SMALL RETAILERS FEEL SHARPER PINCH. “Although the recession has been a struggle for all U.S. retailers, there is evidence that it has been especially difficult for the nation’s smaller, independent retailers. With Americans cutting back drastically on their spending, some stores have lost business as shoppers have turned to cheaper discount chains, while others have found that their customers have simply gone without the kind of discretionary items some small retailers sell.”

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: The Strong Horse vs. My Little Pony.

OBAMA ASKS FEDERAL WORKERS TO SACRIFICE — By 0.4 percent! “Citing the current economic recession — and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks eight years ago — President Obama says he will use emergency powers to cut the programmed across-the-board January increase in federal employees’ pay from 2.4 percent to 2.0 percent, according to a letter he sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Monday.” Given that lots of people in the private sector — and even in state and municipal goverments — are facing no raise at all, or actual pay cuts, I don’t think this will impress many folks out there.

UPDATE: A federal employee reader who asks that I not use his name writes: “Also note — that 2.0% is just the base increase. Once subjected to locality adjustments (all of them adjusted upward), that 2.0% becomes more like 3.5%. Last year the 2.9% increase in the general schedule ended up being in the neighborhood of a 4.2% increase for most working in the northeast (D.C included).”

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Oh, grotesque! So-called Kennedy seat. Who calls it that? I don’t. I hope you don’t.”

STEPHEN GREEN’S HAIR OF THE DOG: Don’t Google “Secretary of State” + “Angry” Without Safe Search On.

TRAILER PARK: Trailers for Whiteout, Ninja Assassin, and The Book of Eli.

BEYOND THE BIOPSY: A tiny monitor for cancer.

The reader who sent the link writes: “Do you think Obamacare will help or hinder the funding for similar projects?” I’m pretty sure the answer is “hinder.”

IT’S LIKE THEY THINK THEY’RE ROYALTY: Note: A Seat in Congress Isn’t a Lifetime Appointment. “So the government is a bunch of Nazis when you’re one of the people, and then when you win a position in the government, it’s the people who are the Nazis. Nazi see, Nazi do!”

DOES HAWAII HAVE A RACISM PROBLEM?

Celia Padron went on a Hawaiian vacation last year, lured by the prospect of beautiful beaches and friendly people. She, her husband and two teenage daughters enjoyed the black sand beach at Makena State Park on Maui. But a Hawaiian girl accosted her two teenage daughters, saying, “Go back to the mainland” and “Take your white ass off our beaches,” says Padron, a pediatric gastroenterologist in New Jersey.

When her husband, 68 at the time, stepped between the girls, three young Hawaiian men slammed him against a vehicle, cutting his ear, and choked and punched him, Padron says. Police officers persuaded the Padrons not to press charges, saying it would be expensive for them to return for court appearances and a Hawaiian judge would side with the Hawaiian assailants, the doctor contends. . . . With no known hate groups and a much-trumpeted spirit of aloha or tolerance, few people outside Hawaii realize the state has a racism issue. One reason: The tourism-dependent state barely acknowledges hate crimes. That makes it hard to know how often racial violence is directed at Caucasians, who comprise about 25% of the ethnically diverse state’s 1.3 million residents. Those who identify themselves as Native Hawaiian — most residents are of mixed race — account for nearly 20%.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a full report at the link. Interesting to see the SPLC taking notice.

UPDATE: Reader Bob Gailey writes:

Thanks to Clinton coming here and apologizing for the U.S.A overthrowing the Hawaiian Kingdom (there is another side to that story if one cares to look) and the subsequent movement by Senators Akaka and Inouye to push for Hawaiians getting their own government thanks to the Akaka Bill, it’s not surprisng the natives are getting bolder.

The story is also correct about the law enforcement over here. The judges and many on the police force are related to many of those who create problems here so when they were told it would be useless to press charges, they were correct. Again, thanks to Clinton for opening Pandora’s Box and Akaka keeping it from closing with the racist Akaka Bill…Hawaii will never be the same.

Another reader emails:

You betcha. The University of Hawaii had a ton of stuff posted on how Hawaii was for Natives and how non-natives should not have voting rights when I visited last year to lecture. I was warned by some freinds that lived there to be careful outside the cities and if I got into problems with a native, not to expect the police to take my side. There are lots of native only area, from what I was told, and despite the fact they are legally open to all, its not in reality. It was kinda like being a Christian in Saudi Arabia again. There is a strong secessionist movement that is very anti-white and wants the return of the old royality.

See what happens when the public schools stop pushing integration and instead push diversity. The SW next?

And SayUncle writes: “I spent my formative years there. Check out Kill Haole Day. Haole = derogatory term for whites.”

I’ve never vacationed in Hawaii — the Caribbean is closer and cheaper — but this doesn’t make me want to go anytime soon . . . .

THE FUTURE OF ENERGY: Solar panels built into roads?

GOVERNMENTS USING more political Internet filters. Luckily, that could never happen here.

A LIST OF fellowships for aspiring law professors.

MARKDOWNS ON XBOX 360 and Playstation 3.

DELL NON-HELL (CONT’D): Following up on my post from the other day, reader Bruce Hamilton emails:

Thought I’d give you another good non-hell story about Dell. My brother’s wife’s Dell had a failing hard drive. I’m the families tech support, so I braced myself for multiple phone calls from what to rescue from the drive (it was dying, but not dead yet), to how to how to install the new drive and reload Vista. The computer was still under warranty, so the tech support guy in India mailed her a new drive with no fuss (!). That’s a surprise because companies typically demand it be completely broken first. Dell’s tech support in India then gave her a call (!) (same guy!) to let her know the new drive was on the way. When it did the next day, they called her again (!) to ask if she needed help installing it! They didn’t know that I had already told her how to hook it up. Well, lo and behold, the drive already contained a complete copy of Vista and all the drivers. All she had to do was turn it on and it started installing itself! What great service!

Since I don’t have a web site, I thought I’d write them some email of praise for their great tech support and thoughtful pre-loading of Vista and drivers on the replacement hard drive, but I wasn’t able to do so. Their one failing is to supply an email address that you don’t need a computer number and service number to write to. Spent 20 minutes on the site looking for one… Oh well, I guess that’s one failure we can live with.

Maybe somebody there will see this.

UPDATE: And they did: Dell’s Richard Binhammer wrote to say thanks for the feedback. On the other hand, a lot of people wrote in with bad stories about Dell, most of them very lengthy. But here’s a short one from reader Stu Wagner: “I won’t waste your time with the details, but I bought a high-end desktop from Dell and spent approx. 20 hours on the phone trying to fix it over a 10-day period (long-distance to India), never got it fixed and they were out of ideas, told them to come and get it, I was done. It took them three months to pick up a $3000 desktop. I now have a MacPro and have been very happy with it.”

AUTOBLOG: GM using bankruptcy to shirk responsibility for clunker mercury switches? “The Mercury Policy Project issued a press release earlier this week saying that GM ‘has reneged on a commitment to safely discard those switches so they don’t pollute our air and water’ by not funding ELVS since bankruptcy. This means that ELVS doesn’t have enough money to dismantle and dispose of the hundreds of pounds of mercury in the clunkers, 54 percent of which are GM vehicles.” It hasn’t reneged — it’s just dumped that commitment on a company that doesn’t have the money to do anything.

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE in Malaysia.

BIZARRE, toilet-themed restaurant.

PRECISION VOTING: A new dispatch from Michael Yon. Plus this: “The helicopter shortage is causing crippling delays in troop movements.”

BEWARE THE shrinking polar bear.

IN THE MAIL: From Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. Some years ago I started on a project entitled Due Process When Everything Is A Crime. The gist was that since criminal law has expanded to the point where everyone is some sort of a felon, the real action is in the area of prosecutorial discretion — in choosing whom to prosecute from among this population-wide mass of the guilty — where, in fact, due process basically doesn’t apply. That suggests that maybe there should be some due-process limits on decisions to prosecute. I never got to it (my scholarly rangetop has so many back burners it must be a half-mile deep) but the issue continues to deserve attention

Along these lines, you might also see Gene Healy’s Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything, and Angela Davis’s (no, not that Angela Davis) Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor. It’s an issue that’s worthy of a lot of attention.

WILL OBAMA cut out on Afghanistan?

BUFFALO NEWS: Rangel Should Resign. “Charlie Rangel always has been an entertaining congressman. And not to damn him with faint praise, an effective one, too. But the New York City representative, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is having a problem with his numbers as they relate to the truth. He now can be neither entertaining nor effective. He needs to go. If he won’t, Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to push him.”

Wall Street Journal: The Absent-Minded Chairman. “When normal people happen to ‘find’ their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you’re Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth.”

Plus, Jail Time For Rangel?

RHUT ROH: Behold the fantasy Facebook ghost town! The New York Times meets those meddling kids. “In short a New York Times article, an article from The Newspaper of Record, is based entirely on a reporter talking to her chums.” Shocking, that.

HARRY REID: Kennedy’s death “going to help us” on health care.

I’d shout out “who killed the Kennedys?” but, well, you know. . . ..

GET A GRIP.