A NEW COMMON LANGUAGE FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION: Latin?

THOUGHTS ON CHEAP SOLAR from Clayton Cramer.

IT’S ALL ABOUT BILL: “Just when I thought I was out, the Clintons pull me back into their conjugal psychodrama. . . . Maybe the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar when things are going well.”

WELL, GOOD: Pakistan’s Islamic Parties Struggle for Support. “”People were asking for clean water, and they didn’t get it. We were very hopeful. But the mullahs did nothing for us.” No surprise there.

2008 ELECTION PREDICTIONS from Bill Quick.

I DON’T KNOW THIS BLOG, and can’t vouch for it myself. But if this story about Huckabee’s speaking fees pans out, it seems that it’s likely to be pretty damaging. I’ve got no problem with taking speaking fees from stem-cell research companies — but it contradicts Huckabee’s positions, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: More from the Globe: “He opposes embryonic stem-cell research, but this year accepted a fat speaking fee from drugmaker Novo Nordisk, which conducts embryonic stem-cell research.” (Via John Stephenson, who has more).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Shades of Jim Wright? Well, possibly. Reader Bill Nelson sends a link to this report that Novo Nordisk — the stem-cell company — distributed 35,000 copies of Huckabee’s book, translated into Spanish, for free. No word what Huckabee was paid; possibly nothing, possibly a lot. No doubt people will be asking the campaign about it.

HOME FOR CHRISTMAS.

A REPORT FROM onboard the Ron Paul blimp.

THE JOYS OF LIVING off the grid.

HEH: The war on terroir. (Via ¡No Pasarán!)

SAVING THE PLANET by shopping online: Nice to see my own thoughts backed up by research.

UPDATE: Katie Granju saves the planet, too!

VANESSA REDGRAVE bails out terror suspects.

STEPHEN F. HAYES reports from Iowa.

I MENTIONED BOB ZUBRIN’S Energy Victory earlier — a reader emails that he’ll be on C-SPAN2 tonight starting about 7 pm Eastern. And here’s a bit on Zubrin’s book from Alan Boyle. And here’s a review from Cliff May.

UPDATE: Another review here.

Meanwhile, although I think that corn-based ethanol is a bad deal, that doesn’t mean that all biofuels are bad. For example, cellulosic ethanol looks promising. And Zubrin told me a while back that you can make methanol out of kudzu, which will certainly appeal to folks in my neck of the woods.

A SURPRISE MOVE BY THE NLRB on employee Internet use.

AN INTERVIEW with General Petraeus.

HUFFINGTON POST: Giuliani’s Exoneration Over Expense Scandal Falls On Deaf Ears. “Over the past several weeks, Rudy Giuliani’s presidential aspirations have been weighed down by allegations that he hid trip expenses to see then-mistress Judith Nathan by billing them to obscure city agencies. Now, however, a new review of records has partially exonerated Giuliani for what was widely perceived to be a cover-up. And conservatives and even impartial observers are bemoaning that the scandal received far more attention compared to the revelations of innocence. “

BEN SMITH: Should Republicans distrust Obama?

I dunno, is he a politician? Plus, thoughts on experience.

A LOOK AT lawfare in Israel. “While the soldiers and general public view the war as a failure, one sector of Israeli society sees the war as a great triumph. For Israel’s legal establishment, the war was a great victory. It was a war in which its members asserted their dominance over Israel’s political and military leadership. . . . Given the contrast between Mandelblit’s and Mazuz’s view of the war as a triumph and the public’s view of the war as a failure, it is worth considering whether there is a connection between the unprecedented ‘lawyerization’ of the war in Lebanon and the fact that Israel lost the war.” Lawyers are fine in their place. Which has its limits. Overlawyering war is likely to lead, over time, to the position that all laws of war are productive of defeat and the product of self-interested behavior by special interests. That is not a desirable outcome.

LEGAL HARASSMENT: Department of Sartorial Intimidation. The intimidation is entirely intentional. I’d like to see some turnabout on issues like this.

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION: Sarkozy in Afghanistan.

A HOLIDAY VIDEO FROM FRED THOMPSON. Rather different from Hillary’s or Huckabee’s approaches.

THERE’S A FREE MARK STEYN! BLOG, complete with a list of things you can do to help.

GOOD NEWS FOR PROCRASTINATORS: Reader Dean Knight emailed yesterday that Amazon was offering shipping as late as Sunday afternoon for Amazon Prime members with delivery on Monday. I didn’t get the email that he got, but I discovered that this shipping schedule on Amazon only shows the Saturday 4 pm cutoff unless you’re logged in, but then, if you’re an Amazon Prime member, it shows the Sunday 2 pm (Eastern) deadline instead. So you’re not out of luck yet, though I wouldn’t wait until the last minute for anything that really matters. No system is perfect, and this is pretty late.

HERE’S A REVIEW of Bob Zubrin’s Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil.