It's back to work for me, here's a space for you.

The calendar says it's my birthday, so I'm off to do something different, like work out at the gym and go shoe-shopping. Here's a space for you - what's on your mind today?

• Jesus' General writes a letter.
• The Poor Man creates a cartoon.
• Arianna's Russert Watch
• Jane Hamsher on Daniel Schorr and Judith Miller
• Heretik on the Saint Patrick Four war protesters being found guilty only of lesser charges in Binghamton.
• TBogg on Ralph Nader

"It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap. We gotta get out while we can...."[Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run]

The New York Times:

.... as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.

Acknowledging that "being on the highway is a deathtrap," Mayor Bill White asked for military help in rushing scarce fuel to stranded drivers.

A bus carrying nursing home evacuees caught fire, killing 20.

Politics, hurricanes, crime, whatever's on your mind, here's a place to inform and vent.

Say Hello to the first official Daily Kos spin-off site, Street Prophets, about faith and politics. Markos of Daily Kos explains more about the site.

Instapundit and NZ Bear have come up with a non-partisan way for bloggers to help their states cut the fat in their budgets to fund the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

In a million years, I wouldn't have thought that a 9 month old computer would have a hard drive failure. But, my Dell desktop, which I love, did just that early this morning. After hours of trying to figure out the problem with Dell Tech support, being told to give up, they'll have a tech come over with a new hard drive covered by warranty next week, I had to face the issue of lost data - mostly Quicken stuff and billing - which is pretty critical. Not to mention, all my saved passwords to news sites, subscription services and software programs are gone. There's no solution, until I can bring the old, corrupted hard drive (a Maxtor) with its "code 7 failure" to a data recovery service next week, and decide whether it's worth the $500 to$1,000. they will charge to try and recover the old files.

In the meantime, I've hooked up the the Sony desktop that I used before the Dell, but it has not been updated in 9 months, so it's been many more hours updating Windows and virus and other software - and I have none of my current files.

Bottom line: I haven't felt like blogging, particularly since there's nothing in the news besides FEMA and Judge Roberts, both of which I'm kind of OD'd on... so feel free to take over.

Summer is definitely over. I have court at 8:30 and again at 2:00 and yet again at 3:30. On the plus-side, the weather in Denver is perfect, even driving from court to court is a pleasure and I have the best day job in the world. Also, my latest post is up on Huffington Post, and maybe TChris or Last Night in Little Rock will be around.

On the minus-side, I don't have a Blackberry or other means of posting when I'm away from my desk, so feel free to keep each other up-to-the-minute with news and your views. I'll be back tonight.

If you need something to get you started, check out Bill Maher, speaking to President Bush:

"On Your Watch, We've Lost Almost All Of Our Allies, The Surplus, Four Airliners, Two Trade Centers, A Piece Of The Pentagon And The City Of New Orleans”...

I'll be offline most of the day, if you'd like to take over, be my guest.

Time for a laugh:

Q: What is Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?

A: He doesn't really care how people get out of New Orleans.

And, Via Crooks and Liars, President Bush writes a note to Condi Rice advising of his need for a potty break.

Several people have e-mailed me this week to let me know the site is loading so slowly it's become a source of frustration. If you are having the same problem, please add a comment here. I am going to contact my hosting company to see if there is something they can do, but I'd like to get a handle on the size of the problem. Please be patient.

Say hello to CBS's new blog, The Public Eye. One of the bloggers there is Brian Montopoli, formerly of the Columbia Journalism Review. Brian was one of the bloggers with press credentials for the Democratic convention - and even though he hung out with us liberals, he strived to provide non-partisan coverage. He is an excellent choice for CBS, and I bet it's not long before we see him on the CBS evening news.