SURGICAL Spock ears.

IN THE MAIL: Bob Drogin’s Curveball, about intelligence failures and Iraq.

SOME THOUGHTS ON ABORTION AND THE COMMERCE CLAUSE.

A while back, Dave Kopel and I argued that regulation of abortion is beyond Congress’s constitutional powers under the Commerce Clause.

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR Fred Thompson?

THE NEW BLACKLIST: An excerpt from Roger Simon’s forthcoming book on Hollywood. Best line: “With my radical past, I suspect I could do a better job of writing left-wing movies than Hollywood has lately, judging from the box office receipts of those films.”

HEH: Hillary Mulls Supporting Illegal Alien Pilot License.

THAT WAS FAST!

GEE, THAT’S A TOUGH ONE: “Is the WaPo ‘running a story based off of selective quotations and gross mischaracterizations from a handful of memos?'”

UPDATE: From the comments: “Let me see if I have this straight, we can get the memos of a defense secretary in a time of war before the administration he worked for is even out of office, but we cannot get the memos of the first lady 7 years after her administration is over?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts:

Why is it that news sites refuse to publish the documents upon which they report? I mean, even Glenn Greenwald produced the emails he was mischaracterizing. Why can’t The Washington Post do the same with the infamous “snowflake memos” it has managed to obtain?

Because then people could make up their own minds.

BLOGGERS COMPLAIN ABOUT HILLARY to the Federal Election Commission. “The complaint, filed by Matthew Margolis and Mark Noonan, cites stories published in the Los Angeles Times and New York Post questioning contributions to Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaigns from impoverished Chinese neighborhoods in New York City.” I’m not hsurprised that this has happened. And these guys wrote the book on the subject!

LIVING THE “TERROR DREAM” in America.

MICHAEL YON REPORTS that Iraqis are saying Al Qaeda has been defeated:

“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.

As with all Michael Yon reports, read the whole thing. And remember that he’s supported by reader donations, so if you like his work, consider hitting the tipjar.

UPDATE: Pockets of Al Qaeda support still remain, though.

MATT WELCH: Sex scandal? What sex scandal?

What I find most interesting is that in all the speculation about who was involved, I haven’t seen anyone suggest that it was a Hillary sex scandal. That must mean something . . . .

MUKASEY SHOULD GET WATERBOARDED: Both the Huffington Post and InstaPundit agree!

Of course, if members of Congress think waterboarding is torture they could just, you know, outlaw it.

UPDATE: No waterboard, but Chuck Schumer is feeling squeezed: “With a crucial Judiciary Committee vote on attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey scheduled for Tuesday, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) finds himself in a conundrum as fellow Democrats begin to turn against the man he publicly recommended for the nation’s top law enforcement spot.” I guess Schumer’s too far-right for today’s Democratic Party!

SECOND-YEAR ASSOCIATES AT LAW FIRMS out-earn the Chief Justice of the United States.

MORE KAUS-STYLE ANECDOTAGE ON IMMIGRATION: Took my car to the car wash today. The work force used to be all Mexican; now there were no Mexicans to be seen. More results from even modest immigration enforcement? One downside: All the newly-hired American workers were kinda disorganized and slow compared to the old Mexican workforce. Maybe that will change with practice.

UPDATE: Reader James Paternoster thinks I’m too optimistic about the practice:

The roofers next door speak Spanish and work quickly, as at the carwash. There’s a work ethic that must be as attractive to employers in the trades as the wages they can pay to illegals. Perhaps it’s even a bigger factor than the wages: I wonder what Mickey Kaus thinks about that question. And whether Americans’ experience with Mexican workers will raise expectations of tradespeople and manual workers generally? And whether that can lead to a better work ethic, or whether it will just lower the quality of service?

To be fair, these guys didn’t seem lazy, just badly coordinated. But the work-ethic point is one I’ve heard a lot.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve DiSciullo emails: “The Mexicans are afraid of being fired and the Americans aren’t, that’s the difference.”

PROBLEMS FOR THE PAKISTANI ARMY. That’s bad news.

NIGHT OF THE guilty plutocrat.

Plus, very strong GDP news.

THE NEW REPUBLIC’S PUBLISHER, Elisabeth Sheldon, responds to critics. Bob Owens is incompletely satisfied.

BOOK-BLOGGING: MIchael Totten reports on Staff Sergeant David Bellavia’s book, House to House, which I’ve mentioned here before.

DECLINING VIOLENCE IN IRAQ confuses journalists.

Because they know the narrative, but those pesky facts don’t fit. . . .

NOW THAT’S SCARY: Forget zombies. I sent off my next Popular Mechanics column, got ready to take it easy for a few days, and then checked my email to find not one, but two law review articles back from the editing process for revisions. I’d prefer zombies — they just want to eat your brain, not subject it to bluebook citation form . . . .

FOR DEMOCRATS, Iran is the new Iraq.

IAIN MURRAY ON the Law of the Sea Treaty.

ACCORDING TO THE INSTA-DAUGHTER, the new Britney CD is “actually pretty good.”

HUNTING PIRATES with BOLOs of the sea.