Devra over at Talk A Blue Streak says she's getting paranoid about things. Here's a sample of her concerns:

We have a President who embraces Fundamentalist Christian theology as a guide to governing in Foreign Policy. And who rejects 'Christian Charity' as a guide to governing in Domestic Policy. We have a Commander In Chief who is knowingly driving our government into bankruptcy. What does this add up to? A president who seeks to undermine us. I'm not inclined to paranoia - I'm just paying attention.

If you are a Fundamentalist Christian, you are probably perfectly comfortable with the idea that the government should be 'Faith Based' - provided that Faith is a Christian, Bible-centered one.

But how is this any different from the many 'Faith Based' Muslim nations of the world? The Taliban does come to mind, here, as does Saudi Arabia.

We are a secular nation. That is our strength. Why do we sit by, afraid to ask questions of a president who seeks to turn this into a bankrupt Christian nation. I wonder, what do Christian militias think of George W. Bush? Do they think he's on the right track? Bankrupt the Federal government, strengthen private industry, weaken labor, turn over social services to churches, privatize privatize privatize ... what's next? Dismantle government, and the individual protections it promises. Good god. It's like I'm living the prologue of a dystopian science fiction novel. And then there's the War.

And after that, the Moonies. Go read, and let her know she's not alone in her anxiety.

Via The Agonist, a link to the blog Uzbekistan Diary, "A year in the life of a North American Journalist working in Uzbekistan."

The most recent post is yesterday. It begins,

We are in the middle of a fight with the US Embassy. There are certain un-named factors in the US Embassy that want my organization to trumpet all the good things the US is doing here. And they want us to make our UZ journalists tell those stories on UZ TV.

This presents a conflict of interest for me.

Sure, as a private US citizen, I would like the world to know about the good things my country does. But as a director of a press organization, I do not see it as my job to do PR for the United States, even though my salary comes from US taxpayer money. My job -- my mandate -- is to promote a free and independent press. It is not to promote and create an UZ press that tells the stories the US government wants them to tell.

[Note: We incorrectly identified the blog's author as a "He"--so we have changed the title of this post. Thanks to Sean-Paul for letting us know.]

South Knox Bubba has had an epiphany on what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Don't forget to read the comments. [link via Atrios.]

Welcome back from a too long hiatus to Law Prof. Jeff Cooper of Cooped Up--he's moved to Movable Type and gotten a bloglift.

Issues Guy gives up anonymity and has a new article out at History News Network, go read.

Ignatz (Sam Heldman) gets a nice bloglift as well.

Lisa English of Ruminate This examines General Electric's ownership of NBC in the context of their status as a major producer of nuclear bombs and reactors.

Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review on the latest code orange alert--we'd write some more but we're off to the grocery store to stock up on our three day supply of bottled water.

The Horse is all over the right-wing Kerry bashing

Don't forget Eric Alterman is on O'Reilly tonight-- Fox News Channel, 8 and 11 pm EST.

What Liberal Media?

by Eric Alterman


Buy the Book Today!

Thanks to PJack, one of Atrios's readers, TalkLeft is now available in PDA form so you can read us on your palm pilots or pocket pc's. Here is the link, which you can also find on the right side of TalkLeft, right above our XML feed.

If you are a Live Journal user, Carpeicthus made us an RSS feed so you can put us on your "friend's list" and be notified when we update. Here's the link.

Many thanks to both PJack and Carpeicthus. PJack has made a page of PDA links for a variety of left-oriented sites, you can access them all on one page, here. Carpeicthus has also made live journal "my friends" pages for Atrios, Matt Yglesisas and Daily Kos, which you can access on his friends' list, here.

Robert Ambroggi, a lawyer in Rockport, MA, Legal Tech Writer and author of the book, " The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web," has written not one, but three columns on law blogs in recent months for Law Technology News. Find out what you're missing.

The Year's Most Laudable Web Site Launches (November, 2002)

Many Blawgs Provide Practical Information (December, 2002)

Lawyers as Pundits by Way of the Web (January, 2003)

Ambroggi also has own blog, LawSites, that tracks new and intriguing Web sites for lawyers.

TalkLeft is moving dns servers and may be down for 24 to 48 hours starting soon. Please read our friends on the right in the meantime.

Update: We're still here so maybe it was a false alarm.

Kevin Drum, also known as CalPundit has a new photograph of himself up on his weblog. This one is the best yet. His eyes are open and he's smiling. Wearing jeans with a button down collared t-shirt. no socks (we hope) and mocassins. Direct look in his eye. Ready for fun or adventure, take your pick. The young, preppy law-school look is gone. If we had to guess his occupation, we'd say....private investigator, former cop. Decent guy who can deal with the low-down without sinking into it himself. He sure is tall though, we'd guess 6/4. The kind of guy you'd want around if you were walking around too late at night and were about to get mugged and needed a savior. Kevin, I think this photo is a keeper. You even look smart.

Our site meter has been busy all day today--thanks to Instapundit, Vodkapundit, and Eric Alterman's Altercation. Last week Atrios helped our numbers out a lot. If you haven't read them yet today, go on over. They are must reads every day. Thanks, guys.

While we do keep our sitemeter private (mostly for user privacy), we're happy to announce that we just hit 200,00 visits and 300,000 page views today. We've been averaging between 2,000 and 3,000 visits a day since just before Christmas. We're not in the big leagues yet, but we're climbing. So please, all of you readers, keep coming back. And if you'd like to hit the "chip in" link on the left, we'd be most grateful for your couple of bucks.

Update: We had 3,589 visitors today, a few hundred more than our previous "record."

Ruminate This, the gutsy, outspoken and totally rational brainchild of Lisa English, just got a bloglift for its move to MT and it looks great. Go take a read.

CalPundit got a lift too--Kevin's changed his photo on the front--and is soliciting opinions about the new one. We like the second one better, but think he should take a third and smile a little bit for the camera.

We've made a couple of addtions to our blogroll, journalist David Neiwert's Orcinus, Digby , Roger Ailes (not that one), Progressive Gold and TBogg.

Alterman quotes retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni who opposes a war with Iraq now. Zinni used to head the U.S. Central Command, in charge of U.S. forces in much of the Middle East and Central Asia, from 1997 to 2000, after which he was George W. Bush’s personal emissary to the Middle East peace process. And don't forget, tomorrow is the debut of:

What Liberal Media?

by Eric Alterman


Buy the Book Today!

Read the 13 page Introduction now and visit the website.

Salon has a new interview with Hunter Thompson, our favorite gonzo Journalist who says 9/11 "let the Bush crowd loot the country and savage American democracy." Hunter has a new memoir out, "Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century," already destined for the New York Times Best Seller list this weekend.

Kingdom of Fear
by Hunter S. Thompson

Buy the Book Today!

Publisher's Weekly describes it as, "Hunter Thompson, author of such classics as Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and other journalistic endeavors, has finally penned a memoir. Well, sort of. "

Last but not least, we've added two features to TalkLeft. One is a newsfeed on the lower right side of the site with positive articles about Gary Hart, who may or may not run for President, but who right now is our first choice if he does. (There's a few issues we don't know his stand on that could possibly alter this). The other is "The Hart Monitor" which are sporadic posts containing updates on his run or non-run, whichever it should be. We'll say once again that should Hart choose not to run for President, we hope the next President, who we are sure will be a Democrat, makes him Secretary of State.

Blogger reaction to the Columbia tragedy today:

Glenn Reynolds.com: Mourn and Move On--Glenn makes the case for not letting this roll back the space program, but rather, forging ahead.

Stephen Green of Vodkapundit: Bad Day for Bitterness --Eloquent, with similar thoughts to Glenn, including criticism of NASA.

Patrick Nielsen Haydenquotes the William Gibson weblog: "nobody ever said it would be risk-free. If it were, it wouldn’t be glorious. And it’s only with these losses that we best know that it really is."

Atrios: "To those who think it's inappropriate to mourn some lives more than others - well, it's the only way we can mourn at all."

Calpundit: "We learn from our mistakes, but we should never allow fear of failure to keep us from pushing the boundaries of what we can accomplish. Death — and recovery from death — are a fundamental part of the human condition, a lesson that we are re-learning rather more often than we'd like in the first few years of the 21st century."

This Washington Post article is really good too--"People who work on the program understand that failure is part of the enterprise. When he retired in 2001, Dan Goldin had a message for the assembled NASA staff at headquarters in Washington: "Be bold and don't fear failure. Treat failure as a blessing, because mediocre goals are poison."

It's that time of year again....Journalist and historian Eric Alterman, columnist for The Nation and author of MSNBC's Altercation and the brand new book What Liberal Media? is revising his bookmarked links on Altercation. Here's how it works:

       The Blogosphere is changing so rapidly that it’s easy to miss some of the best sites. That’s why I’m so lucky to have Jeralyn (www.talkleft.com) volunteering again, to take your nominations for who deserves the high-powered MSNBC.com-driven slots on the right. Send her (not me!) your nominations at alterlinks@aol.com. Don’t stuff ballot boxes. It’s merit driven, once she is aware of you. (Though if you really want extra credit, I’d consider a link to both Altercation and What Liberal Media.com. Did I mention there’s a pdf file with the first chapter of the book there?

Three additional rules Eric has to be listed: Your site must be a weblog; You must have a link to Altercation on your front page, and it's for progressive sites only. There is no 'other side.'

Again, mail your suggestions to us at alterlinks@aol.com.