CONSIDER THIS A Christmas hint.

No, not really. I couldn’t afford the ammo.

FISH, BARREL: Fact-checking Helen Thomas.

HILLARY’S WEAKNESS: Bill.

RON PAUL: He’s just terrible, even when — which is often, once he’s off the subject of the war — I agree with him. His voice is too high, he can’t remember who the Kurds are, and he often comes off like a crazy old man in a bus station.

But that’s good news, in a way. Paul’s doing better than anyone expected. It’s abundantly clear that he’s not doing it on charisma and rhetorical skill. Which means that libertarian ideas are actually appealing, since Ron Paul isn’t. Paul’s flaws as a vessel for those ideas prove the ideas’ appeal. If they sell with him as the pitchman, they must be really resonating. I suspect Paul himself would agree with this analysis. Er, except maybe the bus station part.

JEFFREY TOOBIN JUST MADE A FOOL OF HIMSELF by saying that Huckabee needed to explain what he meant by abolishing the IRS. Actually, as Toobin should know if he’s going to opine on this stuff on CNN, this isn’t some wild idea of Huckabee’s but the subject of a bestselling book and a national grassroots movement. That’s not to say that it’s necessarily a good idea, but it’s certainly not something new that Huckabee just made up. The audience knew this. And if this was like earlier debates, there were probably hundreds of Fair Tax demonstrators outside. Toobin should have known it, too.

JONATHAN ADLER: Why the public shrugs at global warming.

READER DAVID RICE EMAILS:

I’m hardly one of McCain’s people. Before tonight, I could only vote for McCain, Ron Paul, or Mike Huckabee. But tonight, it was clear to me that McCain impressed the most.

And of course, the most dynamic moment tonight was the homosexual 40 year veteran asking whether gays in the military should be condoned by the Republican candidate.

Dynamic, yes. But also a planted question, it appears. Once again, CNN demonstrates an inexplicable failure to background-check pro-Hillary questioners.

UPDATE: Some advice for CNN.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s not just Hillary: “Oh, my tireless colleague Avi Zenilman back at Politico World HQ does an insta-search on Kerr and discovers he was on the Steering Committee of ‘Veterans for Kerry.'”

This — like the Hillary connection — doesn’t undercut the question. (I’m in favor of gays in the military). But it does make CNN look bad for failing to disclose easily-available information about this guy.

MORE: An on-air apology from Anderson Cooper, saying that CNN didn’t know that Gen. Kerr was on Hillary’s steering committee: “If we had known that we would have disclosed it before using the question, if we used the question at all.”

Suckered by Hillary, again. Try Google, next time. It’s not that hard!

MOST REVEALING BIT: Fred Thompson on the Vice President’s responsibilities. The person he described sounded a lot like . . . Fred Thompson. That doesn’t surprise me.

I do think that Giuliani/Thompson is probably the strongest GOP ticket.

MCCAIN’S PEOPLE are certainly doing the best at bombarding me with emails linking good reviews of McCain’s performance. And they’ve got quite a few. Here’s one.

GLOOM FROM BRUCE FEIN: “The United States culture is decaying, growing steadily less capable of supporting a republican form of government.”

UPDATE: Reader John Schwab points out that Fein confuses Petrarch and Plutarch. Proving Fein’s point about the lack of classical education today!

TRIAL LAWYER — and Trent Lott’s brother-in-law — Dickie Scruggs indicted for conspiring to bribe a judge.

HEH.

LIVE-BLOGGING THE REPUBLICAN YOUTUBE DEBATE at Ann Althouse’s place.

And more from David Weigel.

UPDATE: Much more at RedState. And rare praise for McCain at The Corner.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Live-videoblogging at Team Thompson.

MORE: Liveblogging at the Bitch Girls, where the gun questions went over well.

STILL MORE: Dan Riehl thinks Huckabee is now in the top tier.

Say, didn’t the Huckabee surge start shortly after he did this interview? Yeah, that’s it. . . .

And here’s McCain video.

MORE STILL: D’oh! Stephen Green has been “drunkblogging.” How did I miss that?

STILL MORE: McCain gets off another one: “If we’d done what the Democrats wanted to do six months ago, Al Queda would be telling the world, ‘we beat America.'”

And SayUncle emails:

Line of the night from Fred Thompson on guns: I own a couple but I’m not gonna tell you what they are or where they are.

That’s an indication Fred knows guns.

It was better than Romney’s “I didn’t inhale” answer, too.

EVEN MORE: SayUncle follows up: “I was impressed that Giuliani really did his homework on Parker/Heller. He still seems to think there’s some urban exception to the Second Amendment. He didn’t convince me but he knew his stuff.”

And I love the Mars question.

FINALLY: Hillary manages to plant a question! Shockingly, it slipped past CNN’s google abilities.

And lots more observations from Bob Krumm.

HMM. I MENTIONED A WHILE BACK that the Houston police were secretly testing an unmanned aircraft. Now it turns out that the same aircraft is reportedly being used in Iraq.

UPDATE: Drones in Miami.

“KLUB KLIP” OR “CARRY-IT CLIP”? Explanation, and a poll, here. Klub Klip sounds more marketable, but I’d just market the same thing under each name to different demographics . . . .

WEIGHT LOSS AND the importance of puttering.

STEPHEN GREEN CONTRIBUTES YouTube questions for the Republican debate.

CRACKING THE CODE OF THE ZOMBIE. Zombies seem to be everywhere, but I mind this kind less than most . . . .

PADMA LAKSHMI: Tangy, tart, hot and sweet. And in the accompanying photo she looks to be all of those things herself . . . .

Plus, the joys of abandoning vegetarianism!

THE MAKERS OF TASER respond to the United Nations torture committee.

MICKEY KAUS: “The trouble for Hillary is that when it comes to sex rumors she and her husband (unlike, say, John Edwards and his wife) have no credibility. They threw that away when the philandering charges they righteously denounced in 1992 and 1998 turned out to be basically true.”

CAN’T ANYBODY PLAY THIS GAME? “The head of the federal agency investigating Karl Rove’s White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call.”

A LOOK AT Hillary’s managerial experience. Plus, Fabio on politics and diplomacy!

AIR AMERICA:

The Air Force is looking for a few good men and women like Ms. Fauci: flight attendants who staff Air Force One and 16 other luxury planes that ferry government dignitaries around the globe.

It’s not as easy finding recruits as one might think. The 150 members of the Andrews-based group and about 70 others stationed elsewhere — all Air Force enlisted personnel, trained in survival skills, aircraft emergencies and the culinary arts — take on duties that would make commercial flight attendants want to pull the rip cord.

For security and historical reasons, it’s up to them to plan menus, buy food and supplies, prepare meals, load luggage into the cargo hold and then, dressed in understated navy suits, tend to powerful and demanding passengers on trips that can last weeks.

I wouldn’t want that job.

FOR THE U.N., “humiliation” over Darfur.