Happy Second Blogiversary to Skippy--one of our oldest and favoritie web buddies--and a big congrats for hitting the 500,000 visitor mark. We read Skippy every day--he always makes us smile. He's also one of the most generous linkers around.

Say hello to Ghost in the Snow. He's 17, from Texas and pretty savvy. [link via Blah3.com]:

Look! There's Iraq! Tons of oil and we can pretend to be tough on terrorism by bringing down a whole country! It was an obvious choice. And, with the stupidity of the general American public, which dictates that an Arab is an Arab is an Arab, the invasion began. Backed by the Republican-owned media, the idea that it was a war for freedom and all that is right began to permeate the minds of otherwise intelligent people.

So now you have a huge bias against people such as myself, who read between the lines and realize that this war is a political ploy. I'm the one who will get persecuted for choosing jail over the draft.

Our second premium ad space is available --on the left side of TL, under the logo. The space is limited to one ad, so act quick. If you take it for a month, you will save bucks and it will stay up through the Democratic Convention, where we'll be blogging live with our new press credentials and undoubtedly have more visitors to the site.

We're off to court for the afternoon. Have some fun and speak your mind here.

Instapundit explains why he doesn't have comments. He's right. At his level of traffic, monitoring the comments would take so much time that there'd be no time for blogging. While we get hundreds of comments a day, we still read each one--and try to delete those that contain profanity and name-calling. Because we're nowhere near as popular as Instapundit, we can still do it. We hope to continue, and we've noticed in recent months, that our readers are getting the message. There are fewer objectionable comments. For that, we thank you, because we believe interaction and the ability of readers to express their view is important. Plus, it's a lot easier for us to report the news than to analyze it. Reader comments allow you to write the analysis so we don't have to, which in turn allows us to keep TalkLeft up to the hour (give or take a few) with current events.

So, thanks to you readers who use asterisks in place of letters to help us avoid the profanity censor-blocking software used by businesses and law firms, who use words other than name-calling and personal attacks to voice your disagreement with us or another commenter and who follow the html instructions for including url's in your comments. It will help keep the comment section of the site alive even as we continue to grow--and we are committed to trying to do that. We think it's time we recognized your efforts to accomodate our idiosyncratic rules publicly, because so many of you have adapted. Thank you.

Update: Samizdata states a great comment policy here. Trolls and blogroaches beware.

A big thanks to Scotus Blog--written by the Goldstein & Howe law firm--for being indispensable today with the first news and analysis of the Supreme Court opinions.

Goldstein & Howe, P.C., is the nation's only law firm devoted principally to litigation before the Supreme Court of the United States. In the last two terms, the firm was counsel in thirteen cases decided on the merits. This term, we are lead counsel in three merits cases. The firm also regularly consults and drafts briefs on intricate and important issues in matters in other courts.

Update: Law Prof Jeff Cooper of Cooped Up has resumed blogging. This is great news, as he was one of our daily reads.

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Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin, who writes the excellent Balkanization, has just added two esteemed professors to the blog: Sanford Levinson and Cass Sunstein. Go take a look, and don't miss this post of Jack's on elections and the Constitution. Here's a piece, but go read the whole thing:

Blogger Matt Yglesias (who also writes for Tapped) has lost him mom. The funeral is today. You can leave your condolences on his site here.

We're experiencing a problem with our comment filter program--apparently, it's blocking innocuous comments about mandatory minimum sentences and guidelines, to name a few topics. We should have it fixed soon, we apologize for the inconvenience.

Update: Fixed now. Somehow the filter blocked all comments with the letter "n." Let us know if you still have problems.

It's our second Blogiversary. We began daily blogging at TalkLeft on June 15, 2002. According to SiteMeter, since then we've had 2,700,000 visitors and 4,500,000 page views. We've written more than 6,800 entries which have generated more than 63,000 comments. We're currently averaging more than 8,000 unique visitors daily.

Thanks to all of you readers for making us feel like you care what we have to say.

Another big thanks is due TChris, who has been contributing posts on TalkLeft for the past several months. And our advertisers. And Markos of Daily Kos who re-designed TalkLeft in its current form. And Eric Alterman, Instapundit, Atrios and VodkaPundit for linking to us early on. And Skippy, who mentions us far more often than we deserve.

We're just beginning to hit our stride, so please, stick around.

We've increased our contributions options on the left side of TalkLeft. We've reinstated our Amazon "Wish List." We're really hoping to be able to get a MAC notebook and big screen monitor to be used for blogging. Too many people tell us that for graphics and ease of use, Apple is the way to go. So if you really like TalkLeft, and MACS, and would like to see us switch, feel free to buy us one. Otherwise, we're still in need of a flat screen lcd monitior for our Windows' computers. There's one of those on the wish list as well. And a couple of books we'd like to read. No need to buy us anything, only if you want to.

Then, if you do, go here. You can even buy us something we didn't ask for. TL appreciates all gifts.

Sean Paul's The Agonist is the latest weblog to move to scoop. Fix your bookmarks, so you won't miss a day.