White Space Killing CSS Layout

After a longer-than-I-want-to-admit session of reconciling CSS rendering problems where <li> items were mysteriously 3px lower in Webkit (Chrome& Safari) and Internet Explorer, but not Mozilla (FF4 beta 3), I was reminded, and hopefully will remember this time that:

• item 1
• item 2
• item 3
• item 4

<ul>
    <li>item 1</li>
    <li>item 2</li>
    <li>item 3</li>
    <li>item 4</li>
</ul>

on all browsers, is not equal to:

• item 1
• item 2
• item 3
• item 4

<ul><li>item 1</li><li>item 2</li><li>item 3</li><li>item 4</li></ul>

Friggin' white spaces with a non-zero height pushing my items down. Bah!