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."

Congrats to Public Defender Dude, whose blog posts have been chosen for a new book, "The Best of the Blogs" Please Don't Eat Your Co-Worker:

Hey everyone, I can't believe someone likes my stuff this much, but they've made a book about the "Best of the Blogs" entitled "Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers" (click here to see it on Amazon). This book is really cool, it includes a bunch of the best of different bloggers, and they say they've picked out the best bloggers out of something like 30,000 different pages. Now, I can't imagine that I'm in the top 10 out of 30,000, 30 perhaps, but 30,000? Nonetheless, this is what they say, and they've even published a book to prove it. Please go to their website and check it out, and if interested, go to Amazon and buy a copy. If you want, we can arrange it that I sign it for you, if you're interested. Let me know what you think. The editor, Alan Graham, is guest hosting the blog boingboing.net, so if you're interested, you can read there about it as well. The whole purpose of this book is to act as a "giant slayer" against the big media. Let's do our part. I hope you buy and like the book.

We've stayed clear of the controversy surrounding Markos of Daily Kos in the hopes that it would all die down. Yesterday, John Kerry's blog removed Daily Kos from it's blogroll. We hope this is temporary. Some conservatives are now calling contributions from Kos' readers "dirty money." That's absurd. So, we're going to weigh in.

Matt Stoller, writing for Blogging of the President, has a comprehensive chronicle of events along with meaningful commentary on the implications of the controversy for the rights of political free speech.

Markos is a friend of our's. We've spent hours with him - and his wife. He even designed TalkLeft for us, gratis. We've watched him grow from trying to get a few hundred hits a day to getting a thousand hits by noon (another landmark) to where he is now: the largest and most widely read liberal political blogger in the blogosphere. He's earned every visitor to Daily Kos with his hard work, intelligence and uncanny grasp of all things related to politics and the internet. He grew up in war-torn El Salvador and served as an enlisted U.S. soldier in Gulf War I. He has a law degree. He is an incredibly talented pianist. He and his wife just had this beautiful baby. He's our friend.

We will make our position very clear: We wholeheartedly support Markos. He made a comment most people find objectionable and then retracted it and explained why he made it. To us, it should be the end of the story. Any attempt to inflate it or even to keep it alive has little to do with Markos, and everything to do with right-wing conservatives trying to make political hay out of it. This has become a right-wing ploy to debase the left. Don't let it happen. Don't let them win. This is no longer just about Markos or Daily Kos, but about the right wing's attempt to use its muscle to destroy one of the most potent, prominent liberal voices out here--and if they succeed, to then silence all of us.

We believe that this will go away, although as Matt Stoller says, it's bound to happen again on both sides of the political aisle, due to the nature of blogging on the Internet which creates a permanent record of every word we write. As for the "liberal bloggers" who have criticized Markos, we'd point out that most of them are not really liberals but centrist Democrats. Shame on them. We discount their criticism and suggest you do too. What's really at stake here is censorship and the right wing's attempt to make legitimate, mainstream liberal bloggers out to be extremists so that the Democratic candidates will fear being aligned with them and forego advertising on their blogs, causing them to raise less money and thereby reducing their chances of winning back the Presdidency and a majority of seats in Congress.

One more thing. We are not trashing Instapundit or including him as one of the right-wing conservatives we caution against above. Instapundit is more of a libertarian and he can be liberal on criminal justice issues--his bashing of the Rave Act is but one example. We also note his last comment about the controversy was one in which he said he was glad that Kos is continuing to blog. While we disagree with him on military and many political issues, we don't think he set out on a campaign to destroy Markos or Daily Kos, as other right-wing bloggers and some reporters clearly have done in the wake of his original posting about it.

The right wing's attempt to turn one small comment into a political wildfire that spreads through the blogsphere creating division, dissension and damage to the left must be stopped. Forget Markos' original comment and focus on the big picture - removing the extremist right from power, restoring balance to our government and protecting sacred institutions like our independent judiciary. Markos and Daily Kos are tremendous assets for the Democrats. They should embrace him, rather than distance themselves from him.

Update: Atrios makes some changes in blogging policy in response to the Daily Kos controversy.

[comments now closed]

We got this by email so we don't know whom to credit, but it made us laugh so we're reprinting it:

TEXAS HILLBILLIES (sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies)

Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy name Bush.
His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush.
He drank like a fish while he drove all about.
But it didn't really matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out.
DUI, that is. Criminal record. Cover-up.

Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes to Yale.
He can't spell his name but they never let him fail.
He spends all his time hangin' out with student folk.
And that's when he learns how to snort a line of coke.
Blow, that is. White gold. Nose candy.

The next thing you know there's a war in Vietnam.
Kin folks say, "George, stay at home with Mom."
Let the common people go to get maimed and scarred.
We'll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard.
Cushy, that is. Country clubs. Nose candy.

Say hello to Oliver Willis' latest creation--a weblog about the Apprentice, which we must admit, has us hooked as well.

Welcome back from hiatus to MyDD, also known as political whiz Jerome Armstrong, who in real life, is business partners with Daily Kos.

Update: Tapped got a great bloglift, go check them out.

The Christian Science Monitor profiles Wonkette, aka Ana Marie Cox, the blogger who has taken D.C. by storm. We'll add our two cents....she's irreverant, funny, wicked, shameless and best of all, really liberal. We read her every day and you should too.

Wow. Check out Kinja, the new blog of blogs by Nick Denton:

Kinja allows even casual internet users to browse topics, explore the latest weblog writing, and then choose favorite authors to track. A personal Kinja digest contains excerpts from a user's favorites, whether they're friends who blog, or experts on a particular topic. Kinja is a blog of blogs.

There's politics, liberals, conservatives and media, among other groups. We were excited to see they included us as liberals. [link via Instapundit.]