Via How Appealing, who got it from Law.Com reporter Tony Mauro, we learn there's a new blog by the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press. It's called Behind the Homefront, and is "a daily chronicle of news in homeland security and military operations affecting newsgathering, access to information and the public's right to know."

Here's an entry from January 24th we are interested in: (links omitted here, but contained in original):

THE STAGE HAS BEEN SET FOR SUPREME COURT ACTION on the question of whether the public has a right of access to the terrorism-related immigration proceedings, most of which, of course, are long over. On Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit rejected a government request for rehearing by the entire court, letting stand a decision holding that automatic closure of all post-September 11th immigration proceedings was unconstitutional. The Third Circuit last month decided not to rehear a case that reached the opposite conclusion, that the First Amendment does not guarantee a presumptive right of access. The split in the circuits can only be resolved by Supreme Court review. News coverage: Detroit Free Press; News Media Update (3rd Cir.); News Media Update (6rd Cir.)

We learned something new about Instapundit tonight. If he's not careful, we're going to blow his cover as being a conservative.

In responding to a post by Atrios on the connection between Reverand Moon and the conservative Washington Times, which post included criticism of Instapundit for writing articles for the paper, Instapundit responds:

"I think the only thing I ever wrote for the Wash. Times was a piece entitled "Greasing the Skids at the Start of Death Row," condemning the Habeas Corpus provision of the 1996 antiterrorism bill, which oped I coauthored with GWU professor Bob Cottrol and which was placed there through the efforts of that noted Moonie front group, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers."

We don't know much about Reverand Moon, although if Atrios says he's bad, he probably is, so we'll try and learn something about him, but in the meantime, we are very impressed that Instapundit opposed the Habeas provision of AEDPA (Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996--brought in by Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing)--

The Habeas provision in that act is what makes it so difficult for those who are wrongfully convicted to get into court. It places a one year time limit on filing the claim. It can take years for inmates to get someone to review their case and try and track down DNA evidence to prove their innocence.

We are hereby extending Instapundit an offer to become a law professor member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. If he accepts, we'll pay his dues the first year.

We won't extend the same offer to Rev. Moon, the Bushes, Richard Mellon Scaife, Ted Olson, John Ashcroft, Judicial Watch, or any of the true conservatives.

Say hello to Balloon Juice who just got a bloglift. He's considered right-wing by most liberals, as he is somewhat hawkish, does not view Bush in an evil light and generally favors international intervention.

But he also matches up with us on a number of issues. Balloon Juice's author, John Cole, tells us,

"I am pro-choice, against the war on drugs and pro-legalization, against the death penalty and mandatory minimums as well as in favor of prison reform and increased rehabilitation, against faith-based initiatives, generally pro-environment while despising most of the environmental groups, and an avowed civil and individual rights supporter (I really appreciate the work you did on the Racine Rave issue). I hate guns but I support the right to own them, and against almost every tax ever proposed."

You can't get too much better than that if you are a liberal crime-related political blog. So you'll find a link to Balloon Juice on the right under "Best of the Other Side."

We're guest-blogging for Eric Alterman at MSNBC's Altercation today--and it's Slacker Friday. Hope you'll stop by.

Eric Alterman of MSNBC's Altercation is off to Brussels this afternoon. We'll be guest-hosting Altercation once again this Friday, which is a Slacker Friday edition. As Eric mentions in today's column, please send any responses to what he has written this week to us at Alterlinks@aol.com. Charles Pierce will be hosting Altercation tomorrow and Eric Boehlert will do Thursday.

The website for Eric's new book, What Liberal Media is up and running. You can pre-order the book there, it should be hitting the bookstore's shelves very soon. We haven't read it yet, Instapundit got an advance copy, but not us. Still, we can't wait to read it. You can also read about it and buy it here.

There's an Instapundit, Senior--what a great guy he sounds like!

Check out Body and Soul's Strange Brew of headlines--showing that truth definitely can be stranger than fiction.

Jay Caruso over at The Daily Rant explains how to post URL's in the comments. It's important, because as Jay says, when you just type the url, it messes up the column spacing of our blogs and we have to go in and rebuild all the entries not just the one you commented on. TalkLeft has 1900 + entries and it takes a while to rebuild them all, and time is a precious commodity around here. (We had to do this last night so we're very sensitive to it).

Jay lays out the instructions very nicely.

The Horse takes on Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post for his "smarmy column" on John Kerry (link Via Hamster)

All of MWO is great today--they hit everything from Affirmative Action to Korea to whether ABC censured booing of "Poppy Bush" when he delivered a taped message at the American Music Awards ceremony Monday night.

We are off to Court for the afternoon, we hope you will check in here anyway and also visit the sites on the right. And today is Slacker Friday over at Altercation, always a must-read for us.

Where he gets the time, we have no idea. In addition to law school teaching and the publishing obligations that go along with tenure, in addition to updating Instapundit almost all day long, and in between producing music, writing a TechNews column and a FoxNews column, and parenting and spousing, our pied piper of blogging, Glenn Reynolds, now has a new weblog called Glenn Reynolds. com at MSNBC. Its focus is Technology, Culture, Politics and Law.

Glenn's blog debuted tonight, so go give it a read. Tonight's episode features business decisions that result in dumb lawsuits and techno music. You can read what Glenn has to say about the new blog on Kausfiles.

Oh, and don't forget to check out the recommended links on GlennReynolds.com--we're very proud to be included.

Update: The New York Times profiles Reynolds as Instapundit here.

From today's Page Six:

Front-row seat THE Rev. Al Sharpton got the front row on the shuttle flight back from Washington, D.C. on Sunday, and was pleased to see his rival for the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Joe Lieberman, two rows back. Sharpton, who had just appeared on "Meet the Press," exclaimed to his entourage: "That's how it's gonna be when the votes are counted."

Also in the humor department, Ted Barlow is writing only "How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take....?" jokes all week.

Congrats to Oliver Willis who has an article up on PBS called "Why I Blog."

And for Priceless link of the day, from Maxpeak: Bush Releases New "1040"

Howard Bashman of How Appealing , in the last paragraph of his post, sends us to Memeufacture, a Weblog and Automated Trend Reporting site. Memeufacture scans hundreds of websites of different "genres" with some sort of formula using a python program, and comes up with the most popular sites in various categories, followed by the most influential sites in the same categories.*

How Appealing is the second most influential blog in the "law" category. We thought Howard was just being modest when he said there must be an error in balloting. So we went to Memeufacture to take a look. TalkLeft isn't in the law category at all, it's in the Politics-Left category, and they list TalkLeft as the second most influential weblog in the "Politics-Left" Category. Here are their top ten (as of this moment):

1 : Eschaton
2 : TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime
3 : BuzzFlash - Daily Headlines and Breaking News
4 : Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
5 : TAPPED
6 : Cursor.org -
7 : Daily Kos: Political analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation
8 : Matthew Yglesias
9 : NathanNewman.org - News and Views
10 : Eric Alterman: Altercation

Now, we know we get linked to a bunch, but still, number two in that category, when compared to the others? In our dreams, maybe.

For Politics - Right, Instapundit is the most influential, and Oliver Willis is number 6. Wonder what Oliver will have to say about being in this category at all.

The most popular left political sites (as opposed to most influential) are:

1 : NathanNewman.org - News and Views: Pickering and Anti-Klan Testimony
2 : Eschaton
3 : Spinsanity - Taxing the public's trust: The Bush administration is stretching the truth again to sell its latest tax cut
4 : Long story; short pier.: Boom and Bust.
5 : Altercation: Slacker Friday
6. the next five are mainstream media newspapers

*This is Memeufacture's description of what they do: "The automatic content is generated using a simple Python program (about 200 lines.) Memeufacture scans hundreds of websites of several different genres. It determines which links are most popular and which websites posted those links first."

We are obviously missing something here. Can anyone explain Memeufacture and what they are measuring?

Update: We also expressed our puzzlement via e-mail to Memeufacture's chief, John Weher. He has replied:

The ranking mechanism is automated and objective.

Essentially it works by recording who links to what first. If two sites link to the same site at once, it is counted as a tie and disqualified. The rankings change quite frequently, but it is interesting to see the sites that consistently stay near the top, such as instapundit, metafilter and talkleft.

Your being listed in the top means that you tend to point out issues that others find important (and link to) later on. Congratulations for running a great site.