I'll be out for the afternoon so I may miss the Tookie clemency announcement. Here's a place to discuss it, or anything else you want.

Kevin Drum has an interesting post up about our secret laws. Arthur covers torture. Avedon Carol of Sideshow has her usual excellent roundup of the blogoshpere, as does Memeorandum.

I've got miles to go before I blog...here's a space for you.

Check out the holiday gift guide from Saturday Night Magazine. If you scroll down, you will see they feature the TalkLeft 4th Amendment Subway Tote and Wonkette's tee-shirt.

You can get your tote here. (Click here for larger version). Let the 4th Amendment speak for you as you hand your bag over for a search by a subway or airline security guard. It's a silent protest and reminder to authorities that you consider searches without reasonable suspicion or probable cause to be an infringement of your privacy rights. They make great gifts.

• Bin Laden appears, at least as of three months ago, to be alive and well.
• Saddam refused to attend his trial today, which is now adjourned until December 21.
• Tookie Williams' lawyers will be meeting with Gov. Arnold S. tomorrow.
• Patrick Fitzerald was back at the grand jury this week.
• It's the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

I've got some work to do, so feel free to chat about these or your own topics.

And you can vote once a day in the weblogs awards. TalkLeft is coming in second to Americablog for now, so your votes really count.

Check out these postage stamps with your favorite liberal bloggers on them. They'd be great to send out your Holiday greeting cards.

The stamp created for me is here. (Click on the larger version to see it better.) Thanks to Bozartz for creating them.

Kevin at Wizbang is running his third annual weblog awards. (These are different from the Koufax awards in that there are many conservative blogs competing with liberal blogs.)

Kevin's got more categories this year and more liberal choices within the categories. Voting began today, and there is a real-time voting tally so you can see who's winning at any given point. Among the categories and finalists:

• Crooks and Liars is up for best video blog
• Raw Story is up for best media/journalist blog
• Firedoglake and Digby are up for Best of the Top 250 blogs
• Atrios, Daily Kos, HuffPo and Kevin Drum are up for best blog
• Think Progress is up for best group blog
• Jesus' General and Fafblog are up for Most Humorous blog
  
• Sentencing Law and Policy and How Appealing are up for best law blog
• and TalkLeft, TBogg and AmericaBlog are up for best liberal blog

So please, take a moment to go over and vote. You can vote once a day in each category. Voting ends December 15.

The day job beckons, so I will only be checking in sporadically until Tonight. The conversation is your's until then. Enjoy.

Say Hello to News Unfiltered, a project by Daou Report's Peter Daou and U.S. Newswire, bringing you the top press releases of the day in blog format. I love it, it's a "bookmark right now" type of site.

I wish I could spend the day here blogging, but I can't. Here's an open thread so you can have your say.

Update: Tuesday's over, thread closed.

TalkLeft has a yearly Thanksgiving ritual of giving thanks to bloggers and others who most have helped and supported our efforts during the year. In compiling this year's list, I was surprised, because it's the first time that there are mainstream media organizations and writers to thank. It's clear that the MSM has embraced blogs this year, and that's a great thing for both blogs and the public.

I hope readers will check out every one linked below - and consider giving thanks to your favorite bloggers by putting a little something in their tip jars.

First, thanks to the bloggers who have sent the most traffic to TalkLeft:

• Crooks and Liars
• Atrios
• Daily Kos
• Raw Story
  

Is anyone else trying to get ready for Thanksgiving? Here's an open thread with open topics until I get back this afternoon.

Norwegianity and Sideshow have good roundups of topics today, from Murtha and the Republican's transparent stunt of vote on his Iraq pull-out measure, to the immigration raid that busted 125 undocumented workers of a Wal-Mart sub-contractor to Diebold and California. Here's an open thread to discuss these and all other topics of interest to you.