Order Your's Today

This is the first "Informed Citizen Guide" published by William, James & Co. It's called Untidy: The Blogs on Rumsfeld, and it tells the story of Donald Rumsfeld through the eyes of his blogging critics. The posts were collected by editor and former teacher Tom Sumner.

THE INFORMED CITIZEN SERIES looks at American issues through the viewpoint of political bloggers, the Internet’s informed—and informing—citizens.

Via Suburban Guerilla who got a great looking bloglift (y.w.c.t.p.) when she migrated to Wordpress and a new home, so update your bookmarks.

Thanks to those who have hit our tip jar the past few days. As you can see, we have not had a big response to our ad sale, so it is very much appreciated. I'm sharing the tips with our webmaster Mike Ditto, who has spent untold hours upgrading the site the past few weeks at no charge. So please, keep them coming.

For those who want to pick the topics....this space is for you.

We've hogged the discussion the past few days, it's now your turn.

A few people have remarked that they have to re-log in every time. TalkLeft's webmaster Mike Ditto has provided this suggestion:

In the Firefox preferences under Privacy, make sure that it is set to accept cookies and to keep them until they expire. You can also add talkleft.com and typekey.com to the cookie exception list, setting them to "always allow".

The login cookie will still expire after 20 minutes of inactivity, that's just how Typekey works. But the username and password will always be put in automatically if you have Firefox set to remember passwords.

Other suggestions are welcome.

TalkLeft readers were credited today as a "Newsroom Pick" in AOL's Blog Zone.

This Is a No-Win Situation'

L.G., the pregnant 13-year-old foster child caught in a legal battle
over abortion in Florida has received permission to have the abortion
she sought. As a ward of the state, Florida argued she could not make
that decision. [Read Full Story]

· Foster Care Support Blog recaps the events, too.
· The decision was a no-brainer, say readers at Talk Left.
· Kudos to the Judge, says Feministing.
· But Challies says this judge now has blood on his hands.
· And Say Anything wonders how a child not old enough to vote or drink is trusted with this decision.

Congrats to all of you.

If you haven't visited TalkLeft since Friday morning, there's been a big change. You now have to register with TypeKey to post comments. Here's why and how it works.

TalkLeft owes a huge thanks to Mike Ditto for working all weekend to change our templates and other internal mechanisms to make the switch.

All registrations are subject to my approval. Obviously, I have to be online to get notice of your registration, so don't be upset if it takes a few hours. It helps if you use a name you've used before so I recognize you. This is not a political move, it was caused by someone repeatedly posting obscenities in my name. In other words, commenters who disagree with TalkLeft are welcome to register. Out of 100 registrations, only one, whom I suspect of being an imposter, has been rejected. One other is on hold because I have some doubts.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm not unhappy with the change. Already, the comments are far more civil, although just as contentious. And I'm glad that annoying, annonymous commenters are a thing of the past.

Say hello to The Periscope, the companion blog to the news site euro-correspondent.com.

The Periscope was conceived by journalist Michael Standaert in 2003. The main idea is to highlight interesting and thought provoking stories dealing with Europe, the EU, transatlantic relations and just about anything else that catches our eye. There's not a lot of commentary here and we hope the content spans ideological lines in a way that provides a variety of information for the reader. Posting on The Periscope is mainly done by Michael and Stephen Gardner, euro-correspondent.com managing editor.

Markos of Daily Kos is in London where he'll be writing for the Guardian:

I'll be writing for the main Guardian site as well as its blog over the next week. My job is to compare and contrast the British elections with the ones we had back home. In two words? Bizarro World. More on that over the coming week, but you get a first taste of it here, where I talk about how in Bizarro World, it is Labour which has won the framing wars.

I'm actually doing real journalism and won't be near an Internet connection most of the time. As for that "real journalism" thing, I wonder what'll happen to all those silly "are bloggers journalist" idiots. Their heads will probably explode. And they'll deserve every bit of cognitive dissonance they suffer through.

Bump and Update: In case you weren't around yesterday, and wonder what's going on here, you now need to register to comment on TalkLeft. From Friday:

Sometimes, all it takes is one person to ruin a good thing. Due to mass obscene comments by a single person this morning, all of which were directed at me or falsely claimed to be written by me, everyone will now have to register with TypeKey to post comments. Typekey provides answers to privacy concerns here. TalkLeft's webmaster, Mike Ditto, is setting this up now. Just click on the comments to any post to register. You can register with the same posting name you've always used.

Your first comment will require me to approve you. Once you are approved, your comments will automatically appear as before. I personally will be doing the approving, so if I'm offline when you make your first comment, it may not be instantaneous. I'm going to try to remain online through the weekend as much as possible.

You have to give typekey an email address to register, but it will not appear in the comments. Also, you have the choice of not having your email address forwarded to me. So, you can remain anonymous if you'd like. For those of you who allow your e-mail address to be forwarded to me, I will not share it with anyone else.

Update: Only two people have had a problem registering and posting comments. If you have a problem, try registering at Mike Ditto's site, so that we can determine if the problem stems from Typekey or TalkLeft.

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Original Post:

There's a nasty troll on board today with multiple IP addresses. Comments are shut down until further notice.

A few chatterers are trying to run away with the site again. And several on the left are engaging them and allowing them to do it. Time to stop. Those who have been limited to four comments a day will have their excess comments deleted. One chatterer posted 26 comments today. I'm not going to foot the bill for the bandwidth for them--nor will I provide a place for them to chatter incessantly.

Limits of chatterers will be strictly enforced. Four comments a day. Those who continually respond to them, whether on the right or the left, will also be limited.

TalkLeft's comment policy is here.