Top Officers Hopeful That Obama Will Bring More Realistic View Than Bush  —  Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went unarmed into his first meeting with the new commander in chief — no aides, no PowerPoint presentation, no briefing books.

The Mumbai policemen who refused to shoot  —  Photographer Sebastian D'Souza, who was able to take a photo of one of the armed terrorists in the train station in Mumbai, also described the events he witnessed there.  One puzzling—not to mention profoundly troubling—aspect of his report was the following [emphasis mine]:

Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop  —  The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist.  Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns.  None.  No hickory nuts, either.  Then he went out to look for himself.  He came up with nothing.

GOP Looks to Young Louisiana Gov. Jindal as Its Own Version of Obama  —  Jindal May Prove To be Republicans' Version of Obama  —  CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Last weekend, 18 days after Barack Obama decisively defeated their candidate for president, a mostly Republican crowd of self-described …

He's Not Black  —  He is also half white.  —  Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black.  —  We call him that — he calls himself that — because we use dated language and logic.  After more than 300 years and much difficult history, we hew to the old racist rule: Part-black is all black.

At 5am I found a bottle of vintage Cristal champagne.  ‘No, no!’ cried the head waiter, ‘Those are the wrong glasses’ … If Briton Nick Hayward had finished his meal at the Taj Mahal hotel 30 seconds later, he would have been caught in the gunfire.  —  ‘I was very lucky,’ he said.

A Penny for My Thoughts?  —  I visited the future, and it was wearing a bow tie and calling itself “Thomas Edison.”  —  The newspaper business is not only crumpling up, James Macpherson informed me here, it is probably holding “a one-way ticket to Bangalore.”

Stop Covering Up And Kill The CRA  —  Regulation: The Community Reinvestment Act is to blame for the financial crisis, but it so powerfully serves Democrats' interests that they'll do anything to protect it — including revising history.  —  Read More: Business & Regulation

U.S. ‘Black Friday’ Sales Rise 3%, ShopperTrak Says  —  A A A  —  Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) — U.S. holiday retail sales increased 3 percent yesterday from a year earlier, the smallest gain for a “Black Friday” in three years, research firm ShopperTrak RCT Corp. said.

The ongoing disgrace of NBC News and Brian Williams  —  (updated below - Update II)  —  The New York Times's David Barstow, whose excellent and aggressive journalism led to the uncovering last April of the Pentagon's domestic propaganda program involving network “military analysts,” …