Midday Open Thread

• Would Sarah Palin like to have you visit Alaska? You betcha!

  Gov. Sarah Palin is personally inviting Americans from all over the country to visit her home state. Well, sort of. Letters bearing her picture, on letterhead that reads “Office of the Governor” and encouraging people to sign up for a free Alaska travel guide, have begun reappearing in mailboxes around the nation as part of an appeal from the Alaska Travel Industry Association.

  Gawd, will this woman ever get out of our lives?

• Today is the last day to vote for Burnt Orange Report's David Mauro to receive a college scholarship.
• Another repudiation of a Bush administration policy:

  A federal judge has ordered the release of five Algerian terror suspects who have been held without charges almost seven years at Guantanamo Bay.

  U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said Thursday that the five men could not be held indefinitely as enemy combatants.

• For the serious political junkie only: watch the Minnesota senate race recount here.
• Now that he's successfully led the country into its worse economic crisis in decades, George Bush is willing to sign an extension of unemployment benefits. Now watch this drive.
• Beau Biden, the son of Vice President-elect Joe Biden, deployed to Iraq yesterday.
• Bill O'Reilly really is a dope...from November 18th:

  "Factor Follow-up" segment tonight: Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman was certified the winner in his race against Al Franken today. Coleman won by a mere 215 votes. But about 400,000 voters in Minnesota rejected Franken, while voting for Obama. They crossed the ticket to support Coleman, a stunning statistic.

• Oh brother:

  Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” has signed a deal to write a new book entitled “Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream.” To capitalize on his recent fame, Wurzelbacher is planning to release it on Dec. 1 – less than two weeks from now. The New York Times reports that the book “will address Mr. Wurzelbacher’s ideas about American values.”

• Google.org has published a "how it works" and a letter to Nature in advance of publication to describe how their flu trends search engine works. An excellent blog write-up from Technology, Health and Development is here. For a previous Daily Kos write-up on google.org see Google.org: A Better Way For Philanthropy?

  Click here to track flu trends in your state. - DemFromCT

• The Free Republic and other conservative blogs have turned that college scholarship contest into an ideological proxy battle. Okay, if they want to try to sabotage Burnt Orange Report writer David Mauro's chances for the award, then that just gives us further incentive to help one of our own win the scholarship.

  The contest ends tonight, so take ten seconds and vote for David Mauro -- kos.