STILL MORE ON VIDEO: I got this direct-burning DVD recorder to go with the Sony HD camcorder, and yesterday I burned DVDs from the Thanksgiving videos. It works fine — easy setup, simple menus, etc. You can direct-burn an AVCHD disk that will play on Blu-Ray players, or you can burn ordinary DVDs that will play on any player. But to do the latter, as best as I can tell, you have to go through the video out/in rather than a USB connection. My guess is that Sony didn’t want to spring for the processor horsepower necessary to turn AVCHD files into MPEGs on the fly, since it’s already in the camera. Not a major flaw, but a minor irritant. If anyone out there has one and I’m wrong about this, please let me know. I’ve scoured the not-especially-friendly manual.

THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE CONTINUES TO EXCEL: Despite Economy, Malls and Stores Jammed. I admire their courage and self-sacrifice. But will this continuous hard service produce a broken consumer army? There are already ominous signs of strain . . . .

MICKEY KAUS: “When you’ve got Nixon, make Nixonade!”

A LOOK AT THE INFLUENCE OF LIBERTARIANS IN AMERICAN POLITICS:

Card-carrying Libertarians are few and far between. Yet, seen as the guiding philosophy of a bloc of dissatisfied, independent-minded voters whose views align with Republicans on economics and Democrats on social issues, libertarianism is palpably gathering steam.

My favorite part is the reference to libertarians as “the Sith lords of American politics.” That wouldn’t be my first choice of Star Wars comparisons, but it’s better than “the C3POs of American politics,” which people would have probably said a few decades ago.

IT’S ROUGH OUT THERE, in the Iranian blogosphere.

IN AUSTRALIA, John Howard has conceded. Here’s a big roundup.

UPDATE: An observation: “Bush is now a rare survivor of the pre-9/11 western leaders’ club. Of his allies and opponents on the Iraq war, the latter have gone – Schroder, Chretien, Chirac – but so have the former – Aznar, Blair, Howard.” Well, a lot of time has passed, and Howard, like Blair, was in office well before Bush.

IS REP. ALLAN MOLLOHAN GETTING WORRIED? He’s certainly lawyered-up.

HEH: Of turkeys and pardons.

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST on the Nokia tablet PC, various readers suggest this from Asus, but it’s currently unavailable. Looks cool, though.

THE NEW SHAKERS: Jeez.

On the other hand, this explains why some people canonize Stalin, et al.

DAN SOLOVE: My impressions of Rachel Paulose.

NOW THAT’S JUST MEAN: “Eliot Spitzer of New York backpedaled like a Jets defensive back on his scheme to offer driver’s licenses to illegals, and the NY Times almost covered it.”

REPORTING ON black Friday shopping in New Jersey.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Adams complains:

That Amazon Black Friday sale looked great. I moved three items into my shopping cart. But when I returned to actually pay for them at 9pm, same day, sale still running — I was informed that one item had been repriced 25% higher, the other 40% higher, while sitting in my cart.

Imagine going to a department store for a sale, picking three items, and then having them repriced by a guy with a sticker gun while you were in the checkout line (though assured the sale is still running, just not so good for the items you chose anymore.)

Since there was no physical guy with a sticker-gun I could fell to the ground in my rage, I just deleted all items in my cart. “Saved” items from past days too. But of course Amazon will never know or feel the slightest discomfort.

Unless you let people know this is going on.

Consider ’em informed — er, assuming they read InstaPundit. I have had stuff in the cart go down before, but never up. But I seldom leave things there for longer than it takes to check out.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A bunch of shopping-disappointment complaints, involving Amazon and many other merchants. The “lightning deal” thing seems to be leaving some people unhappy — not sure if that was Bill Adams’ problem.

FRITZ SCHRANCK on air travel and congestion.

“HOW DARE YOU QUESTION HER!”

LAHOUD OUT in Lebanon.

BACK WHEN I REVIEWED THE NOKIA N800 INTERNET TABLET, I thought it was nice, but not quite there, adding: “This device is a generation or two away from being what it really wants to be. Give it a slide-out keyboard, more stable software, a slightly bigger screen, and WWAN capability and you’d have a go-anywhere Web device that would let me leave my laptop behind. The N800 isn’t there yet.”

Well, the Nokia N810 is looking a lot closer. More here. And a further review here. Still no EVDO, just wi-fi, but otherwise it’s pretty much a go-anywhere surfing and blogging tool. And it has GPS.

The iPhone kind of meets my description, too, but with no actual keyboard. I haven’t heard much about its use as a go-anywhere blogging tool — I know when Brendan Loy tried that, he found it very awkward.

UPDATE: Stephen Green emails:

Don’t worry about the keyboard on the iPhone. After a couple weeks of use it does what any well-designed input device does–it just disappears into a cloud of habit and muscle memory. But that doesn’t make the iPhone a blogging tool. Until Apple figures out how to add cut’n’paste to the multi-touch screen, then the iPhone isn’t for blogging. Period.

Not that you need new ways and places to blog, of course.

Well, no. Seems like adding cut and paste would be easy, though. And reader B.P. Monaco emails: “I own an iPhone (first version) and spend a lot of time blogging. It’s a great tech device, wonderful if you’re just surfing the net. However, when it comes to blogging on it, I found it to be an absolute nightmare.”

And a customer review — posted via the N810 — says that the N810 is an “iPhone killer.” Well, possibly. I think they’re different devices, with some overlap.

D.C.’S HANDGUN BAN AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ARMS: One hard question, and an answer.

WIRETAPPING UNIVERSITY NETWORKS for the MPAA.

TURNING THE TABLES ON AL QAEDA: Read the whole thing.

APPARENTLY, THEY SET THE BAR PRETTY LOW THESE DAYS, if these are supposed to be “blackmail photos.” Good grief.

THE CANDIDATES AND THEIR FOOD ISSUES, plus the New York Times’ photo editor’s preferences.

ILYA SOMIN on Ron Paul, racism, and federalism.

RUMSFELD TORTURE CASE thrown out.

CENSURING DIANNE FEINSTEIN? Somehow I had missed this.