For those of you trolling TalkLeft, please be aware we will do an instant deletion and ip banning so you can't come back, as soon as we become aware of it. Thanks to Patrick A. who just advised us of one such attempt on our Shock and Awe Post--the troller was upset he couldn't leave his messages at Atrios.

Initially we thought our comments took too long to register, and people were just clicking more than once thinking their comment hadn't gone through. But it's clear to us there is also some trolling going on.

The newest version of MT (2.63) allows us to close the comments to a particular post at any time, while choosing to delete or leave previous comments. We are vigorously making use of this feature.

We're getting upwards of 150 comments and emails a day, just on talkleft (we also get that amount on our work email), so we may miss some. Please send us an email if you spot one we've missed.

We know emotions run high on the war, and there are conservatives who read and post here. All are welcome to engage is dialogue here, even heated debate. But foul language, gratuitous slams, anti-semitism and trolling is not tolerated. So fair warning.

Also, while we're on the topic of comments, please put any url's in html format or we will delete them because they skew the comment box and sometimes the whole site. Instructions are available in the comment box itself.

And for readers who are also writers, please don't put the entire text of long articles in the comments. We can't afford the bandwith and they discourage readers from scrolling down to later comments. Thanks.

Mother Jones has a good article today called Roundups and Rights --we're quoted on the roundup of Iraqis.

Law Tech columnist Robert Ambroggi does a wrap-up of legal blogs today in Blawgs: More Than Just Fluff. We're pleased to be included --and described as "An unabashedly left-leaning look at the law and politics of crime." Robert has a blog himself, Lawsites, which tracks new legal resources available on the web. Robert calls Howard Bashman's "How Appealing" "one of the best resources on the Web for tracking appellate litigation throughout the United States. " He's right, we read Howard at least once a day.

We need to start making our way back to snowed-in Denver today so this is it for us for now. Please give the blogs and news sources listed on the right a read and leave some comments if you feel like it.

Tonight is Texas' 300th Execution. We can't allow ourselves to become desensitized to it because of the war. Our friend Reverand George of Kolbe House in Chicago tells us, regarding the Emery University study on the death penalty (finding that the death penalty deters murders)

Again an article cites the deeply flawed Emory University study, which does not support the conclusion below and it is based on several erroneous assuptions, like prospective murders are aware of crime/punishment data and twice when they applied their "formula", they excluded a calcualtion because it was ZERO and if they had multiplied their data, ZERO time ZERO is ZERO.I believe I may be the only person who has read and studied the entire report--the authors did NOT. [ed. note: edited to reflect Rev. Georges comment was about the Emory University Study, not the California prosecutor's study as we orignally wrote]

One last note for now: We are not criticizing the anti-war movement as some have written us in response to our post last night. We support the anti-war movement. We consider ourselves a vocal part of it. But we and the anti-war movement didn't prevent the war, which was our principal goal. We believe we--TalkLeft--can be the most effective right now covering the legal and political and civil liberties aspects of the war. We recognize here (which we are sorry we neglected to do last night) that the anti-war movement has far-ranging, important goals that reach past the prevention of war. So, rest assured, we'll continue to link to protest sites and report favorably on their news and views.

Peace soon.

We're on the road today, we hope you will scroll down to read our weekend posts and also visit the sites on the right. We'll be back posting tonight.

Feel free to hit the paypal and "chip in" buttons --your contributions are very much appreciated.

We can't believe we have to go through this again, but our hosting company says it has to move TalkLeft to another server. The move is set for Saturday night, and the company assures us they have done everything they can to make a smooth transition with no down time.

However, we all know there are glitches with moves, so if we are down, or you can't comment, or find some other problem, send us an email at talkleft@aol.com.

We will be in Washington with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for the 40th Anniversary of Gideon commemoration and to do some lobbying with some Republican members of Congress on the Innocence Protection Act on Tuesday and Wednesday, and picked the weekend to do the switch so we'd be around if there are any crises. We will be blogging evenings and early mornings from D.C.

If you're in Washington, come to the Gideon Symposium. It is free and open to the public. You can download the brochure here. Details:

March 18, 2003, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
Georgetown University Law Center
600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

We won't have time to post until much later today, so if you have something you want to discuss or rant about, you can do it here.

Atrios gets a blogging gig--way cool. We know he won't forget his roots though.

We've been asked to supply an open thread where readers can talk and debate their own topics, be it the war, elections, crime, whatever. Since we've got court most of the day, and won't be posting till later this afternoon, we're going to give it a try.

We only ask that you not list urls without the appropriate coding because they skew the size of the comments box and sometimes the whole site, and not use obscenities because censor software will block us to many law firms and businesses that read us, and it's difficult to reverse. Other than that, TalkLeft is your's today.

We had over 4,000 daily visitors for the first time Friday. Over 6,500 page views. Thanks, everyone, especially (in alphabetical order) Atrios, Cursor and Instapundit.

Atrios thinks Jim Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review should run for Senator against Arlen Spector. We do too. Jim's in great form today, go read. And Jim...hopefully you'll never need us, but we're here for you if you do, thanks for the vote of confidence.

Poor Man is back from hiatus and very funny as always.

Is anyone else having trouble pinging weblogs.com with MT version 2.63? Our posts are taking forever to "rebuild" when we hit "publish" and the activity log says that "One or more errors occurred when sending update or TrackBack pings. Check the Activity Log for the error." The activity log says that "Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: HTTP error: 500 read timeout"

It is just so time consuming waiting for the "publish" to take effect. If you have any ideas, please post them here or email us at talkleft@aol.com. Thanks.

Jim Capozzola at Rittenhouse Review, just about the best writer we've encountered in the blogosphere, has outdone himself in a blogorama today--telling us who's got the goods on whom--he had to have been up all night to read that many blogs and then cleverly write up what they were writing about --we're going to try and read them all. We may use what he said about us as our blog anthem.

Thanks to (in alphabetical order) Atrios and Instapundit, TalkLeft received its most visits ever today--3600--and 5500 page views.

Thanks to the anonymous tipster who chipped in $25.00 today, our biggest tip yet. Even a few bucks helps us defray the increasing bandwith and news and other subscription costs and makes us feel appreciated. The Amazon tip jar means you stay anonymous. The Paypal donation link lets us know who gave.

And a special thanks to all of you for reading us. You keep us going.

Ernie the Attorney writes about the three stages of blogging awareness. Joi Ito has the 4th stage and a test to see if you're there:

4) Oh, no. I'm addicted to blogging...

You are addicted to blogging if you answer "yes" to at least 3 of the following questions:

Do you think about everything in terms of whether it will make a good blog entry?

Do you keep your computer in standby mode beside your bed and wake up at 2am to blog?

Do you skip lunch and blog instead?

Do you accept speaking engagements or make travel decisions based on whether they will make good blog material?

Do you have your RSS newsreader open during meetings and keep hitting "refresh"?

Do you sit around trying to figure out how you can redesign your job so you can blog more?

Do you think blogs will suddenly cause an emergent democracy and save the world?

How did you all do? No surprise, we're there.