[jQuery] Problem with DOM manipulation in IE

[Jon Loyens]

I'm trying to populate set of lists via some information loaded from
some JSON on $(document).ready.  The following code works fine in FF
but breaks in IE:

function insertItem(item)
{
    var li = $("<li>").html("Item: ");
    $(<span>).html(item.text).appendTo(li);
    return li;
}

.
.
.

function buildList()
{
   // psuedo code here
    for ( each item in list )
    {
       $("#mylist").insertItem(item);
    }
}

In FF/Safari the above code works perfectly fine.  In IE the above
code returns an item with only the <li> element but not the inserted
span element.  Why?

Can someone help me with this problem?