50 NERDY PICKUP LINES. “If I was an enzyme, I’d be helicase so I could unzip your genes.”

DRUDGE’S CURRENT HEADLINE: BOOB TUBE: CNN ‘DUPED’ BY HILLARY PLANT AT REPUBLICAN DEBATE.

Message to CNN: It’s called Google. Use it.

“NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, get Kasparov.”

JOSHUA ZADER has thoughts on hatred, partisanship, and personal integrity.

FRANK WARNER: “The quietest November since Saddam was toppled.”

AN L. SPRAGUE DECAMP CENTENNIAL. This post, alas, focuses largely on fandom at the expense of his writing. His writing was excellent, and I’m told by science-fiction authors who knew him that he was a delightful person. And he’s the author of this sadly accurate statement: “After forty, it’s just patch, patch, patch.”

They seem to be reissuing his magic and time-travel stories. I’m glad to see that, as his work deserves to be preserved.

HOW SECURITY WHIZ BRUCE SCHNEIER protects his laptop data.

FROM VIRGINIA POSTREL, a look at science and objectivity. With some thoughts on journalism, too.

JUST HEARD A LENGTHY NPR STORY ON THE YOUTUBE DEBATE, with a live followup from Mara Liasson — and it omitted any mention of the planted question issue. Hmm. If Fox hosted a Democratic debate and many of the most pointed questions turned out to come from Republican activists, but Fox didn’t disclose that, do you think it would pass unremarked?

HANDS-ON TOYS: This looks like it would make a cool present for the right kid.

I REMEMBER WHEN THIS FIRST HAPPENED, but here’s the denouement: “Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., has entered a plea days before he was set for trial on assault and battery charges over allegations he pushed a United Airlines baggage employee at Dulles International Airport. As part of the deal he will write a letter of apology to the baggage worker.”

A ROUNDUP ON LAST NIGHT’S DEBATE from Stephen Green. Excerpt: “What we really saw tonight was CNN playing out its own agenda in front of a couple million viewers and seven or eight candidates, without anyone calling them on it.” Planted questions and all . . . .

STARSHIP TROOPERS gets closer.

HORTICULTURE JOURNALISM 101 — a gallery of CNN/YouTube plants. “Abortion questioner is declared Edwards supporter . . . Log Cabin Republican questioner is declared Obama supporter; lead toy questioner is a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers.”

Other than that, they were just “ordinary Americans.”

HMM: Old Allies Abandon Chávez as Constitution Vote Nears. But he’s still got some friends.

AUSTIN BAY: Al Qaeda’s emerging defeat.

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.