BOB CORKER: Obama Budget Proposal Contains Major Sleight-of-Hand. On carbon.

UPDATE: TaxProf: The Tax Provisions in Obama’s Budget.

ANOTHER UPDATE: CNN: Dem Blasts Obama’s Budget.

SPENDING AN AFTERNOON WITH the Kindle 2.

UPDATE: By the way, mine arrived today. Haven’t really had a chance to do much with it yet, but it seems very easy to use, and the screen is extremely readable. It’s also amazing how much thinner and lighter it is than the Kindle 1.

BOB KRUMM: “Barack Obama’s plans to hyper-inflate the government bubble while he taxes the rich at confiscatory levels, is so certain to collapse the economy that I can only conclude that he is a brilliant Rovian plant whose purpose is to finally drive a stake into the heart of the era of big government.”

PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET. Heh.

“CULTURE OF CORRUPTION” ALIVE AND WELL. And the piece doesn’t even mention Chris Dodd or John Murtha.

PUTTING OIL SHALE OFF LIMITS? Interior Decision on Oil Shale Locks Away American Energy Resource Larger than Total Reserves of Middle East. Seems like a lousy decision to me.

LIKE OSCARS FOR YOUR KITCHEN: The 2009 Housewares Design Awards.

HOW HOLLYWOOD ruins novels. They do it so much, it’s only news when they don’t.

A BRIDGE TO THE 20TH CENTURY: James Joyner says Republicans are stuck in the past:

I’m writing this from the CPAC convention and judging from the speakers, there’s not a whole lot of recognition of the need to update the intellectual platform to accomodate a changed era. It’s as if Jimmy Carter’s still in the White House and Roe vs. Wade was just handed down.

The Democrats, meanwhile, think it’s 1932 and are trying for a New Deal rerun. It’s natural to want to repeat past successes, but . . . this is the present, not the past.

POCKET ROCKET: A 300 hp Ford Focus.

RED-LIGHT CAMERAS: Killing commerce?

REMEMBER THE HOUSE BANK SCANDAL? “Banks that are owned by governments will be run to benefit politicians.”

REASON TV: Return to the Gulag. “In 2004 and 2006, Utley, a well-known journalist, embarked upon a search to learn of his father’s fate. This documentary traces Utley’s journey through former labor camps and cities in northern Russia and his final uncovering of the horrible truth at the dreaded camp city of Vorkuta within the Artic Circle.”

REALCLEARMARKETS: Should we let California go bankrupt?

MORE THOUGHTS ON racial attitudes and Bobby Jindal.

REMEMBER WHEN THEY PROMISED “THE MOST ETHICAL CONGRESS EVER”? House Kills Effort to Investigate Lobbyist-Lawmaker Ties. “The House voted Wednesday to kill a resolution calling for an ethics investigation into potential quid pro quo between lobbyist campaign donations and lawmakers. . . . The firm, which has contributed millions to politicians in the last decade, has close ties to senior Democratic appropriators including Reps. John Murtha D-Pa., and Pete Visclosky,D-Ind. The FBI raided PMA’s headquarters in November and is investigating the group’s founder and president, Paul Magliochetti, a former Murtha aide.”

UH OH: MIT Study Says Cellulosic Ethanol Could Have “Unintended” Environmental Consequences.

I’VE BEEN MEANING TO WRITE SOMETHING about the Supreme Court’s Hayes case, but I’ve been both busy and sick. But Brian Doherty has some thoughts. I agree that it’s not really a gun-rights case. I’m inclined to think that the Court got it wrong — that, particularly where an enumerated right is concerned, criminal statutes that burden it should be strictly construed with ambiguity resolved in favor of freedom rather than regulation — but I don’t see this as a huge deal. I’m going to look at it more closely when I turn back to the piece on post-Heller cases that Brannon Denning and I are writing for Hastings, but that won’t be for a little while.

THE HILL: Pelosi Tosses Cold Water On Renewing Assault Weapon Ban. Hmm. (Via SayUncle).

THIS IS INTERESTING: Gun Amendment Impacts DC Voting Debate. “Ensign of Nevada claims to have introduced the amendment due to the district’s tendency to enact ‘onerous’ and ‘unconstitutional’ anti-gun regulations. He produced a chart displaying how DC’s tough gun laws have done nothing to reduce violent crime over the years. Coming as it does while the national debate is heating up suggests we’re in a shooting war now over the immediate future of changes to gun regulation in America.”