The lists are starting to come in....check out South Knox Bubba's who has these gems among many more:

• President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft call press conference to announce enactment of Patriot Act III by Executive Order. Law enforcement officials and legal scholars puzzled by bewildering list of new regulations, such as national registration of gas-powered lawn trimmers and edgers, restrictions on the sale of Kaboom brand household cleaning products, and mandatory tracking and reporting of National Hebrew Kosher All-Beef Frank sales.

• After winning the Democratic presidential nomination from James Carville in a poker game, Hunter S. Thompson stuns the nation by winning 92% of the popular vote and the electoral votes of every state except Alabama running on a platform of free guns, free dope and whisky, and free cable TV porn for every American. Bush demands a recount. No paper trail can be produced. John Ashcroft calls for an investigation of Diebold.

• On the day he is released from prison, Tommy Chong purchases the winning Power Ball lottery ticket, claims a $260 million prize, and hires a crack team of cyber-sleuths to investigate John Ashcroft. They discover a huge cache of bizarre and disturbing child porn involving altar boys, Crisco, and twelve swarthy men dressed as the Apostles on Ashcroft's personal home computer.

Update: Don't miss Vodkapundit's predictions either.

Via Atrios, we're joining in on Tip a Blogger day--his pick, and our's, is James Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review. As Atrios says,

No one really expects to make substantial money blogging, but it nonetheless does take a lot of time and the occasional tip for all the free pie is much appreciated.

Politics in the Zeros has the latest Ashcroft memo--

From: John Ashcroft, US Attorney General

To: Tom Ridge: Department of Homeland Security

Subject: Santa Claus: Threat to the nation

This Santa character. We need to keep an eye on him. He dresses in red and appears to be a ringleader for wealth distribution across the planet, with this giving-away-toys-for-free ploy of his. Seems like a damn Socialist to me. And I find those talking reindeer flying through the sky to be highly suspect. Witchcraft, that's what it is!

However Santa does have a potentially highly useful list of who's been good and who's been naughty. If we could gain control of this list, it could prove useful in our fight against terrorism - and against our political enemies too!

I propose we preemptively arrest this Santa character on some pretext, cruelty to reindeer or violating labor laws by making the elves work without overtime pay. Yes, we will have to arrest him based on those noxious liberal animal cruelty and labor laws, painful as this may be to us - however, hear me out.

We arrest Santa, then lean on him. Sleep deprivation, etc. Let's get that naughty/nice list! Feed it into Department of Homeland Security computers, and I'll bet we'll be able to indict, prosecute and jail tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands!

Have a blessed Christmas!

John Ashcroft

There's more about the Santa Conspiracy, go read. Also, Hessiod at Counterspin has some news of investigations related to Ashcroft.

MaxSpeak has moved to MT and a new home, update your bookmarks!

Say hello to Lotus...Surviving a Dark Time and Donkey Rising.

Blogrunner tracks weblog conversations and has the most frequently referenced weblog posts published in the previous 24 Hours.

Skippy has the link to Michael Moore's letters from the troops.

Walter in Denver will be blogging through the holidays. If you will be too, let us know in the comments section.

Dave at Seeing the Forest says the news of mad cow disease in the U.S. will kill the beef industry

Things are going to happen fast now. By the time we wake up tomorrow there will be no beef industry in the US. This is because we have no real inspection system -- the corporations have bought off the government -- and our Agriculture Secretary is corporate lobbyist Ann Veneman.

Greg at Soundbitten points out some inconsistencies in Rush's various statements over the past few months, concluding:

Supposedly cured after 30 days of self-examination and hard reckoning, Limbaugh seems like he's still pretty much thinking like a junkie: he didn't do anything wrong, except for all the wrong stuff that he did, but that stuff wasn't really his fault…

Hey, here's a Monday joke that we picked up from Pandagon who got it from The Corner:

Why was Saddam checked for lice and tongue-depressed? Because, unlike us, he gets free medical care.

Beautiful Horizons, Randy Paul's excellent blog on Latin America, has its first blogiversary.

Jay Caruso of Classless Warfare writes about a victim of the drug war. Don't forget to update your bookmarks for what used to be the Daily Rant. Jay and Jane are still together, just under the new name.

Mark Kleiman writes about the fake Dallas drug story. He's surprised at the lack of media coverage. We've written about it a few times--here

Pacific Views on Joe Lieberman: "A sanctimonious whiner who perpetually carries himself as though he's smelled something unpleasant doesn't stand a chance."

Lisa English of Ruminate This is back today with some good stuff on Bush and compassionate conservatism.

There is so much news the last two days but we've been in court and drafting complex motions that are due tomorrow in one of our cases. So between that and our wrist issues, we've been down to short bursts of posts without much analysis. We hope to get back on top of it (and read the 300 plus daily comments posted to this site, and your emails) over the weekend. Thanks to those of you emailing us stuff we'd otherwise miss, and extra special thanks for those hitting our tip jar--it's much appreciated at this time of year.

Back soon.....

We've deleted a few comments that were overly long or insulting to other commenters. We also saved some of them on our computer. So, if your comment was deleted, and you'd like it back, send us an email and we'll send it right back to you.

Kevin at Calpundit went to a blogger meet last night and they discussed all kinds of things, including lefty bloggers:

Most lefty bloggers are actually pretty moderate liberals: me, Josh Marshall, Atrios, Matt Yglesias, Jeralyn Merritt, Brad DeLong, etc. (Atrios is a hardnosed partisan, but his politics are actually fairly centrist liberal. Surprise!) Most righty bloggers are actually libertarians, not conservatives.

Wampum is still accepting nominations for the 2003 Lefty Blog Awards, called the Koufax Awards. We won the award last year for best single issue blog. We hope to get nominated again this year. Lots of worthy competition, go over and check out the multitude of submissions and plug some of your own favorites.

Walter in Denver has the first Rocky Mountain Blog Roundup today. Nice.

Say hello to A Burst of Light. We found him in our comments section and like his style.

In recognition of Saddam's capture, Buzzflash is re-running it's March editorial on the real reasons Bush went to war.

New article at the Independent Institute: Uncle Sam's Guantanamo Prison: Outside the Rule of Law by Brigid O'Neil.

Howard Dean's blog has the full text of his foreign policy speech. Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence has thoughts on speculation that Dean is "toast." (He's not.) Skippy too has some thoughts on the demise of Dean (not) subject.

Also say hello to Battlegrounds Ballotboxes, internet political activist Kevin Thurman's new blog.

We'd like to extend a big thanks to TChris for filling in for us this weekend. He broke the news here on Saddam's capture while we were still asleep, and kept us all up to date on other issues we need to know about. We'll invite him back as often as he feels like posting, and thanks to all the readers who welcomed and responded to him in the comments. TChris, we owe you one.

Our wanderings around the bloggerhood this weekend found some good stuff:

Leaked Bush Photos from his Thanksgiving turkey-giveaway caper are making the rounds. [ Link via Atrios]

Republican Agenda Passed in the Dead of Night by Daily Kos

David Neiwert on a threat by a right wing blogger, Misha, the "Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, to Eric Blumrich of Bushflash on the left. Tristero has more.

Bush Wars has a weekend update and a Friday report, both excellent.

Don't miss this: U.S. News has a special investigative report: The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy. [link via Counterspin].

Pandagon has the dirty details of a disgusting anti-Howard Dean ad hitting the airwaves. You won't believe who's behind it. Shame on them. Here's more from Matthew Gross of the Dean for America blog. Calpundit weighs in as well, calling the ad "political p0rn."

Patriot Act Watch reports that 10 Democratic congresspersons are seeking hearings on the Patriot Act:

In a letter to be delivered today, Representatives Martin T. Meehan of Lowell and William D. Delahunt of Quincy, along with eight other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, ask chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, to hold hearings next year "on the war on terrorism's impact on civil liberties."

On a non-political note, James Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review writes more details of his mugging last week--we're glad he's not seriously hurt.

On Thanksgiving, I wrote that I had overstressed my wrist and been fitted with a cast. Well, that wasn't successful. But I have a diagnosis now, de Quervain's tenosynovitis--once called "washer woman's sprain." [ Here's more.] I just got a big painful, shot of cortisone (some new kind that supposedly doesn't cause atrophy and discoloration) and a shiny new black splint I'm only supposed to wear at night.

So, even though this condition is not caused by typing or the computer, I do have to lighten up here for a bit. Maybe just a few shorter posts a day.

This weekend, TChris, whom many of you know from his frequent, intelligent and well-expressed comments at TalkLeft, agreed to be drafted and guest blog on TalkLeft. He's an experienced, talented, dedicated criminal defense lawyer from the midwest--and although this is his first foray into blogging as other than a commenter, I know you will like him lots. Of all the regular commenters on TalkLeft, I think his views come the closest to my own. But he's not going to try and be like me--he's going to be himself, writing about what interests him in a style that's all his own.

So say hello to TChris, and make him feel welcome with plentiful comments--even when you disagree with him. I'll try to pop in a couple of times over the weekend, and I expect to be back to normal here Monday. I'm thinking positive--I have to--it's my right thumb and wrist and I'm right handed.