WALTER REED OFFICIALS ASKED, Was Hasan Psychotic? NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling has owned this story from the beginning. And this is damning:

“Put it this way,” says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. “Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole.”

Not that they did anything to prevent someone else from finding themself in that position.

DITHERING: A reader who requests anonymity emails:

Just something that occurred to me today while trying to cross Fifth Ave in Manhattan during the Veteran’s Day Parade:

The towers fell in New York on 9/11/01, Kabul fell to American led forces on 11/14/01. That’s 65 days.

President Obama’s hand-picked replacement commander in Afghanistan, GEN McChrystal, delivered his Afghanistan war plans to President Obama on 8/30/01, and President Obama hasn’t acted on his General’s recommendations as of today, 11/11/09. That’s 73 days, and waiting.

It’s the Gallo approach. We will make no war plan before its time.

KATE HARDING: Face it: The Democratic Party is not for women.

Plus: Martha Coakley For President. Maybe she can run with Lou Dobbs.

EXPLAINING MONEY to kids.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: 12 reasons unemployment is going to (at least) 12 percent.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: AIG CEO Robert Benmosche Tells Board He Wants to Quit. “The CEO is chafing under constraints imposed by AIG’s government overseers, in particular a recent compensation review by Kenneth Feinberg, the special master on pay in U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, according to the people.”

MSNBC: Official: Obama Rejects War Options. “President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday. ”

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “LBJ redux.”

RON BAILEY: Does Washington Post Columnist Ruth Marcus Not Know What a Tax Is?

JAMES TARANTO: “The Motive Remains Murky.”

UH OH: Mack-Cali Chairman: Commercial Real Estate Is Between A Massacre And A Disaster.

IF IT SAVES JUST ONE LIFE, IT’S WORTH IT: Ed Driscoll: End Clinton-Era Military Base Gun Ban.

A FIRST LOOK AT Sarah Palin’s new book.

UPDATE: Fear Of The Mother.

MORE VETERANS’ DAY THOUGHTS, from Lt. Col. John Tammes.

ROGER SIMON: Is ACORN Jerry Brown’s New Medfly Scandal?

CLOSE CALL: “Although no one noticed at the time, the Earth was almost hit by an asteroid last Friday. The previously undiscovered asteroid came within 8,700miles of Earth but astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before it made its closest approach. Its orbit brought it 30 times nearer than the Moon, which is 250,000 miles away.”

SO I’VE WATCHED LOU DOBBS’ RESIGNATION SPEECH and I wonder — is he planning to go Perot? Or, maybe, run in the Democratic primary?

TOP 20 GREEN TOYS FOR CHRISTMAS.

PJTV: Bill Whittle From Gitmo: A Message For All of America’s Veterans.

THOMAS DEL BECCARO: Jerry Brown: Acorn, Suspicion and the Rule of Law.

DESTROYING MANUFACTURING?

Emerson Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer David Farr said the U.S. government is hurting manufacturers with regulation and taxes and his company will continue to focus on growth overseas.

“Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.” . . . Farr, in his presentation, also said manufacturers are being hurt by taxes and regulation. He said companies will create jobs in India and China, “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something.”

Read the whole thing.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: Who I Met At The Tea Party: A Veterans’ Day Tribute.

MIND? “Everything is melting in the mind of Edroso.”

HERE’S ANOTHER REVIEW of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And note how much bigger video games are than movies, nowadays: “Analysts expect Modern Warfare 2’s first week sales to breach $500 million. To provide perspective, The Dark Knight made $155.34 opening weekend. A movie ticket is certainly cheaper than a video game, but half a billion dollars, any way you spin it, screams mainstream hit.”

PHYLLIS CHESLER: Talking ‘Bout Ft. Hood Terrorism on CNN:Pajamas Media vs. Nation Magazine. And being well-received. “Last night I was on the Lou Dobbs show on CNN to talk about whether the Fort Hood massacre was or was not a terrorist attack. . . . Trust me: This is unusual. And last night, as I was leaving CNN’s very spiffy headquarters in NYC, a tall and handsome CNN man stopped me and said: ‘You spoke very well. Thank you.’ The guest who followed me said, ‘I agree with you.’ Folks: I am talking about CNN not FOX. I think, maybe, perhaps, possibly, my God, if not now when, that things might be beginning to change.”

UPDATE: Got in just under the wire on that Lou Dobbs Show thing. . . .

PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH keeps getting bigger.

UPDATE: Garbage patch skepticism.

HUMAN MIGRATION SAVED by wet spells in the Sahara? “According to new evidence, water-dependent trees and shrubs grew there between 120,000 and 45,000 years ago. This suggests that changes in the weather helped early humans cross the desert on their way out of Africa.”

TALKING ABOUT PRESSURE COOKERS. I had some posts on the subject a while back, here and here. With the cold weather, it’s about time for me to get mine out again.

REASON TV: Veterans’ Day 2009: Every Day Is A Bonus.

FOR THANKSGIVING JOY, try Turbaconducken! Mmm mmm mmm.

KEEPING PACEMAKERS safe from hackers. “Manufacturers have started adding wireless capabilities to many implantable medical devices, including pacemakers and cardioverter defibrillators. This allows doctors to access vital information and send commands to these devices quickly, but security researchers have raised concerns that it could also make them vulnerable to attack.”

AUSTIN BAY: Hasan’s Treason. “Traitor is a tough word. It doesn’t smudge and squish.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: “Remember how we had to bail out Chrysler and give the company to Fiat because they were going to save American jobs and the environment with their awesome new electric cars? The electric cars that were going to start hitting the streets in 2010? Apparently, now that they’ve gotten the money, it’s festina lente; Fiat has apparently disbanded the team that was trying to rush these cars to market.”

VIDEO: SCENES FROM THE TUCSON TEA PARTY. “Once again, what’s remarkable about this protest is how absolutely ordinary it is. No one is foaming at the mouth; they’re mostly laughing at Giffords’ hypocritical attempts to cast herself as some sort of moderate while mindlessly following Pelosi and her radical agenda. They’re not an angry mob, as the media has cast the Tea Party movement — they’re a motivated group of voters who are sending a message that will only get louder in the coming year.”

A CURIOUS SUBPOENA.

TEN FAILED DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS.

UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe writes that the Joseph Smith prediction story is incorrect.

COMING: A high-performance Chevy Volt SS?

IN THE MAIL: From Carlos Eire, A Very Brief History Of Eternity.

CLAIRE BERLINSKI: I never believed the letters I read in Penthouse until it happened to me.

SONJA SCHMIDT: Shticks & Groans: My Gig at the NY Underground Comedy Fest. [Link was bad before; fixed now. Sorry!]

BYRON YORK: Big news: New poll shows GOP leading Dems in congressional preference ballot. “It’s an extraordinary turnaround for the GOP. Last July, Democrats held a six-point lead. Last December, Democrats held a 15-point lead. At one point in 2007, Democrats held a 23-point lead, and for all of that year, 2007, Democrats held a double-digit lead. The new Republican lead is the result of a dramatic move of independents toward the Republican party.”

HAPPY VETERANS’ DAY, and take some time to remember a Vet who’s special to you. Another way to observe the day would be to donate to Project Valour-IT. I’ve donated.

And to some readers’ surprise, Google is recognizing Veterans’ day. Good for them.

RON BAILEY: How Green Are Your Nukes?

Once an opponent of nuclear power, Stewart Brand is now a big backer. With regard to the safety, cost, waste handling, and weapons potential of nuclear power, Brand writes, “I’ve learned to disbelieve much of what I’ve been told by my fellow environmentalists.” On safety, Brand notes, “year after year, the industry has had no significant accidents” in the operation of the world’s 443 civilian nuclear plants. “Radiation from nuclear energy has not killed a single American,” asserts Brand. He does look at the after-effects of the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant which released a lot of radiation over swathes of northern Europe. He finds that the dire predictions that hundreds of thousands would die of radiation induced cancers turned out to be false. Weighing the safety tradeoffs between nuclear power and man-made global warming, Brand cites this observation from environmentalist Bill McKibben: “Nuclear power is a potential safety threat, if something goes wrong. Coal-fired power is guaranteed destruction, filling the atmosphere with planet-heating carbon when it operates the way it’s supposed to.”

Al Gore disagrees.

THE FEDEX VS. UPS lobbying knife-fight.

DOT LOOKING AT AIRLINE RE-REGULATION?

When asked if this meeting was called by the AFL-CIO, Olivia Alair, DOT spokeswoman, said, “Secretary LaHood made the decision to bring together aviation representatives to talk about the future of the industry because he wants it to succeed. Given the economic pressures and challenges U.S. aviation is facing, a number of stakeholders suggested a meeting like this would be helpful so people could share ideas and perspectives.”

Read the whole thing.

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 IS OUT, and here’s a review from Wired. “It’s all very realistic, and it’s doubly powerful because the game’s storyline could be pulled from today’s headlines.”

RAND SIMBERG: Whether or Not Obama Focuses On The Economy, It Gets Worse. “The problem is not that Obama doesn’t spend enough time on the economy — his philosophy isn’t capable of (or interested in?) stimulating growth anyway. . . . Obama persuaded many small business people to pull in their horns and make plans to keep a low profile (including laying people off) in order to avoid the wealth confiscation of the populist, socialist, economic storm they saw coming with his election.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: “The Obama Administration’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration, Erroll Southers, was censured by the FBI for asking law enforcement personnel to conduct a background check on his ex-wife’s boyfriend.”

WHAT’S THE HUMAN COST OF GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED HEALTHCARE? DEPENDS.

WHAT THE FBI WAS DOING INSTEAD OF STOPPING NIDAL HASSAN:

A couple of months ago I put up a post about federal prosecutors’ pursuit of Dr. Roger Weiner, an outspoken Mississippi cardiologist who was charged with Mann Act violations for using a Memphis-based website while in Mississippi to meet and date adult women. FBI agents posting as prostitutes repeatedly tried to get Weiner to agree to for money for sex. Each time, he explcitly turned them down, at one point writing to one in a chat room, “I’m not interested in a hooker.” They arrested him and charged him anyway.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. dismissed all charges against Weiner, ruling that the federal courts didn’t have jurisdiction in the case. Biggers’ opinion strongly suggested the case against Weiner was politically motivated, and came down hard on federal prosecutors.

In a better world, they’d be more worried about blowback from stuff like this than from going ofter an obvious jihadi . . . .

MORE ON beaten and imprisoned Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez. Maybe someone should ask some of those Castro-sucking-up Hollywood types for a reaction?

POLITICO: GOP Tries To Recapture Town Hall Anger. Thing is, the GOP never captured it, so how can they recapture it? It was, and is, an external phenomenon.

BREVITY, BY CAPITOL HILL STANDARDS: Chris Dodd’s financial “reform” bill is 1136 pages long, and “impenetrable.” No word on whether it bans sweetheart mortgage deals for members of Congress . . . but I know the way to bet.

APPLE DISAPPROVES OF ridiculing public figures. How stodgy. I’ll bet the Droid Apps don’t suffer from that sort of handicap.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Good religion.”

JACOB SULLUM ON FORT HOOD’S GUN-FREE ZONE. “Neither Smith nor the other victims of Hasan’s assault had guns because soldiers on military bases within the United States generally are not supposed to carry them. Last week’s shootings, which killed 13 people and wounded more than 30, demonstrated once again the folly of ‘gun-free zones,’ which attract and assist people bent on mass murder instead of deterring them.”

I’M GETTING MY GULAG TOGETHER AND TAKING IT ON THE ROAD: Conservative Student Group Announces National Campus Gulag Campaign.

IS CHINA HEADING TOWARD economic collapse?

READER JOHN MARCOUX sends these pictures from the Tea Party in Beaufort, South Carolina today.

DUBIOUS PROGRESS: Internet Virus Frames Users For Child Porn.

ABC NEWS: Senior Official: More Hasan Ties to People Under Investigation by FBI.

THE HILL: What lessons can we learn from the Fort Hood attack?

DON’T ASK, DON’T GIVE: Gay Activists Boycotting the DNC. “Joe and I are launching today a donor boycott of the DNC. The boycott is cosponsored by Daily Kos, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, David Mixner, Andy Towle and Michael Goff of Towle Road, Paul Sousa (Founder of Equal Rep in Boston), Pam Spaulding, Robin Tyler (ED of the Equality Campaign, Inc.), Bil Browning for the Bilerico Project, and soon others.”

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

INSPECTOR-GENERAL-GATE UPDATE: Walpin cleared.

Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general fired by the White House in July during his probe of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, has been cleared of a complaint by the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento that he had acted improperly.

Now, he says, he wants his job back.

“It takes away any basis belatedly set forth by the White House as a reason for my termination,” Walpin said this morning in an interview from his home in New York. “So I am certainly looking forward to a final determination by the court and to be reinstated.”

Walpin filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., in July alleging that he was fired improperly while investigating whether Johnson had misused federal grant funds. The government is trying to have the case dismissed, but Walpin filed documents in court late Monday opposing that.

This could be fun.

A NEW CONSTITUTION for the Cayman Islands.

RICHARD DALEY BECLOWNS HIMSELF: Chicago Mayor Daley Blames Fort Hood On America’s Love Of Guns! They’ll talk about anything but what’s actually going on . . . .

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the Marine Corps.

You could observe it by heping out Project Valour-IT.

THE VATICAN JOINS the search for extraterrestrial life.

CHANGE: Fannie And Freddie Fire Their Own Inspector General.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Unemployment Skyrockets: “U.S. now beating European unemployment rates”.

WALTER SHAPIRO WONDERS why so little attention to winning the Cold War.

D.C. SNIPER JOHN ALLEN MUHAMMAD has been executed.

DRONE WARS: “Biden? He had his chance.” Heh.

BREITBART HAS SOURCES EVERYWHERE: Exclusive: Audio From ACORN Claims Jerry Brown Will Whitewash Investigation. “On October 15th, local ACORN spokesman David Lagstein was the special guest of the East County Democrat Club in El Cajon, CA. Lagstein is ACORN’s chief organizer in the San Diego area. The meeting was held at Coco’s Restaurant, a very public venue. Because of ACORN’s close ties to the Democrat party, Mr. Lagstein clearly felt he was among friends. These two clips suggest the investigation of ACORN announced by California Attorney General Jerry Brown already has a pre-determined outcome.”

More background here and here.

IOWAHAWK: Troubled American Psychiatrist Allegedly Turns Gun on Warmongers at Ft. Hood.

HARVARD YARD, home of American heroes.

INSTAVISION: I talk to the CEI’s Fred Smith about the economy, the grassroots, and what the GOP needs to do.

FEARING A FLU VACCINE, and wanting more of it.

NEW INNOCENCE PROJECT NEWS: Prosecutors say Northwestern investigator paid witness. “Prosecutors allege that after conducting a 2004 interview with Drakes, an investigator with the team paid a cab driver $60 to take from the interview site, a park in downstate Swansea, to a gas station two miles away. That amount was more than the fare and tip, and leftover cash — $40 — was given to Drakes; he used it to buy crack at a nearby crackhouse, the filing states. David Protess, director of the Innocence Project, acknowledged Drakes was given money for cab fare but denied it was a pay-off for a statement that implicated himself in the killing.” Well, if you’ll implicate yourself for murder for $40 . . . then, like the song says, you must be on crack.

VISE-GRIPS AND MORE: Locking Pliers Comparison: Abusive Lab Test.

TEST-DRIVING THE BMW ActiveHybrid X6.

LIST: Best Music Of 2009.

BBC EFFORT TO PUT DRM ON TV BROADCASTS shot down.

MICHAEL SILENCE: How do you mark the Berlin Wall coming down without including Reagan? “Well, NBC News shows us how, and, as a bonus, manages to include Hillary Clinton in the report, twice.”

Related item here.

TISSUE-ENGINEERING A FUNCTIONING PENIS: “In a unique feat of tissue engineering, scientists from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have created penile erectile tissue and implanted it into male rabbits, allowing the animals to, well, go at it like rabbits. Researchers implanted scaffolds seeded with cells from rabbit penile tissue. One month later, organized tissue with blood vessels began to grow. Tests showed that the new tissue functioned like a normal penis, with normal blood flow and drainage of the veins. The rabbits even fathered offspring. The research was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

VOLCANO-LANCING in Italy. Not via airborne lasers, though.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGIES. I think the cute-kitten thing would wear out pretty fast, but no doubt it’s just the opening salvo.

NEW SOLAR-SAIL EFFORTS: “LightSail-1, as it is dubbed, will not make it to Neverland. At best the device will sail a few hours and gain a few miles in altitude. But those hours will mark a milestone for a dream that is almost as old as the rocket age itself, and as romantic: to navigate the cosmos on winds of starlight the way sailors for thousands of years have navigated the ocean on the winds of the Earth.”

A PAIR OF DOUCHES: Jon Gosselin and Levi Johnston, in matching coats.

IN THE MAIL: The War on Terror and the Laws of War: A Military Perspective.

REASON TV: UPS vs. FedEx.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THE GLOBAL COST OF CORRUPTION:

How much do crooked politicians and others steal every year?

Nobody really knows, of course, but as the BBC reports today, the UN estimates that $1.6 trillion each year is stolen each year and moved across national borders. Tragically, much of this money is stolen from poor countries. It is bread taken out of the mouths of the poor.

Don’t expect this figure to drop any time soon. Led by Russia, China and Iran, a large group of countries are fighting efforts to crack down.

This money is significantly greater than the value of all foreign development aid. It is more than the ten year cost of the health care bill that just passed the House. It would be enough to fund a worldwide basic health system and provide basic primary education to every child on earth. Over the next fifty years it will cost the world much more than climate change.

More than that, the level of criminality and incompetence demonstrated by the existence of so much theft is the most serious obstacle to economic and social development around the world. It is not just that governments administered by thieves are both indifferent to the plight of the poor and unable to run programs that will help them; it is also that voters in rich countries aren’t stupid. If foreign aid were perceived as being more effective, political support for it would rise.

Instead, voters suspect — rightly — that support for things like carbon regulation stems mostly from politicians’ expectation that it will yield even more graft.

BYRON YORK: No Matter What Happens, The Top Issue Is Jobs. And the lack thereof.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WANTS VISITOR INFORMATION FROM NEWS SITE: “In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site ‘not to disclose the existence of this request’ unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.” Pushback from the EFF led to the subpoena being withdrawn.

CORY DOCTOROW: When “random” searches aren’t actually random.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Teenager? Is TMZ threatening to post child pornography?”

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ: Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer: His terrorist motive is obvious to everyone but the press and the Army brass. “What a puzzle this piece of vacuity must be to audiences hearing it, some, no doubt, with outrage. To those not terrorized by fear of offending Muslim sensitivities, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s motive was instantly clear: It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments. All were conspicuous signs of danger his Army superiors chose to ignore.”

COLUMBIA PROFESSOR PUNCHES WOMAN IN ARGUMENT OVER “WHITE PRIVILEGE:”

A prominent Columbia architecture professor punched a female university employee in the face at a Harlem bar during a heated argument about race relations, cops said yesterday.

Police busted Lionel McIntyre, 59, for assault yesterday after his bruised victim, Camille Davis, filed charges.

McIntyre and Davis, who works as a production manager in the school’s theater department, are both regulars at Toast, a popular university bar on Broadway and 125th Street, sources said.

The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about “white privilege” with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said.

You can’t make this stuff up. (Via JWF, who wonders if it would be treated differently were the races of the parties reversed).

UPDATE: Related: Gallup: U.S. Waiting for Race Relations to Improve Under Obama. Sounds like Columbia has a ways to go yet . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chuck Allen writes: “I would say that it is time for another ‘beer summit’, but it seems that was what they were having, and it all went horribly wrong!” Yeah, Ivy League profs who can’t hold their liquor? This country really has gone to the dogs. . . .

MORE: Reader Grayson Hill writes: “What’s the matter with these people? Grade school boys know better than to punch women.” Grade school boys know a lot of things they forget by the time they have Ph. D’s.

JOHN LOUDON: St. Louis Protects Its Own: A DA Turns a Blind-Eye on the Gladney Beating.

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: THE STATE OF THE STIMULUS. “One reason unemployment continues to rise may be that stimulus funds did not target high-unemployment states.” From each according to his abilities, to each according to his political clout. . . .