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:

We haven't had one of these for a while in the blogosphere, but our bloggers' lunch with Bill Clinton seems to have brought out the worst in a lot of people.

Tonight, it's Ann Althouse and her second attack on Jessica of Feministing. Jessica responds here. Read all the comments, too. And this post at Salon. I'm firmly with Jessica on this one.

Jessica's sin, according to Althouse: She is posing in the picture, you can see she has breasts, and she resembles a rather famous intern who became rather famously involved with Bill Clinton.

I was there. I think Jessica turned sideways because we were packed in like sardines. At one point I was right on top of Chris Bowers -- he had to ask me to move forward -- when I did, I probably bumped into Jessica. But even if Jessica did turn to show a flattering pose, so what? Why is Ann being so catty about it? I sat across from Jessica at the roundtable. She did absolutely nothing to call attention to herself. She was sitting directly opposite President Clinton. She did nothing flirtatious, nothing to try and grab his attention, she was just like all of us, engrossed in the conversation.

Now, on to the next blogfight which is taking place in the comments at Steve Gilliards' NewsBlog, to his post asking why there weren't any minority bloggers at the lunch. In his post, Steve, a journalist, says he wouldn't have gone even if he had been invited. Reporters don't do these kind of events. Fair enough, I'm not an impartial journalist and don't have that training, so I'll take him at his word. Liza at Culture Kitchen (whom I really like and have sincere respect for, we spent an evening together at a club in Amsterdam) is even more upset about the lack of minority bloggers. She wrote Peter Daou about it and received this response. I'll agree. There should have been a greater attempt made to include minority bloggers. But I think it was unintentional. I will bet that when there's another such event, and there will be, whether it's by President Clinton or another Democrat, there will be a greater effort to include a more diverse group of bloggers.

I have a brief due and other work-related stuff. Here's an open thread for you today.

Why would I fly to New York for a day? Because former President Bill Clinton invited a group of progressive bloggers (who happen to be Democrats) in for a 2 hour roundtable meeting at his Harlem office. It was awesome. More later, including a list of all the bloggers there (and yes, even the TL kid was there, thrilled at the opportunity.)

Bill Clinton, Peter Daou, Jeralyn Merritt

Bill Clinton and Bloggers

Criminal defense lawyers take note: He's far better on our issues than we thought while he was President, from mandatory minimums, to drug courts to restoring the right to vote to former offenders. I'm totally impressed.

More later, time to board the plane. I'll have lots more pictures up tonight as will all the bloggers there. I'll also update with a list of the bloggers.

First Update:

I'm headed to the airport and won't be back to a computer until tonight. Here's a place for you to discuss whatever is on your mind.

I'm headed to the airport -- I will be on a plane every day between today and Tuesday Sept. 12 -- including the dreaded Sept. 11 anniversary. I'll be posting, and pushing your comments through, just a little less frequently.

So, pull up a chair, what's on your mind?

There are still problems with the comments on TalkLeft. Here's what's happening. Since I haven't been able to restore the comment template, the comments are still open to all. But, many are being directed to the "junk comment" screen and being held. They are mixed in with real junk comments -- which since comments are now open -- now approach 200 an hour. I have to log into the junk comments, find your real comments and unjunk them so they appear on the site, while deleting the junk ones. As you can imagine, this takes a tremendous amount of my time.

In a word, so long as you don't post as "anonymous," your comments will appear, they just may not be instantaneous. I am not filtering for content, point of view, or anything besides name-calling, profanity, links not in html format and the like.

I'm off to Omaha for court. I'll be stopping in to post from the airport and hotel, but there's proably a lot going on I'll miss. Here's a place to weigh in. Happily, I think this is my only trip for the next month.

Please be patient with the comments. The site is being rebuilt as we speak, and should be complete by the end of the week. Until Friday, I'll be hand-approving comments as I have time to log in to the site.

by TChris

Who works on Labor Day? Baseball players and a ton of other people. Those who aren't stuck at work can read the official (i.e., boring) History of Labor Day at the Department of Labor's website. The Department of Labor, you will be reassured to see, is "in the 21st century." The rest of the administration should try to catch up.

Livelier versions of Labor Day's origin can be found here and (surprisingly) here.

If you aren't working today (or if you're at work but slacking), here's a place to converse.

Here's an open thread to keep you going. Comments are open, if you don't see your's, it may be in the "junk" folder on MT, and I'll be clearing them a few times a day in batches over the weekend.

Also check out the great sites on the right on our blogroll. And check back in case TChris or LNILR or Big Tent Democrat has something to say...no promises, it being a holiday and all, but you never know.

It's 50 degrees in Denver and 41 in Aspen. It will be a chilly weekend. But the music will keep us warm. Besides, I never miss a chance to hear this guy. Here's the full roster.

Here's a montage of past years.

Have a great holiday, see you soon.

Matt Yglesias is leaving the TPM conglomerate and returning to solo blogging at his own site.

I've been a big fan of Matt's since he began blogging in 2002 while still an undergraduate. I followed him to American Prospect, where he wrote as a staff writer and for Tapped. For no reason in particular, I didn't follow him on to TPM, but now that he's going back to his own site, I'll be a daily reader again.

Update your bookmarks, and Welcome Back, Matt.