Christopher Caldwell writes on the Ground Zero mosque in the Financial Times:

There is gloom enough to satisfy Eeyore. The president promised the country that his massive $787 billion stimulus package and other spending would reduce the unemployment rate to 8 percent; with the loss of 131,000 jobs in July, it is stuck on 9.5 percent, and would be higher still had more than one million workers not withdrawn entirely from the work force since April.

From Sam Stein (former member of Journolist!), in the Huffington Post:

Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam won yesterday's GOP primary for governor in Tennessee, the Tennessean reports:

Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments about U.S. interests in the resolution of competing claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea caused Beijing to lash out at what it perceived as unwarranted U.S. intervention in a matter outside its concern.

The cover of Time magazine shows the shocking image of a young Afghan girl named Aisha who was disfigured when her husband sliced off her nose and ears.

Thomas Joscelyn reported on the State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2009, and noted Iran's support for terrorist groups, including the Taliban in Afghanistan.

CNN's Peter Hamby reports the holidays will be a little less crazy for political junkies next year:

The Republican National Committee on Friday passed an amendment that would shift the 2012 presidential calendar to later in the year and punish states that try to move up their nominating contests.

The New York Sun editorializes:

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center argues persuasively that the Ground Zero mosque shouldn't be built so close to the site of the worst terrorist attack in our country's history:

President Obama’s Gitmo problem (that is, his inability to shut the facility down, even though he wanted to do so in just one year) is in many ways a Yemen problem. The Yemeni detainees accounted for roughly 40 percent of the Gitmo population when Obama took office.

When Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, some argued that what really mattered in the decision were Walkers findings of fact--which supposedly prove there is no rational basis for keeping marriage a union between a man and a woman.

At Ricochet, John Yoo explains the trouble with Walker's "factual" findings:

Only days after Israel took the unprecedented step of agreeing to participate in a UN investigation on the Gaza flotilla incident, assurances given by the Obama administration have proven to be empty.

Should the press publish the names of American officials who have interrogated captured al Qaeda operatives?

Megan McArdle on the new jobs numbers: