We're off to Durango, Colorado early this morning to view physical evidence in one of our cases, so we won't be posting, or appearing on any cable tv shows. It's an 8 hour drive, or a very bumpy 1 hour flight, and we've trepidatiously chosen the flight. We say trepidatiously, because 99% of the time we have no fear of flying but this flight is different.

The last time we flew to Durango was for a court appearance 22 years ago --we remember because we were 7 months pregnant. We were so freaked out by the flight (air pockets due to the summer heat make these tiny planes swerve and drop mercilessly, so they later told us) that we rented a car one-way for the drive back. Aside from the cost, the driving was not a problem--we would have driven for 3 days to avoid a repeat of that flight. We have no problem flying to Aspen, Grand Junction or Casper (Wyoming) --or even taking a puddle jumper to Kalispell, Montana, but Durango is scary.

Wednesday may be the day the Eagle County DA decides whether to charge Kobe Bryant with sexual assault or some other crime or no crime at all, so we recommend you check news updates frequently. We'll be back here late Wednesday night or Thursday, as soon as we've recovered from our most harrowing adventure.

Update: We're back, safe and sound, thanks for the comments. The plane ride was fine... but someday when this case is over, we'll tell the story of the conditions under which we were forced to view the physical evidence. It's one for the books, for sure. Suffice it to say, too many law enforcement agents in rural counties think they can operate under their own rules--and that they make the rules. At least we're in federal court on this case, where hopefully the Judge won't view it that way.

We were out of town and missed our good pal Skippy's first anniversary. He's taking comments, so go over and wish him many more. Skippy is one of the most generous linkers out there, and has a unique, extremely upbeat blogging voice. We bet if you submitted five blog entries to us, we could pick Skippy's out every time. (no money on the bet though.) Anyway, congrats, Skippy, and thank you for your many kind words about TalkLeft during the past year.

Our hosting company is upgrading our server, should be any minute now, and we will be down for up to one half hour. We haven't written anything today since we are having cable internet access installed and it's more complicated than they thought. We still have dsl, but we're anxious to try cable. We'll try to catch up on the news in the meantime.

Welcome back to Media Horse. They've got some great stuff up, as always. Instapundit is back and posting after his week of scuba-diving in the Grand Caymans.

Atrios and Matt Yglesias are still in Europe (not together) and contributing occasional posts. Lisa English of Ruminate This will be back next week, after a long and probably not-much-fun house move.

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.