FORGET THE ELECTIONS: The really important news from Israel is Bar Raphaeli on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover!

SO I ASKED ABOUT THE KINDLE 2 EARLIER, and various readers offered their advice. (Or noted that you can get InstaPundit via the Kindle). Most people were positive — Kindle-owners generally liked ’em. Reader Jamie McArdle (no relation to Megan) writes:

My husband got me a Kindle for my birthday last Sept. It’s obviously thicker, possibly heavier, doesn’t hold as much as the Kindle 2, has clunkier buttons, doesn’t have the Read To Me feature… and I love love love it and take it everywhere. I don’t even take advantage of all the features it does have – podcasts, subscriptions to stuff, etc. – but I’ve gotten so dependent on it that when I do pick up a paper book (VERY rare!), it takes me a minute to change gears and realize that I have to physically move a piece of paper in order to turn the page.

My thought, originally, was to read everything possible on the Kindle and buy the books that turned out to be my favorites in hardcover; so far I’m just thrilled to have ALL my favorites with me at all times. (I also found a number of sources of literature that’s in the public domain and therefore cost nothing to download – not only a great boon, as I read alot, but also a mind-expander as I read things I might not have sought out in a library.) I still love a “real” book, but increasingly that feeling
is more theoretical than practical in my life!

On the other hand, reader Jeff Shultz writes:

I think I’ll stick with my Palm Tungsten TX w/Mobipocket instead.

Why?
1. Palm TX does more – it’s a fully featured PDA (w/o a phone). Kindle is a tricked out iPod with a digital book program included.
2. Palm TX is cheaper. Much cheaper.
3. Palm TX does not appear that it will snap in half if I look at it sideways (and the Rhinoskin case guarantees it). Seriously – that Kindle 2 looks very fragile.
4. Palm TX fits in pockets or on my belt. Kindle 2 is still too large. Did it really need the keyboard?
5. My Palm TX is expandable with SD cards.

Overall, the positive assessments from Kindle owners far outweighed the negative email.

SECOND CIRCUIT TO SECOND AMENDMENT: Drop Dead!

GEERT WILDERS BANNED FROM BRITAIN: “This is the first time ever that a parliamentarian from one EU country has been forbidden entry to another.” Plus, a warning: “Don’t think this couldn’t happen here. The new administration is even further to the multi-culti Left than Britain’s Labourites . . . not that there aren’t plenty of Republicans who would cheerfully go along with the silencing of ‘hurtful’ opinions.” People are willing to endorse all sorts of imaginative extensions of “international law” — but the plain language of Article 19 doesn’t seem to cut much ice.

But here it is, anyway: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

For all the talk of trying political leaders for violating international law, where’s the effort to put some teeth in this one?

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh writes:

I definitely do not support the British decision, and I would oppose any such decision by the U.S. government (not that I know of any in the wind). But I should note, for those who are interested in comparing European law and American law on free speech (as I sometimes do), that the American precedent on this question, Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972), generally allows the U.S. government to exclude speakers based on their political views.

That’s true, though it’s generally something of a scandal when it happens — and the United States, unlike Britain, hasn’t placed itself into a federal union with the speaker’s country. The analogy might be closer to Mississippi refusing entry to Martin Luther King . . . .

IN CASE YOU’RE NOT IN THE RUNNING FOR A CABINET SLOT: Lots of tax-related resources.

MORE UNHAPPINESS WITH OBAMA from a previous Bush critic:

Nobody doubts that there are legitimate state secrets — but the Bushies, and now apparently the Obama/Holder DOJ, thought that anything that makes the U.S. government look bad should be a state secret. The theory is that disclosing government crime or misconduct would embarrass the government in the eyes of the world, and whatever embarrasses the government in the eyes of the world harms national security. . . . Retroactive complicity is an important, and underexamined, moral category. People cover up for others for many reasons, not all of them bad. But the longer and more involved the cover-up becomes, the more deeply implicated you get — not only in the cover-up, but in the original misdeeds that you’re concealing as well. Little by little, you come to own the deeds yourself. Or they own you. It’s time to throw away the Ring, Frodo, before it hooks you and enslaves you.

I am less surprised than some by the Obama / Holder position. But then, I never thought we elected Frodo.

WHEN TO KEEP A SICK KID HOME.

SLASHDOT slashdots itself.

MICHAEL BELFIORE: Win a private spaceflight for $20.

SOUNDS LIKE A NICE WAY TO TRAVEL: Time Flies and Drinks Flow on German High-Speed Rail. I can’t imagine that it would be economic in the U.S. though. Plus, this downside: “You can argue that a fast train doesn’t necessarily mean a fast trip. The five-hour ride from Munich to Vienna would have taken three and a half in a car.”

ISRAELI ELECTIONS: Livni Beats Netanyahu: But Israeli Election Results Point Rightward.

SATELLITE VIEWS OF EGYPT via Geo-Eye.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Geithner: From Indispensable to Indecipherable. Why are we in such a hurry to give a lot of money to people who don’t seem to know what to do with it?

UPDATE: “Administration Officials Met With Laughter At Bailout Briefing.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Geithner — bringing the Huffington Post together in derision with Michelle Malkin. He’s a uniter, not a divider!

MEN’S RETRO-ADVENTURE: Penetrators, Destroyers, and Lone Wolves.

REASON TV: Are you the change you’ve been waiting for?

THE RUSH FOR OBAMA’S SIGNATURE: “The responsibilities of leadership have a way of broadening a president’s views. Democrats want to act before that happens.”

BETTER BATTERY PERFORMANCE through nanotechnology.

HIGH MILEAGE WITHOUT A HYBRID: The Jetta TDI. “Volkswagen’s new 2.0L turbodiesel, which was named one of Ward’s Auto’s Top 10 Engines of 2009, runs at just 1,800 rpm while cruising between 65 and 70 mph, so the Jetta TDI feels and sounds more like a car powered by a large, unencumbered V6. It’s relaxed and anything but buzzy, accomplishing all its work below a 4,500-rpm redline that ensures things never get hectic underhood. Also gone is the knock, clatter and clang characteristic of past diesels. The Jetta TDI is as quiet as a luxury car on the highway, and though the diesel can be heard while idling, the entire car is eerily vibration free while sitting at a stop light.”

BRINGING BACK MALAISE?

Personally, I prefer Baconnaise. Or, for the health-conscious, Baconnaise Lite. How about a bacon-based stimulus plan? Hey, wait, look at this . . . . The country is saved!

POLITICO: Left silent on Social Security, Medicare. The big spending we’re seeing now is sure to put additional downward pressure on entitlement benefits in coming years.

RESEARCH SHOCKER: Muslim study group surprised to find Alabamans don’t hate Muslims.

UPDATE: Indeed: “What Woldt discovered was not the prejudices of the small-town southern white American but instead the prejudices and stereotypes of contemporary leftist academia. Woldt expected to find prejudice not because she had already seen it but because her education indoctrinated her to expect it in others.”

SALESMAN IN CHIEF.

CONTROLLING BONE-FORMING CELLS through nanotechnology.

IN THE MAIL: From Hugh Hewitt, The War Against the West: Crucial Conversations with the Most Informed Experts About Our Enemies, Our Defenses, Our Strategy and Our Leaders in the Long War Against Islamist Extremism.

IMPRESSED ME NOT: Walter Shapiro on Obama’s Press Conference. “The president’s response to the first question from the Associated Press about the risks of sounding too apocalyptic about the economy ran (or, to be more accurate, crawled) for nearly 1,200 words–and ended with Obama saying ‘Okay’ with an implicit question mark as if he were requesting permission to keep on talking.” More thoughts here. “What was needed was brevity and what was delivered was decidedly long-winded, non-committal and flat.”