[jquery] jQuery rotate/transform

It's because you have a recursive function inside of rotate. It's calling itself again:

// Animate rotation with a recursive call
setTimeout(function() { rotate(++degree); },65);

Take that out and it won't keep on running recursively.

I would also suggest just using this function instead:

function rotate($el, degrees) {
    $el.css({
  '-webkit-transform' : 'rotate('+degrees+'deg)',
     '-moz-transform' : 'rotate('+degrees+'deg)',  
      '-ms-transform' : 'rotate('+degrees+'deg)',  
       '-o-transform' : 'rotate('+degrees+'deg)',  
          'transform' : 'rotate('+degrees+'deg)',  
               'zoom' : 1

    });
}

It's much cleaner and will work for the most amount of browsers.