[APKhaos]

Jim,
Sorry to hear you have toasties in the harness. Not good.

You could isolate the entire circuit, but that would mean running new lines to all three points - not easy to do, and will scream 'shade tree' to anyone who sees it. Hang tough - there is light in your life soon.

Now that you appear to have a solid short to ground somewhere in this circuit, you can do some tracing with your DVM on Ohms.
The key to this is to isolate which section [or sections] of your failed circuit are going to ground.

The first step is to check that you are reading very low resistance from the circuit side of the fuse to ground - the short. Suggest you pull the bulbs that this circuit is serving for this test.

Nest step is to disconnect the wires at each of the lamps on thsi circuit in turn - testing for the short as you disconnect each lamp. What you are looking for is a failure in the lamp assembly itself - corrosion, mechanical damage, etc. Chech each wire for signs of burning - if you find a crispy you may well have found your fault.
BTW, the front trunk lapm is notorious for causing this kind of short - look there first!

Next step - as Warren suggests, a good first step is to pull the bulhead connectors - in order to prove that the harness from the trunk fuse box to the front running light is OK. With the bulkhead connectors isolated, test for the short again.

If it is gone, then the problem is rear of the bulkhead. If it is still there, the problem is between the fuse box and the front running lamp, or bulkhead connector, or both.

If the problem is forward of the bulkhead, then its time to strip the harness some more to locate the other burnt areas, or to take a deep breath and run new lines taped up to the harness. It's possible that the burn has carbonised the insulation on adjacent wires in the harness, so its best to go find it now - before the other shoe falls.

Hope this helps - you should have it nailed in no time!