The right is already slamming the Huffington Report. One incredibly nasty review proclaimed it the equivalent of Gigli and Ishtar after only ten hours.

Please. It got 8 million hits yesterday - 10,000 hits a minute. Those numbers hardly indicate a box-office failure. Do you think the re-launch of the LA Times website today got that many peeps?

How can anyone judge it so soon? The writers are trying. Give them a chance . I just wish I had time to read more of it.

Update: Austin Bay thinks it's a clog, not a blog. He says the layout is confusing and there are too many voices. I really like the layout of the blog page, and find the choice of who to read refreshing. But at least Austin put some thought into his criticism, unlike many who seem to be slamming it just because it's celebrity driven.

It's fairly common knowledge that blogs run on bandwith and bandwith gets expensive. In recent months, video bloggers have emerged on the scene, posting segments of news shows, interviews and other events so that bloggers and others can watch online when we want, rather than having to watch on tv at the appointed hour.

It takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth to host videos. Two of them, Ian at Political Teen and Trey Jackson of Jackson's Junction, are asking for your help.

Crooks and Liars also takes donations, and even though they didn't ask today, I hope you send some help their way as well.

Political Teen and Jackson's Junction lean right; Crooks and Liars is firmly left. But all three deserve your support.

Liberal bloggers all know The Hamster. Eric Hananoki started the Hamster as a freshman at George Washington. We were early linkers to each other and got to know each other through e-mails. Now, Eric is graduating (already!) from GW and moving on....to Air America Radio and Al Franken's blog.

Congratulations, Eric. I'll miss The Hamster. Air America Radio is lucky to have you and I'm sure all your loyal readers will follow you over there.

Another shout-out today, this time to Democracy Rising, an anti-war site dedicated to finding an exit strategy from Iraq. Founding member Kevin Zeese (also President of Common Sense Drug Policy) writes today about the conscientious objector trial of Keith Benderman.

Last week, Kevin wrote about the problems in the Lynndie England guilty plea:

Now the prosecution of Private England may undo the damage control done by DoD to protect its officers and hold only a handful of scapegoats responsible.

Also say hello to our new advertiser, Raw Story Q and author Nancy Goldstein, who recently wrote Break Them Down on Abu Ghraib.

The Huffington Post is off and running. It's a winner, and going right on our "blogwire" roll. In addition to the home page, there's a blog page and a newswire page. The blog and newswire pages have a clean and crisp look - no clutter. There are a lot of blog entries on a variety of topics. If it wasn't a work day, I would spend hours there. I will later, I'm sure.

A nice touch is that some posts have a "bio" link and/or a picture next to the authors' names. This helps with those you've heard of but don't remember why, and those you are clueless about. Others, of course, are household names.

It's not just about politics. Some of those posting have never blogged before but gamely are giving it a try. It will be interesting to see who becomes hooked.

A few blog posts that have grabbed my attention so far:

John Cusak on Hunter Thompson. He describes a t-shirt Hunter sent him a few months before he died. Hunter had written on it:

'Politics is the art of controlling your environment.' That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that 'it doesn't matter who's President' has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World -- or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property -- or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons -- or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.

I'm taking the day off from blogging to make lunch for my mother and my sister. The only people missing are the TL kid, who's in New York, and my father, who passed away a few years ago, but they will be with us in spirit. Happy Mother's Day to all of our readers, and here's an open thread for those of you who are online.

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.