Q:

IE image map remains clickable behind another div

I have an Image Map of the United States. When you click on a state, the map fades out and a map of that state appears with an image map of the area codes in the state. In Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, the state map becomes clickable and the United States map becomes unclickable until you close the sate popover. However in Internet Explorer, the United States map remains clickable through the state popover, and I cannot click on any area codes.
Here is my javascript:
$(document).ready(function() {
        $("#usMap").html();
        $("#usMap").load("/includes/us_map.inc");
    });

    $('area').live('click', function() {
        var state = $(this).attr("class");

        var statePopover = $("<div id='statePopoverContainer'><a id='popoverCloseButton'>Close State</a><div id='statePopover'></div></div>");
        $("#usMap").append(statePopover);
        $("#usMapImage").fadeTo('slow', 0.2);

        $("#statePopover").load("/includes/stateMaps/" + state + ".html");
    });

    $("#popoverCloseButton").live('click', function() {
        $("#statePopoverContainer").remove();
        $("#usMapImage").fadeTo('slow', 1);
    });

I am loading the map on document ready because if you don't have Javascript, something else appears.
And here is the CSS for  all things related:
div#usMap {
        width:676px;
        height:419px;
        text-align: center;
        position: relative;
        background-color:#333333;
        z-index: 1;
    }

    img#usMapImage {
        z-index: 1;
    }

    area {
        cursor: pointer;
    }

    div#statePopoverContainer {
        width:100%;
        height:100%;
        z-index:5;
        position:absolute;
        top:0;
        left:0;
    }

    a#popoverCloseButton {
        position:absolute;
        right:0;
        padding-right:5px;
        padding-top:5px;
        color:#FFFFFF;
        cursor:pointer;
    }

You can see this happening at http://dev.crewinyourcode.com/
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A:

After an hour of tweaking and un-tweaking, IE conditionals and unbinding my jQuery events...all I had to do was change $("area").live() to $("map#countryMap area").live() and it works perfectly.

