For the second month in a row, we've exceeded our very generous 24,000 MB a month bandwidth allotment and there are two days left in the month. If any of you are able to chip in, we'd really appreciate it. Just click on one of the buttons below. Amazon is anonymous, paypal is not. Many thanks.

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Say hello to Volconvo, "a socially conscious group that wants to promote intelligent debate and activism."

Our sitemeter has been down almost all day. It's a pain, because TalkLeft takes forever to load when Sitemeter is not working. There's one way we can always tell if it's us or Sitemeter....We check Instapundit whose sitemeter is on the same server. His sitemeter is down now too. [This has nothing to do with our hosting company which is the great Hosting Matters--only with Sitemeter which uses its own servers to compute site stats.]

Thanks to Zombyboy at Resurrection Song , the 7th edition of the Rocky Mountain Blogger Roundup is up. There is some fine writing and humor in this edition, so go check it out.

Don't forget the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash is May 28 at the Denver Press Club. We hear liberal Colorado bloggers will be in short supply, so if you are one, or support one, please come on down.

by TChris

Read my lips: no new taxes. Okay, wrong president, but the current President wants the Republican controlled Senate to read his lips, just this once.

As the President promises two chickens in every pot and a high speed internet connection for all but the homeless, the Senate is debating "whether to renew a lapsed ban that would permanently prevent state and local governments from levying additional taxes on dial-up, DSL (digital subscriber line), cable modem, wireless or satellite access to the Internet." John McCain (R-AZ) is trying to sell a compromise that would extend the moritorium while allowing states to tax voice-over Internet Protocol (using the internet in lieu of long distance), but Lamar Alexander (R-TN) worries that "state and local governments could lose billions in tax revenue if prevented from taxing Internet access."

Will Bush persuade his party to stand behind him? Let's hope he doesn't propose a tax on liberal bloggers.

We'll play this meme:

"Flashlights, in particular, piqued his curiosity, which sometimes landed him in trouble."

--American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, Regan Books, 2001.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

The Revealer, a blog about religion and the press, continues to provide a daily collage of religion news from the war in Iraq. Today's feature is on Muqtada Al-Sadr, about whom the Revealer says:

Sadr sounds here like a kind of trickster figure, practicing verbal rope-a-dope on American journalists who, after all, are coming to the conversation with a distinct disadvantage: Sadr may have been watching the Americans on CNN for years, while "60 Minutes II" is parachuting into a culture it doesn’t understand.

The world-class appellate law blog, How Appealing has moved to it's new home. Please update your bookmarks. And congrats to Howard Bashman for getting paid to blog!

Following last week's article in the Charlotte Observer that prominently featured TalkLeft, this weekend's Washington Post reports on the increased number of political candidates who are placing ads on weblogs.

Premium and Regular blogads on TalkLeft are available and a terrific way to cost-effectively reach thousands of politically savvy readers.

Has anyone noticed Billmon at Whiskey Bar has a "closed" sign up? We hope it's temporary.

Geoff Nunberg will be mentioning a bunch of blogs on his NPR Fresh Air program Monday. Congrats to Skippy for being included.

Happy blogiversary to Atrios and James Capozzola -- Eschaton and Rittenhouse Review turned two years old this week.

Wonkette makes the New York Times:

With her gossipy, raunchy, potty-mouthed blog, Ms. Cox, a 31-year-old self-described failed journalist, has grabbed the attention of staid Washington, where gossip columns usually amount to little more than records of Capitol Hill staff changes and James Carville sightings. As she puts it, her mission for her blog (www.wonkette.com) is to write "a blend of gossip and satire and things I make up." It supports no party line, mixing gossip items from newspapers and Web sites with tips e-mailed from readers, which could be anything from guesses about which members of the Bush administration are gay to blind items on Washington luminaries. "

Josh Marshall receives a heartfelt e-mail from the employer of the four kidnapped Italian bodyguards in Iraq, with special praise for Fabrizio who was killed.

Well, one thing we didn't figure on is a hotel with just dialup. And slow dialup at that. How the ABA could pick such a place is beyond us, but it's like being stuck in Palm Springs circa 1958. Not is there only no high speed, there is no minibar, no water in the rooms, no HBO, no late night food service, a shortage of electrical sockets, etc. Right now we're on wireless, but it's only available in the hotel lobby, and much as we'd like to blog all night, sitting in a hotel lobby with a room full of strangers just doesn't seem like fun.

We'll be in a Criminal Justice Section Council meeting all day tommorrow, no wireless in the conference center, so we're not sure when we'll return to blogging. It may be tomorrow night or Sunday night.

If you haven't checked out the great sites on our blogrolls, please do.

A major thanks is due to TChris, who kept TalkLeft current this week while we've been busy in court. We've tried to catch up at night, but even so, without his contributions, the site would not have been up to its usual standards--particularly with respect to output. TChris is off on a journey from now until next week, and although we're headed out of town Friday for an ABA meeting in Palm Springs, we'll keep blogging as much as we can.

We've added some new blogs to our blogroll, quite a few on politics and elections, so be sure to check them out.