YESTERDAY’S POST on the cheap and popular Flip Video Camera produced this email from Christopher Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal:

I LOVE the Flip. Bought one from Amazon several months back and I’m having a ball with it. I’m not interested in making Hollywood-quality movies, just recording events, and the Flip does that extremely well. And it’s true about the low-light quality. I tried it out in the back stacks of the library where I work, where there is very little light, and the result was outstanding. I first learned about it at InstaPundit so I guess a thank you is in order.

Glad it’s worked out.

THE ROAD TO 100 MPG: A report from the Automotive X-Prize, with video.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “The good news is, the weak dollar isn’t the catastrophe that some people seem to think it is. While it is falling, it will trigger capital outflow, but when it bottoms, US capital markets will become attractive to foreigners. Meanwhile, our export industries will get more competitive. . . . Psychologically, a weak dollar is a blow to our pride. But practically, it was going to have to happen, because Americans have been buying more than they sell for much too long.”

A UNITER, not a divider.

WILLIAM CREELEY on blocking JuicyCampus.com.

DANIEL DREZNER: The decline and split of the West?

DOES THE STATE DEPARTMENT NEED A Deferred Prosecution Agreement?

ANOTHER BIG Disaster-Preparedness List. Lots of interesting stuff here. There’s more (a lot more) to disaster preparedness than just buying things, but it’s true that anything you’re going to want to buy needs to be bought before the disaster. Still, you need to acquire skills and knowledge, not just stuff, in advance of a tornado, hurricane, earthquake, or whatever. (Here’s a roundup of some books on that subject). And for less cataclysmic disasters, this book is good.

BILL STUNTZ: “Like many who heard it, I was powerfully impressed by Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia this week. But I found the speech unsatisfying, because it all but ignores the issue that is central to racial division in twenty-first-century America: crime and criminal punishment. . . . While white fears of black crime are more reasonable than Obama admits, black rage at a discriminatory justice system is more justified than most whites understand.”

TOM STOPPARD ON 1968. “The year of the posturing rebel.”

Some of the more radical lefties seem to want to recreate it. Then again, posturing rebellion by faux-rebels has never gone completely out of style since.

UH OH: “Obama had his NAFTAGATE, now Hillary has hers.”

AN IMMIGRATION AGENT DEMANDS A SEX-FOR-GREEN-CARD SWAP:

The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.

“I want sex,” he said on the recording. “One or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex “now,” to “know that you’re serious.” And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.

Just think how things will be if we get national healthcare. “I want sex. One or two times. That’s all. You get your operation. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

SO WE MET CARDIOLOGIST-BLOGGER Dr. Wes Fisher for dinner as he passed through town. (He’s also the guy behind MedTees.com, which he runs with his wife Diane, a clinical psychologist. Here’s Helen modeling one of his t-shirts.) A fine time was had by all.

JACOB SULLUM: Why is Barack Obama afraid of drug decriminalization?

WHEN YOUR SPRING BREAK PARTYING INVOLVES DYNAMITE, you’re partying too hard.

EUGENE VOLOKH corrects Dahlia Lithwick on the Second Amendment. To me it says a lot about modern legal thinking that a right explicitly mentioned in the Constitution can somehow be characterized as “new” based solely on what the Supreme Court does.

JOHN KERRY: Black people, Muslims, whatever.

IT JUST GETS WORSE: McClatchy reports on Obama’s church:

Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation. Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama’s church.

Obama is giving us a “national conversation on race,” but mostly by letting a lot of white people realize just what circulates, unremarked, in the black community. (Via Gateway Pundit.)

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Spengler.

DON SURBER INTERVIEWS Don Surber. Topflight interviewer, interesting subject — it’s a winner!

FLEMMING ROSE RESPONDS to bin Laden’s latest threat. “What kind of civilization are we… if we refrain from mocking and ridiculing bin Laden and his followers?”

A pretty sorry one. Which, I fear, would suit some people fine.

NEW ULTRAPORTABLE LAPTOPS from Dell. Of course, to be really appealing, they’d have to come with Windows XP instead of Vista . . . .

JOHN STOSSEL, the lone libertarian.

A LOOK AT THE TAIWANESE ELECTIONS.

FROM KITHBRIDGE, an aggregated look at Obama/Wright blog coverage.

ABOUT THAT TIP YOU LEFT AT STARBUCKS. It may not have gone where you thought.