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.

Say hello to new liberal blogger My Left Brain . Instapundit got a bloglift (y.w.c.t.p.) -- it looks really good.

Walter at Idols of the Marketplace has some harsh words for President Bush and The Alamo.

Drug War Rant has this response to our post on Vietnam's execution of a female drug courier: "You want to deter criminal drug dealers? Eliminate their profits by ending the drug war."

Max of Maxspeak connects the dots in the pre-9/11 memo released yesterday. And Neal Pollack rips the timing of the release:

The White House has a tradition, if it wants to inform the citizenry about something really important, of releasing key documents on the Saturday night before Easter Sunday, when most Americans are absolutely glued to the news. That was certainly the case this Saturday past, which will forever be known as Declassification Of The August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing Day.

Atrios waxes eloquent on why there is no dishonor in criticizing the war:

Pointing out that it was a mistake to send these people to their deaths does not dishonor them - it rightly dishonors the civilian leaders who sent them there. These people served their country when asked, even if their civilian leaders can be faulted.

Road to Surfdom has the latest rumor on who will be the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq after June 30: Current U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte.

Happy First Blogiversary to Whiskey Bar - and don't miss Billmon's latest analysis of Iraq, Countdown to Failure.

I suppose it's a natural human response: eye for any eye, atrocity for atrocity. But I still find it amazing that the progressive collapse of every single justification offered for this war -- the nonexistent WMDs, Saddam's mythical connection to Al Qaeda, the craving of the Iraqi people for Western-style bourgeois democracy and Big Macs -- has had so little effect on the willingness of the American people to keep fighting it.

....the events of the past week have probably doomed whatever slender chance existed for stabilizing Iraq in the post-June 30 period. It looks like the Coalition is on a countdown to political failure. And political failure will eventually mean military failure as well, since it's hard to see how public support for an indefinite occupation can be maintained indefinitely. ...The only remaining question, it seems, is how much more blood will have to be spilled -- in Iraq, and maybe in America as well -- before the price of that failure has been paid in full.

If you're a blogger, you may want to consider adding blogads to your site. Business reporter David Ranii has this article in today's Charlotte Observer, which begins with a quote from us. And check out our new ad offering "George W. You're Fired" t-shirts.

If you're an advertiser, Right Wing News just compiled a list of the top 29 political blogs on the web, using a combination of Technorati, Truth Laid Bair, Blogstreet and Daypop. The top five, no surprises here, are Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, Eschaton (Atrios), Talking Points and Daily Kos. TalkLeft is very proud to be number 15.

Arianna Huffington gushes about blogs today in Salon, and has started her own. Welcome, Arianna.

Simply put, blogs are the greatest breakthrough in popular journalism since Tom Paine broke onto the scene.

Press critic and writer Jay Rosen of Pressthink analyzes the relationship between bloggers, linkers and advertisers as a result of the Daily Kos dustup last week. One of his final points:

Finally, while there is much that is ignoble in the patterns I describe, there were moments of honor in Blogistan, too-- because of the incident. This defense of Kos by Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft is one. You can almost hear her rising on the floor of a new senate to speak in support, complete with links.

Thanks, Jay, for the compliment and your thoughtful, balanced analysis of the fury of the week that was... all about Kos.

[at the well-taken suggestion of a commenter below, comments now closed]

Say hello to the new Baghdad blogger Raed in the Middle. He says he used to co-blog on Where is Raed? and describes himself as "a left winged secular muslim."