SURVEY....BlogAds is conducting its 2005 reader survey and I hope you'll take about 3 minutes to participate here:

For question #16, the name of this blog is "TalkLeft." Thanks for your time.

Our server move went off without a hitch, another big thanks to the folks at Hosting Matters. We'll be back posting tomorrow.

TalkLeft's comment policy has been updated. A permanent link to the policy is provided on the front page under the word "More."

In the meantime, here's some news of interest:

• Private Health Car in Jails Can Be a Death Sentence in the New York Times

• CIA Agents Fear Prosecution over Interrogation of Detainees, also in the New York Times

And a feel-good story:

• Who is Gary and why are people saying such nice things to him

And some Oscars' Coverage:

• The Two Johnnys, excellent in-depth profile and interview with Johnny Depp, that originally appeared in Rolling Stone

• The Girls With Grit, LA Times

• Superstars Rehearse for the Oscars

• Drudge on a rejected Robin Williams skit lampooning evangelist James Dobson. The deleted lines which Williams intended to lisp:

Just a reminder that TalkLeft is being moved to a new server tonight. Hosting Matters expects to begin the move around 10 pm ET, but it could be earlier or later. We will be the only site on the new server. The move is being done to protect other sites on the current server, because for a reason we have not been able to determine, TalkLeft has been crashing the server a lot. It may just be that with 9,700 posts and over 125,000 comments, the site is too big. Or it could be a problem with our code, or spammer-induced. Being on a new server should make the cause easier to determine.

Comments you make here later today may or may not make it over to the new server. Once the move is complete, you may need to click your "refresh" button a few times Sunday to find us.

I will probably institute other comment policy changes in the coming weeks, aimed at reducing pings from spammers, and repetitive, hostile or long-winded comments from trolls and chatterers. I also want anonymous posters to identify themselves with the same moniker, so readers know their comments are coming from a single individual. You know who you are.

Update: Eric at Is That Legal? is having similar problems with commenters, particularly those posting under multiple names.

Atrios provides us with the list of five funniest blog posts ever. He may not have won a Koufax this year, but he's won plenty in the past and this one is still number one in my book:

• Preznit Give Me Turkee

The next four, beginning with this year's winner:

• Poor Man's Poker with Dick Cheney.

• Jesse Taylor's (Pandagon) Peggy Noonan Parody

• Neal Pollack's A Man Wronged and Ow

Atrios' Eschaton is still my first blog stop in the morning and last one at night.

One more note: On best post ever, the 2002 Koufax winner for Best Post, Jim Capozzola's AL GORE AND THE ALPHA GIRLS, is still an all-time favorite. This year I voted for TBogg's incredibly personal and heart-rending Exit Interview. The winner was a stand-out post History Professor Juan Cole's What if America Were Iraq? Professor Cole also won for the second year in a row in the best expert category, a category in which Economics Professor Brad DeLong is also stellar. As is Maxspeak.

The best new blog went to Mousewords. Crooks and Liars and AmericaBlog are also winners for me in that category.

Welcome to TalkLeft, the on-line source magazine for liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news.

More than 125,000 reader comments have been posted on TalkLeft. It is not possible for us to monitor or read all of them. We do, however, have a general commenting policy and by posting a comment on TalkLeft, you acknowledge it and agree to follow it.

• All e-mail received by TalkLeft is considered intended for publication unless otherwise indicated in the initial message from the writer. Please don't send attachments.

• TalkLeft reserves the right to edit all e-mail and posted comments for content, clarity, and length.

• Bandwidth is expensive. The comment space is reserved for comments that relate to the topic of the post . You may not reprint lengthy text from your own works or those of others, including news articles. You may link to them.

• Comments that are abusive, offensive, contain profane or racist material or violate the terms of service for this blog's host provider will be removed and the author(s) banned from future comments. Censor software employed by law firms and businesses has blocked TalkLeft in the past for these types of violations. It is far easier for us to ban an offending commenter than to get reinstated by the software censors.

• All points of view are welcome on TalkLeft, with the following exception:

• TalkLeft will limit commenters to four comments a day if, in its sole discretion, the commenter is a "chatterer," loosely defined as one who both holds opposing views from those expressed by TalkLeft and

Posts numerous times a day with the intent of dominating, re-directing or hijacking the thread; or

Posts numerous times a day and insults or calls other commenters names or repeatedly makes the same point with the effect of annoying other commenters.

• A message will be left in the last thread that the commenter chattered on advising that he or she has been limited to four comments a day. All comments in excess of this amount will be deleted. Repeated violators will be banned.

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• Reading and posting comments at TalkLeft constitutes acknowledgment of and agreement to the terms outlined in this comment policy. This comment policy may be revised in part or in full at any time

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• TalkLeft is not responsible for and often disagrees with material posted in the comments section. This is an opinion site. The material posted by TalkLeft or left in the comments section may or may not be accurate.

Read and Post at your own risk.

Your suggestions and comments are always welcome!

Thanks to TalkLeft readers for coming through once again. Wampum, the incredibly generous hosters of the Third Annual Liberal Blogging Awards, announced tonight that TalkLeft has won in the Best Single Issues blog category, making us the only "threepeat" winner.

This year is different though because there are two winners in our category ...TalkLeft and Grits for Breakfast, an excellent blog that specializes in Texas Criminal Justice Issues. Wampum reports:

Only one blog, Jeralyn Merritt’s Talk Left, has ever won a Koufax for Best Single Issue Blog. Jeralyn won in both 2002 and 2003. With the Daily Kos edging out Atrios for Best Blog this year, only Jeralyn has a chance for a threepeat.

Grits for Breakfast’s focus is on the Texas Criminal Justice system. ...GFB received a large number of votes in this category. If you go to the appropriate comment thread and count the votes, you will see that GFB has the most votes. A number of those votes per posted after I closed the voting for the awards. At the time I closed the voting, Talk Left, by virtue of a large number of email votes, held the lead by a very small margin. The votes for GFB coming in after the close of voting would erase that margin and swing the award, also by a very narrow margin.

Thanks to those of you who have hit our tip jar this week. I try to send out individual thank yous, but sometimes I get behind. I'll try to do better. The donations really help and are much appreciated.

Update: Mr. Hindraker has acknowledged writing the e-mail and apologized for it. I think his apology is genuine and I consider the matter closed. I am also going to send him an e-mail complimenting him on his swift and direct response, and I've updated the title to this post. Everyone has clicked the "send" button a little too fast at one time or another. One of the things I have always liked about AOL is that it has an "unsend" button where you can unsend your mail if it was directed to another AOL user. I've used it many times.

******************
Too funny...Powerline Blog is an uber-right blog by three lawyers. Time Magazine named it Blog of the Year, primarily for its coverage of the Dan Rather story. One of the authors is lawyer John Hindraker who blogs under the name Hindrocket. He went to Harvard Law School. You can sometimes see him punditing on cable news talk shows. Here's how he writes on Powerline. Want to know how he really talks when he thinks no one is listening except a liberal?

Check out this e-mail response Hindraker sent a blogger for Minnesota Politics, in response to an email which expressed a difference of opinion on the Jeff Gannon story, but had no profanity or name-calling.

Nice. I have no doubt that Mr. Hindraker is an intelligent man with a high IQ. All the more reason for him to use it. Time Magazine should be cringing right now along with the rest of us. [link via TBogg who has more.]

Update: MN Politics responds in the comments here that the e-mail he received was from "John H." at Powerline. Here is the copy of the heading from the email, which he just e-mailed me (I've substituted xxx for the IP addresses since I don't think they should be public):

While mainstream media has been paying lots of attention to bloggers this year, it's a welcome change to see it devote headlines to those who made it possible, like Ben and Mena Trott, the darlings of the blogosphere.

Movable Type, the blogging software used by more than 7 million bloggers, (including its simplified version, Typepad,) was created by Ben and Mena Trott in their bedroom. They named their little venture Six Apart, because they were born six days apart. Fast forward to the present, three years after they launched the company, and Six Apart has offices in San Francisco, Paris and Tokyo. Venture capitalist and blogger Joi Ito arranged for them to sell "a stake" in their company for $11.5 million. Mena is President, Ben is CTO, and neither has turned 30 yet.

Congratulations, Oliver. For three years he's wanted to be on tv, and he's finally getting his chance:

This Monday, February 21st - President's Day - I will be appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, along with Patrick Ruffini (formerly of GeorgeWBush.com). Tune in to C-Span at 7:45AM...

Break a leg, Oliver.

Voting is scheduled to end today in the Third Annual Kaufax liberal blogging awards, hosted by Wampum . TalkLeft is proud to have been voted a finalist in two categories:

Best Single Issues Blog

and

Best Expert Blog.

It's a very tough race this year. If you'd like to vote for us, you can vote by scrolling down to the end of the comments section using the links above, or e-mail your votes directly to Wampum (If you vote by e-mail, be sure to mention the category, single issue or expert.)

Be sure to cast your vote in both categories. Your support in the final round of voting is greatly appreciated.

Origin and author unknown--somewhere in the Keys...

President Bush was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation last weekend in Arizona. He spoke for almost an hour on his future plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living. He referred to his career as Governor of Texas, how he had signed "YES" 1,237 times - for every Indian issue that came to his desk for approval.

Although the President was vague on the details of his plan, he seemed most enthusiastic about his future ideas for helping his "red brothers." At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented the President with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name - Walking Eagle. The proud President then departed in his motorcade, waving to the crowds.

A news reporter later inquired to the group of chiefs of how they came to select the new name given to the President.

They explained that Walking Eagle is the name given to a bird so full of sh*t that it can no longer fly.