated, unaccountable, and a source of considerable political distortion. And efforts to police the politicization of that area just lead to troubling questions about the IRS and political speech. Better to just get rid of the deduction, except for charitable hospitals and the like, and let the market sort things out.

AUSTIN BAY looks at the growth of realism in the Middle East.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh looks at attitudes in the Arab world and suggests that terrorists are defeating terrorism.

THE ABRAMOFF SCANDAL CONTINUES TO WIDEN: Here’s a Wall Street Journal story (free link) that brings things up to date.

A NOT-SO-HAPPY BIRTHDAY for Augusto Pinochet.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: I never bought the nano-pants, but I cooked (and ate) all day yesterday in this “Nano-Tex” stain-resistant shirt and, well, it works — it looked just as fresh and new when I took it off as when I put it on. Given my character as a messy cook, that’s no small accomplishment for modern technology.

TOM MAGUIRE ON JOE WILSON AND SCOOTER LIBBY:

And secondly, what was it with Libby and Joe Wilson?

You can guess the rest – some old appearances of Wilson at least allude to the sort of dual-loyalty issue that seems to be a part of the neocon/anti-Semitism debate. I run them below. And let’s be crystal-clear: I am *NOT* alleging that Joe Wilson, Chris Matthews, or anyone else is anti-Semitic. I am speculating that Lewis Libby may have thought so.

Interesting. It’s progress of a sort, of course, if we’ve reached a point at which suspected antisemitism can arouse such ire in the White House, something that certainly hasn’t always been the case.

DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT is impressed with new German Chancellor Angela Merkel.