The TL mom fell at her skilled nursing facility last night and fractured her hip. At 83 with Parkinson's and dementia, it's difficult. But, she just came through surgery and they said it went well. They've put a pin in her hip and were able to do it with a spinal anaesthetic instead of general. So I'll be hospital blogging on and off through the weekend, as my wireless connection holds up.

I'm sure I'll miss some news, so here's a place for you to comment away.

Update: Eric Muller posts an apology and acknowledgment that he was mistaken about the photo. I'll just say this. Lawyers, myself included, generally are left-brain. We don't know when a photo is photo-shopped or real-- we don't have the artistic ability to discern between the two. I honestly believe Eric thought the photo was real. He is to be credited for apologizing once its falsity was called to his attention.

UPDATE, 3:00 p.m.: It appears that I was mistaken when I linked to the picture on flickr below, which I believed to be a picture of Michelle Malkin. I regret my error, and I apologize to Michelle Malkin for it. She has asked that I leave the post up -- indeed, she has reprinted it -- and so I will do as she wishes.

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It's not even noon and we already have our Friday night blog fight that promises to go all weekend. It's Michelle Malkin vs. Eric Muller of Is that Legal , with a little Wonkette thrown in for good measure..

UNC Law Prof Eric Muller and Wonkette posted a picture he found on a Flickr site allegedly of Michelle Malkin on their websites. Eric wanted to show her hypocrisy for trashing a woman scantily dressed in her latest column.

Only the picture was photo-shopped by someone and is not Michelle. Now, Michelle is filing a complaint with UNC about Eric, saying it's gone too far. And she's asking for help identifying the flickr poster. Allah at Hot Air (another Malkin site) has more on the photo-shopping aspect.

Rudy Giuliani's friends may be his undoing. First, Bernie Kerik, the subject of a federal wiretap investigation who has already pleaded guilty to a minor charge. Then Bernie surfaces in the Jeanine Pirro bugging investigation, and now, according to the New York Times:

The politics of the Pirro investigation, which was disclosed on Wednesday, seemed more tangled yesterday. Two lawyers with knowledge of the inquiry said that subpoenas had been issued to one current and one former employee of Giuliani Security and Safety, a division of the consulting firm founded by former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

A third man, who works at the company, has been interviewed by F.B.I. agents as part of the inquiry, the lawyers said. All three men were very close to Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, whom Ms. Pirro consulted in the summer of 2005 about secretly taping her husband, Albert. In the conversations, which were recorded by authorities and detailed in reports on WNBC-TV, Mr. Kerik indicated at one point that he had asked a contact at Mr. Giuliani's firm to find him a recording device.

Mr. Giuliani, who appointed Mr. Kerik police commissioner and has been close to him, is in the midst of deliberations about whether to run for president in 2008.

Naturally, Rudy dumps on Jeanine:

Update: Never mind, they didn't move the site tonight after all. Comment away.

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TalkLeft's hosting company advises that it is moving the site to a faster server tonight. This means that once the move begins, your comments will go down the comment hole until the move is complete and your browsers are redirected to the new site. I will put an update here when the move is complete.

Tomorrow, and after that, you should clear your caches and make sure you are redirected to the new server, or your comments will still go down the comment hole.

I will have no way of retrieving comments posted on the old server after the move. Again, this is separate from the move to Scoop from Movable Type. That is progressing, and we're at the point of testing the pages. When enough bugs are ironed out, we'll make that switch and the commenting problems will be forever gone.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

It's my birthday and I'm taking the day off from both my day job and blogging. Not because I have something special to do, but because I can and I want to.

I don't particularly feel like saying how old I am, I'd just note that Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Tuesday Weld, Bruce Springsteen and Bill and Hillary Clinton are older than me. But not by much.

If you have no reason to take the day off, here's some space for you to vent.

Amanda Across America visits Atrios in Philly.

TalkLeft went down this morning for a few minutes. The hosting company says they are moving it to a new server tonight after 9pm ET. If you have difficulty reaching it after that, clear your cache and refresh. Site moves usually take about 48 hours for the glitches to go away.

This is separate from the redesign to Scoop which will fix the commenting problems. That redesign is taking longer than the Scoophost folks expected and it has to be tested. I'll keep you posted.

While I'm still unpacking boxes from my move, and TChris is on the road, here's some space for you to discuss whatever's on your mind.

The test site for Scoop should be done today and I hope to be playing with it this weekend so that it can go live next week and we can be done with the comment problems on TalkLeft.

Thanks again for your patience...

I'm moved into my new place, Comcast and Qwest just left so I'm finally back online with tv again. I haven't read a paper or watched a news report since Sunday, so I'm quite a bit behind the curve. There are many comments to go through as well as two work days of voice-mail and hundreds of e-mails. I must have 100 boxes to unpack yet and my hands are already raw. It was no different moving down the street than it's been in the past to move across the city. It wasn't even cheaper.

I love my new place though, and I'm thrilled I won't have to go through this again for quite some time.

Today is moving day for me. I'll be losing my tv, telephone and high speed internet connection until Wednesday....and that's assuming Comcast and Qwest perform as agreed.

A huge thanks to TChris who will be posting here and perhaps Big Tent Democrat and Last Night in Little Rock. I'll be on WWAN every few hours to push your comments through, so I hope you'll check in.

The site move to Scoop is progressing, ScoopHost says they'll have a test site up by Thursday. I'm hoping that will solve the commenting problem and by next week TalkLeft will be faster and easier for commenters than ever.

In the meantime, feel free to chat here. I'll be back as soon as I get a working computer and online access at my new home.

And for those of you with a residence move in your future, don't forget to leave a few items of silverware and a towel or two out on your last night. I ate my take-out dinner with a 1/4 teaspoon I found left in a drawer and while I remembered to put a change of clothes, shampoo and some makeup aside, I forgot all about a towel for the shower. I had to go to the new house and bring one back.

I'm moving my house Monday and Tuesday. I'm only going 1/2 block but it's still a huge ordeal, not to mention I'll be without high speed internet, cable tv and telephone service for a few days.

I do have a laptop with WWAN that allows me to connect without a hotspot, so I'll be logging on to push any stuck comments through, but my content may be light. TChris and Big Tent Democrat may stop in, so check back.

Have I mentioned how much I hate moving?

Some things to read today if you're online:

• Matt Yglesias:

As the President readies himself to go to the map for his right to order torture in violation of America's laws and international commitments, it's worth putting this in some context.

• The Talking Dog interviews Dr. Steven Miles, medical professor at the U. of Minnesota, and author of "Oath Betrayed" discussing medical complicity in torture, prisoner abuse, et al, in the war on terror.

• Law Professor Jordan Paust's plea to Congress urging that minimum due process guarantees under customary international law must not be denied when Congress attempts to articulate forms of procedure for new US military commissions

• A report in the San Francisco Chronicle about the interesting make-up of the California lethal injection team members.

• Warren Strobel and John Walcott on how Bush is gearing up for an attack on Iran -- based once again on faulty intelligence: