Say hello to the Heretik: Born to Burn. Great visuals, excellent content, a mix of satire and news with some music and art and poetry thrown in. It's written by Joe Ivory Mattingly.

Also say hello to Thought Mechanics. They're adding bloggers, so if you're interested, head on over.

Update: Here's a preview of what you can expect.

***********
Arianna Huffington may be changing the face of blogging. Her new celebrity blogging venture, The Huffington Post, written by 250 bold-face names, will launch in cyberspace on May 9. Among the names:

Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman

....Notables will oversee certain sections, with Gary Hart, the former Colorado senator, for example, taking the lead on national security issues.

The venture is designed to compete with the Drudge Report, only it will be interactive. Drudge's former chief techie, Andrew Breitbart, has signed on. There will be some conservative participants, Tony Blankly, for one.

Here's a question: Where are the politically active musicians? No Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Mellencamp?

One more: Will any of them admit to blogging in their pajamas?

• Crooks and Liars has a special "Justice Sunday" video of Sen. Bill Frist. And details of the secret audio tape obtained by the LA Times of Dobson and Perkins discussing strategy.

• Skippy on the Pope.

• Atrios tells us about the charge in the Observer that the new Pope obstructed justice by demanding that the sex abuse inquiry of the Church be conducted in secret. Norwegianity has more. Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul writes an outstanding piece on the new Pope and why his German Hitler Youth membership and his failure to become a part of the Resistance does matter.

• Kevin Drum on Bush "blackballing the attendance of technical experts at a telecom standards meeting this week if they contributed money to John Kerry's campaign."

• Grits for Breakfast has an op-ed in Houston Chronicle on the demise of the Harris County drug task force in Texas. His earlier post is here. He also calls attention to the backlash against Texas Senator Hinojosa for his criticism of the drug task force.

TalkLeft hit the 6 million visitor mark today. It is very gratifying to know that so many of you out there in Cyberland read us regularly, both for our take on the news and for the discussion in the comments.

Thanks to all of you, from TChris and me, for making TalkLeft a part of your day.

Your turn to follow the news wherever it takes you.

I have court in the mountains today - it's a beautiful day for a 2 hour drive. Here's a space for you to comment on what's making news. I'll be back late this afternoon.

Update: A big thanks to TChris who posted some great stuff today.

Atrios and Eschaton turn three years old today. Here is Atrios' first day of posting. Who would have thought in that time he would receive more than 50 million visitors. He's now averaging 100,000 visitors a day. Congratulations, A, and many happy returns.

On another blogging note, check out this article today on Markos of the Daily Kos.

Atrios and Daily Kos are the two most widely read liberal bloggers anywhere. All you need to do is read their blogs (and in Daily Kos's case, some of the diaries) and you'll see why. As to the time that goes into it,

Thanks to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and AOL News' Blog Zone for mentioning TalkLeft today.

First, Howard:

Attorney Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft doesn't think much of DeLay saying he had made "inartful" remarks on targeting judges:

"If one of my clients gave this kind of apology at a sentencing, the judge would throw the book at him. . . . "He's not sorry for the content of his intemperate remarks, only for the way he phrased them. That's like saying he isn't sorry for the crime, only that he got caught."

AOL BlogNews picked up on blog coverage of Sen. Bill Frist's threat to go nuclear:

Daily Kos outlines some news stories about Frist. And Rightsided takes exception to those news reports. Captain wonders what GOP "milquetoasts" are waiting for.

Frist has backed himself into a corner, says Talk Left. And Blue Vertical Studio reports on the makeup of American federal courts.

Construction at the new bank site looked pretty ugly today, but since I've had some requests, here's week two of what will be a new bank outside my window.

Thanks to The Gap, the parking meters in downtown Denver were free today.

Did anyone notice this in other cities?

Henry Copeland of Blogads tells Volvo what a raw deal it got buying ad space from Microsoft's "Spaces" blogging environment instead of from brand-name bloggers:

As Steve Hall of Adrants notes that most of Spaces blogs are "empty, useless, pointless weblogs." "A quick review of weblogs listed as recently updated on MSN Spaces revealed few, if any, containing more than a post or two. Many simply state, 'There are no entries in this blog.'"

....To expand on Steve's point, Volvo is, at best, paying to appear above MSNSpaces bloggers who are writing about random stuff, blogospheric noise. Spaces bloggers are newbies on the fringes of the blogosphere. MSN may well have promised Volvo 100 million page impressions a month, but these are impression seen by nobody -- or more exactly "nobodies" -- people who are viewed as influentials only by their moms and ex-girlfriends.

We haven't had one of these in a while and I'll be off at court and the jail today. The floor is your's.