Say hello to new blog Public Defender Dude, which as the title implies, is written by a public defender. It's very good. We like that PDdude includes both his thoughts on being a public defender and on the criminal justice system, as well as some details of his cases and workdays.

The rantings of a Public Defender constantly fighting against society's pervasive Police Industrial Complex. Enjoy the unique perspective of one who's life's work is to fight the system through the system....

This blog is not only about the criminal justice system. Us Public Defenders tend to be anti-establishment and have strong views on a variety of subjects, most of these views would be at odds with much of the rest of society, but they would tend to be very logical and well thought out views.

New to us, but not blogtopia (yes, Skippy coined that word,) is Chief Wiggles, who writes from Iraq. The Chief is in the Army National Guard, currently stationed in Iraq. Scott Evensoen, the blog's administrator says,

When the war began, the Chief would send his journal entries to family and friends via email. This got to be quite cumbersome, so while he was back here on hardship leave over his mother’s death, I talked to him about setting up a blog. He agreed if I would administer it for him and thus, Chief Wiggles—Straight from Iraq began.

We especially like the pictures from Iraq. Here's a news article about the blog.

Our blog move to a new hosting company is complete. Some comments from yesterday may not appear as they are still on the old server. Also, from time to time the old version shows up instead of the new because the files are currently on both servers. Once we make sure nothing is missing, we will have the files removed from the first server.

A note about comments: Sometimes they take a long time to post to the servers and we're not sure why. We'll try to figure it out. Also, if you put a url in your comment, you have to use the html code as set out in the comment box. Otherwise it skews the site and we will delete it. Your comment remains, just not the url.

Thanks for your patience.

Okay, we're changing hosting companies again. Supposedly there will not be downtime but it's never gone that smoothly before, so we're a little skeptical. The most frequent upset in the past has been that the newest posts get lost. So if you log on in the next few days and the site shows older posts, it's a temporary glitch and we'll be back.

Our hosting cost is doubling, we use a lot of bandwidth (12 - 15 GB a month) probably because we write ten or more entries a day. If you can chip in, it's much appreciated, the amazon and paypal buttons are on the left.

If we go down entirely over the weekend, just know we'll be back.

Lots of computers are getting the worm. In fact, both the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune websites are down as we write this, and have "we'll be back soon" type notices on their sites. It's probably due to the worm. If it hits you next, here's how to deworm your computer.

[LA Times link corrected]

We're having server problems. The site works fine to read from, but we can't use our MT files to post without great difficulty. Something to do with a server load failure, whatever that means. We'll be back with new stuff as soon as we get this straightened out.

We're up to 15 GB. a month of bandwidth or data transfer --most hosting companies limit you to 2 or 5 except at a very increased cost. If you're in the mood, and can spare a few bucks, please, jump right up to the top left of TalkLeft and hit the tip jar. Amazon is anonymous, Paypal lets us know your email address so we can send you a personal thank you email.

In solidarity with Al Franken, being sued by Fox News for using their trademarked "Fair and Balanced" tagline, bloggers are adding the words to their blog titles: See, Atrios, vaara, Maxspeak, Jesse at Pandagon, and Blah3 --all are now Fair and Balanced weblogs. Atrios says "Join the fun!"

We can't join because we are not a neutral or fair and balanced weblog . We proudly promote one side. But what fun to see hundreds of blogs suddenly declare themselves "fair and balanced" webzones.

Update: Instapundit calls the Fox suit "asinine" and gives himself a new tag line. Law Prof Eugene Volokh weighs in against the suit as well.

We're off to the ABA Criminal Justice Section Council meeting --being held in conjunction with the annual ABA meeting--in San Francisco. We're especially looking forward to the presentation and debate Saturday morning on military tribunal rules. Stay tuned, as we'll report here on any significant developments. But posting may be lighter than usual throughout the weekend. As always, we recommend you visit the excellent blogs and news sources listed on the right.

Update: It's now 4pm and we're still at the Denver airport. The plane was delayed then cancelled due to a broken winshield. We won't leave now until 6pm...but we found some good company to compare justice notes with while we're waiting...CNN's legal analyst Jeff Toobin, freshly back from Eagle and on his way to the ABA meeting in San Francisco, is on the same flight.

Happy Second Blogiversary (ywctp) to Instapundit.com. From his latest post critical of Attorney General Ashcroft.

NICE TO SEE that the Justice Department has plenty of resources for the terror war and can even spare the time and money for, ahem, lower-priority cases like this one:

"Federal prosecutors said today they have charged a North Hollywood wholesaler of adult films with violating federal obscenity laws as the government steps up a campaign against the major distributors of adult entertainment."

"The U.S. Justice Department said that its 10-count indictment against Extreme Associates and the husband-and-wife team that owns it is part of a renewed enforcement of federal obscenity laws after more than a decade in which they were rarely imposed."

Obviously, there's no need for a budget increase this year. Coming soon: a crackdown on interstate parking-ticket scofflaws, and a multi-agent, years-long investigation into New Orleans bordellos. Oh, wait. . . .

Glenn finishes with this prediction which is music to our ears.....

Ashcroft is becoming a liability. I doubt he'll survive past this term....

The excellent Beautiful Horizons, concentrating on Latin American and Human Rights, has moved to Typepad, so update your bookmarks. The always eloquent Jeanne D'Arc over at Body and Soul is moving there too.

Say hello to Kimberly of Brief Intelligence --and thanks to Lisa English of Ruminate This for bringing her to our attention. As Lisa says,

This particular blog is so well-written and In Your Face. Kimberley holds nothing back and I'll tell ya, if you're sick and tired of reading mainstream milquetoast reviews of this ongoing American political debacle, Brief Intelligence is the place to be.

Lisa's all over the smear on Rev. Canon Gene Robinson.

Hessiod at Counterspin thinks the new Al Qaeda warnings mean we can say goodbye to taking cell phones, pagers and laptops on airplanes. We never had a pager, and the cell phone wouldn't bother us, but take away our laptop? Please, say it isn't so.

Skippy is talking about Gephardt--not as a supporter, just as an observer of his union support--and says we're in for a long campaign.

Oliver Willis posts his list of the ten greatest Americans.

Natasha over at Pacific Views (used to be The Watch, so change your bookmarks if you haven't already) is impressed with the Coalition Casualty Count by Pat K with help from Elvis56. A lot of work went into this site, and we're impressed too.

Long Story, Short Pier isn't sold on Dean yet.

Lilith of A Rational Animal is headed out to San Francisco for the annual ABA meeting from Thursday to Sunday. She's wondering if any other bloggers are going and would like to get together. Go over and email her if you are. (We'll be there Friday for two days for the Criminal Justice Section Council meeting, and don't know if we'll be able to do a bloggermeet, but keep us posted if there is one, we'd try.)

How Appealing has the latest news on the Ten Commandments monument and the federal court order to the Alabama Supreme Court to remove it. The Order spells out to the State Court what will happen if they don't comply. It'll be expensive, for one thing.

We'll be on Kobe-TV duty all day tomorrow, sticking up for the presumption of innocence, starting at 7am, going until 10 pm (MST), all around the cable dial. So please read the blogs above and those listed on the right, and we'll be back Thursday.

Say hello to the The American Constitution Society Weblog. The ACS is a new organization that just had its first convention in Washington.

Started in 1999 under another name, the Constitution Society says it's trying to raise an army to challenge what it calls the dominance of conservative thought over U.S. courthouse decisions.

What the liberals need, founders argue, is a network for progressive law students, professors, lawyers and policymakers to battle -- and outthink -- the political right. They want to counter the passion and power of the Federalist Society, a two-decades-old group with 25,000 members, many of them with influential jobs in the Bush administration and on his list of nominees for the federal bench.

The work, they told convention participants over and over, could range from organizing to block Bush judicial nominees to writing law review articles. The goal, organizers say, is to ensure U.S. courts observe legal decisions that protect individuals' rights to a safe workplace and a fair trial, and freedom from abuse and discrimination.

Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno were in attendance. Bookmark the blog and support the ACS any way you can. We need them to fight the right and win for all of us.

We also thank them for linking to TalkLeft.

Happy second blogiversary (ywctp) to The Hamster. Eric has one of the most up-to-date, liberal sites around. We were astonished last year to find out that he was 19 and a freshman at GW. This year he'll be a sophomore. We used to think Matt Yglesias was the youngest, most politically aware blogger we knew (along with Jesse of Pandagon and Andrew Northrup of Poor Man , who vascillate between politics, humor and satire, with a smattering of issues of import mostly to those in their age group,) but Eric has proved himself to be right in their league. If these young men are in any way representative of their peers, and we believe they are, the future is beginning to look a lot brighter to us.

Does this sound familiar? Here's some advice from Instapundit: break the work into small chunks. Another tack: Turn off the computer or disable the internet connection for an hour, use it to return phone calls and get focused on work. Often the hour will turn into three or four hours, and you'll get caught up. Blogging and surfing are tremendously addictive activities...among our favorite descriptions of blogging are it's like the internet on speed or the difference between skiing and snowboarding. Everyone should take time to crash now and then. If only we would follow our own advice more often.

Bump and Update: Welcome 5280 Readers! Enjoy the site, and yes, we accept donations . If you're an advertiser, we consider small, tasteful ads that do not detract from our message.

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A big thanks to journalist Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence whose article on Colorado bloggers comes out tomorrow in Denver's upscale magazine, 5280. TalkLeft is one of the featured blogs, along with Stephen Green of VodkaPundit, Walter of WalterinDenver and Andy O'Reilly of World Wide Rant. We haven't read the whole thing yet, just the quotes Dave put on his site. Here's one of our's:

"When I'm on [FoxNews'] Hannity & Colmes, a milllion people may see me," she says. "But how many of those people are really interested in what I have to say? But when I blog, people are reading me because they're interested in the liberal viewpoint."

[Then later in the piece:]

"It's the response that keeps you going," she says. "People are really reading. And through the comments, you can see they're thinking and discussing. You know you've hit a chord, and it pumps you up."