No, not an organized one. I'm on my way to meet Calpundit and his mother, who are in Denver doing geneological research. We've never met, so this will be fun. More later.

Update: Kevin Drum, aka Calpundit, is personable, handsome and very smart. He looks exactly like his picture on his blog, only happier. Since we read his blog every day, we've seen that picture about 300 times, so seeing him in person for the first time is like seeing an old friend. His mother is delightful as well. We chatted for a little over an hour--about blogs, individual bloggers (anyone's ears burning yet?), politics, our real lives and more. We think he's a little more liberal than his blog makes him out to be--by design. If you aren't already a steady reader of Calpundit, you should be.

After leaving Kevin and his mom, we had the opportunity to meet Colorado's Governor Bill Owens for the first time. He was doing the Fox segment after our's. Owens is a staunch Republican, and very tough on crime. He has a well-known, purposeful habit of appointing ex-prosecutors to the bench. Apparently, he doesn't trust us defense attorneys. Still, it was fun to meet him and he couldn't have been nicer (although we were on good behavior as well.) He told us he saw our tv segment and that we did a good job, especially when we mentioned that a gag order in the Peterson case would be beneficial in stemming police leaks. (Owens knows all about police leaks from the JonBenet Ramsey investigation.) We told him he was doing a good job as governor but we'd like to see him move a little to the left on crime issues.

Gov. Owens looked very healthy and happy too--maybe its the moon or something in the Colorado air, but all the men we've seen today, from our client at court this morning to Calpundit and the Governor all seemed to radiate good health and good feelings.

Jay Caruso at Daily Rant says blogger Andrew Sullivan, who raised $80,000. in his last pledge drive has another funds solicitation in the works.

For readers who don't know who Sullivan is (there are a lot of liberal non-bloggers who read TalkLeft who won't have a clue,) Sullivan is a conservative, gay blogger-journalist who seems to make a lot of people angry. We've only read his blog two or three times, so we won't criticize or praise him. But we didn't know until reading Jay's post at Daily Rant that Sullivan is HIV-positive. We have a hard time getting angry at anyone facing a life-threatening disease.

Sullivan is asking for $20 a year if you read his page more than a couple of times a week, and more if you can afford it. We'll probably be 90 years old before we fit in that category, but we don't begrudge him being paid for his work.

We have a tip jar too if anyone's interested in contributing - $20 isn't necessary, but even a few dollars helps with hosting costs and the cost of the commercial news and research services we subscribe to. Contributions also make us feel appreciated--and remind us that some of you count on TalkLeft to be here day after day, looking at crime and politics through the lens of the Constitution.

If you're one of the conservatives who read this site, we have no problem with you giving to Andrew instead of us. And if you're a reader who wants to keep reading for free, be our guest. This is a free site and will stay that way--as will our other site CrimeLynx --unless some media giant comes along and buys one or the other or both.

Hey, how about this! We were just notified by True Majority.Org, run by Ben and Jerry's ice cream co-founder Ben Cohen, that TalkLeft has won a blogging award for being one of their top 25 favorite blogs. They are sending us a case of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

"Your blogging rocks! We've been reading your stuff (and the work of others) and would like to give you a special treat from TrueMajority -- a case of tasty Ben & Jerry's ice cream. We were founded by Ben Cohen, the ice cream guy, and to recognize the work of our 25 favorite bloggers, Ben thought we should send out five pints of his best stuff to each of them. (via email)

Update: Congrats to our pal Eric over at Hamster who also was named in the top 25.

Law Professor Eric Muller has moved his blog off of blogspot. Its new home is www.isthatlegal.org. Update your bookmarks, and if you haven't been reading it before now, this is a good time to start. We don't always see eye to eye with Eric, but we respect and appreciate his point of view -and we do agree with him a lot. His coverage of the Japanese internment camps and Howard Coble's prejudicial comments is top-notch.

Emma of Notes on the Atrocities has two new terrific, detailed posts up--one on Bush's attempted takeover of the judiciary and Frist's attempt to limit filibustering on the nominees--and one on Ashcroft's testimony claiming victory in the legal war on terror and the Inspector General's report showing his department's abuse of many of those detained.

Bump and Update: Well, it didn't go too smoothly, we're rebuilding all our 3,000+ posts now. If you can't post comments or access anything on the site, please email us at talkleft@aol.com.

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Well, we're doing it again--changing servers. Hopefully it will go smoother this time and there shouldn't be any down time. But if you have trouble accessing TalkLeft tomorrow, at least you'll know why.

Hosting Matters seems to be back on track after the fire today: Instapundit and Matt Yglesias are back up.

We haven't been able to access Instapundit or Matt Yglesias all day. We remembered that Instapundit is hosted by Hosting Matters, so we logged on to its site, and sure enough, there was a fire at "NOC" (whatever that is, some kind of command center we think) and workers was evacuated and the sites they host are down. But they promise to be back up shortly. We don't know if that's where Matt is hosting, but it's a good bet.

Emma over at Notes On the Atrocities analyzes the prose of various blogs. First there is the "ur-blog/news-digest model"--efficiency and economy--think Atrios:

Atrios is to blogging what haiku is to poetry--economy and efficiency...The style accentuates immediacy....It’s quick and pithy. The speed of news and communication is palpable on Eschaton, and he treats his readers with a prose style that underscores this ethos.

Then there are the essayist blogs. Go read which ones Emma selects to dissect. And then there are the activist blogs. Emma says TalkLeft, like Tom Tomorrow, is an activist blog.

Tom and Jeralyn might make some changes if their blogs were going into the New Yorker. But that’s not really the point. Their directness and candor speak volumes. The posts are more like personal emails mailed out to friends than official publications. We understand that it’s more important for the posts to get posted than it is for them to be posted error-free.

Thanks, Emma!

VoteLaw is the latest to leave Blogger for MT. Ed Still has created a very nice design for the election-law related blog, so be sure to update your bookmarks.

We have received a few e-mails from readers who advise they cannot post comments. All use aol (as do we). We have found that if we access the site through Internet Explorer while on aol, there is no problem.

Also, posting comments is sometimes slow. You only need to click once. We tend to block urls that post the same comment three or more times. If you have been blocked and your multiple posting of comments was an accident, email us the name you used when posting the comment and we'll unblock your url.

We started a new category tonight at the request of a reader, Foreign Affairs, to address issues in the middle east. We are not particularly knowledgeable in this area, so we expect most of our posts will consist of news rather than commentary, but you are all free to add your thoughts. Only anti-semitic and nasty comments will be deleted.

Lisa English is back at Ruminate This. Mary from The Watch did a superb job of covering for Lisa while her allergy-stricken eye healed.

Say hello to the Guerilla News Network (found via Skippy who's celebrating his anniversary this weekend) and K Marx the Spot by the folks at Bear-Left.

Wampum has made the move to MT and its own home here so update your bookmarks.

For longer reads, check out the San Francisco Chronicle and how women are losing freedom in the chaos of Post-War Iraq and On the Roads of Ruin by Peter Oborne in the Sunday Oberserver. Oborne recently returned from an extensive tour of Afganistan to see if the U.S. and Britain were living up to their promise to fund a rebuilding effort. He found the country deserted by the West and left to fend for itself against massive thuggery. David Neiwert of Orcinus has written a moving tribute to a dear uncle who recently passed away.

Salon Readers respond to Andrew Sullivan on President Bush's "looming package of manhood." Here's one:

Since Chris Matthews and Gordon Liddy, the criminal, have stated that women will vote for Bush because of the bulge in his flight suit, the formerly private parts of Bush are now a subject open for questions and answers. Why did he have an erection upon seeing all those young men aboard the carrier? At our house we've been laughing about Bush's stuffing his flight suit with socks, à la male ballet dancers. I've been polling my girlfriends. None of us, not a single one, will vote for Bush, bulge or not.

Or maybe all of this is none of our business and we should attack him on more worthwhile grounds. I personally think his bulge is as worthless as his brain. And women are far too smart to trade their civil rights and future aspirations for a roll of socks.

Atrios reports that Neil Young is afraid of getting deported for his Dixie Chick-like criticism of George Bush.

The People's Republic of Seabrook got a major bloglift and is looking good.

Arthur at Light of Reason writes about a federal judge in Seattle who has struck down a law on first amendment grounds that made it illegal for anyone to disseminate personal information about law enforcement-related employees if it was being done for malicious reasons.

Update your bookmarks, the Volokh Conspiracy has left Blogger for Volokh.Com.

Happy wedding anniversary to Skippy. His weekend blogpicks:

go read talkleft or atrios or calpundit or little red cookbook or roger ailes or tom tomorrow or body and soul or eric alterman or wtf is it now? or the daily kos or the horse or ruminate this! or lean left or spadehammer or plucky punk or liberal oasis or cursor or blah3 or antiwar or the smirking chimp or the daily rant or madkane or gail davis or brad de long or the democratic veteran or the rittenhouse review or max sawicky...or any other fine blog on our blog roll.