Gary Hart is blogging again--as always, his analysis is solid and on point. Don't stop reading him because he's not running for President--he always said he would still find a way to contribute, and he's trying hard to get the hang of blogging.

Also check out Raise Your Hands, by Kevin Thurmond, who set up Hart's blog. Kevin used to have a blog called Getting in the Game, but has started Raise Your Hands as a means to blend political news and activism.

As for what Hart has been up to lately, check out this San Francisco Chronicle article from last week.

We hope that if the Democratic candidate for President is successful next year, whoever he is, that he has the sense to appoint Gary Hart as Secretary of State.

CalPundit on the Bush Administration's recent announcement it would not use torture on detainees:

Now, if we can just add to this a policy that forbids turning prisoners over to other countries so that they can torture them for us, we'll be in pretty good shape on this issue.

Daily Kos on how the Bush Administration is curtailing the benefits of our armed forces, which are angry about it. Like Kos, we hope this translates into Democratic votes at election time.

And while Republicans and conservatives "support our troops" by putting them in harm's way, with an ill-conceived mission justified by a lies-generating "cabal" of pointy-headed "intellectuals", they also eagerly tear apart the meager social programs that help our veterans after the sacrifice to their nation.

Oliver Willis sends us to "10 Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq". And Skippy reminds us that "Bush Lied, People Died."

Arthur at Light of Reason writes about some of the more disturbing provisions of the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts.

Patriot Watch asks if GITMO TV is next:

"The U.S. Naval Base at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, is prepared to stage military tribunals against terror suspects, the commander of the Pentagon's Southern Command said Wednesday. They have also built defense and prosecution offices, a conference room and judges chambers as well as a media center to accommodate what is expected to be keen interest in the proceedings, which provide for the death penalty as the maximum punishment for convicts."

American Prospect's Alex Gourevitch explains why Bush and Ashcroft are on a fishing expedition, casting too wide a net in the terror war.

Eric Alterman writes in his new Nation column that the liberal media is dead.

We've added a website translator to TalkLeft on a trial basis. It's on the right hand side at the bottom. Just select one of six languages and click on "translate." We saw it first on Long Story Short Pier, which uses the babel fish version.

The Systran version is commercial, and if we keep it, will cost $450 a year minimum. It also has a limit on the amount of html it will translate, so only about half the page, or one day's worth of entries, is included. The translation can take ten seconds or more to load.

Please let us know if you think this is a valuable resource.

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Our hosting company's server will be brought down at approx. 3:00 PM CST and is expected back up no later than 3:20 PM CST today due to an upgrade which should make Talkleft load faster. We will be unavailable for about 10-15 minutes (we are prepared for 30 minutes.)

We're back. Two days without going on line is a record for us. It wasn't easy, and we don't recommend it. Our experiment of leaving for a weekend without our laptop is one we doubt we'll repeat. On the other hand, Banff, Lake Louise, Emerald Lake and the scenery in the Canadian Rockies is truly breath-taking. The area is enclosed in a national park and far more pristine than the U.S. Rockies. We're going to try to catch up with the news now as we haven't seen a newspaper or watched tv since Friday afternoon. We plan to be caught up and back on track here by Monday morning.

We are traveling today--Friday-- and won't get back here until late Sunday night. Please check out some of the great blogs and news sites listed on the right--and of course, our most recent posts.

Instapundit has a new TechCentral Station column up today on what makes a good blog. Glenn should know!

We also appreciate Glenn mentioning us along with Volokh and How Appealing as a blog providing academic or legal expertise.

So what's the secret to good blogging? Glenn says,

In every case, though, what brings success is knowing something other people don't know, and expressing it well.

All of this means, of course, that if you came to this column looking for blogging secrets, well, there aren't any. The key to good blogging is simple: have something interesting to say, and say it well. Kind of like, well, every other sort of writing - just faster, and with links. There's nothing new about that, but it's still a kind of magic, as good writing always is.

Speaking of good blogs, James Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review is one of the top writers around--meaning he just writes better than anyone else--except for Jeanne at Body and Soul who is on a par with him. Anyway, Jim announced today that is withdrawing from the race against Arlen Specter to be the next Senator from Pennsylvania. We think he was only running in the blogosphere, but Jim, you had a great run. We would have voted for you.

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We've had some complaints that TalkLeft isn't readable in Opera. There was a problem with the "border width" setting in the css template. Thanks to some help from some Opera browser user, we think the problem is fixed. If the page still doesn't load correctly in Opera, please let us know. Thanks.

Atrios is posting from his undisclosed location in Europe today, go read.

Bad Attitudes speaks our mind on Ashcroft's push for more death penalty prosecutions.

Don't miss The Dark Side of Innocence in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

Welcome back to Mad Kane's Dubya's Dayly Diary , and her new song, 'Democrats' Anthem: Election 2004':

(to be sung to "Blowin' In The Wind")

How many wars must a President start
Without any reason at all?
How much ill will must a President cause
Until he at last takes the fall?
How many wars must a President launch
Because he is greedy for oil?
The answer my friend is dump Republicans.
The answer is dump Republicans.

Here's the rest. Mad Kane's blog is here.

Sunday is the first anniversary of the conversion of TalkLeft to a blog. Here is our first post.

Thanks to all of you who have read TalkLeft this year and written about it. We've had 625,000 visitors, and 1 million page views.

Just today we were notified by our hosting company that our bandwidth must be increased to 5 GB a month and our server space to 300 mg. We're not sure what those numbers mean (only what they cost)-- but we take it as a sign our popularity is increasing. So we're glad.

We also have some special thanks to extend: Daily Kos for the site design of TalkLeft--Kos spent an untold number of hours creating the site in MT so we could leave blogger behind; Eric Alterman of Altercation and Instapundit for mentioning us very early on and frequently enough to get noticed; Atrios for sending loads of hits our way.

And Cursor, Media Horse, Buzzflash, Tapped and Common Dreams for linking to us on their excellent sites.

Don't miss Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review on women bloggers. Every one he mentions is top notch.

As to his comments and praise for Lisa English of Ruminate This, we couldn't agree more. She is one special person and blogger. We e-mail with her frequently and put her at the very top of our list of bloggers for warmth, generosity of spirit and commitment to liberal values. (We also have nothing but compliments for Wampum Blog, we just haven't had occasion, as Jim has, to personally interact with Mary Beth Williams, its author. Now that we've read his remarks, we'll look for one.)

And a special thanks to Jim for including us in his list of favorite women bloggers. Here is his list--we recommend you read them all--in addition to Lisa and Mary Beth, whom Jim lists separately because they are so special to him:

Jeanne d’Arc of Body and Soul, Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, Avendon Carol of The Sideshow, Madeleine Begun Kane of Mad Kane’s Notables and her other sites (be sure to visit ALL of them), Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged, Jane Finch of the Daily Rant, Susan Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla, Ann Salisbury of Two Tears in a Bucket, Devra of Blue Streak, Janet Petrik of Beyond Corporate, Susan of Easy Bake Coven, Kim Osterwalder of Free Pie, Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light, Vanessa Gatsch of Plucky Punk’s Happy Land, Amy Carlton of RubberNun, the anonymous female writer of Doxagora, Elayne Riggs of Pen-Elayne, and Maru Suze of WTF Is It Now?, among others.