Our congratulations to Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, best known to blog readers as Instapundit, who just received a Chair at the University of Tennessee law school. He is now the "Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law."

Last week we reported that TalkLeft was being censored--at least at a few law firms that use filtering programs, including the firm of Howard Bashman who writes the excellent law blog How Appealing. He provided us with the name of the company that provides the filtering service to them, we contacted them and they have fixed the problem.

Apparently we were sharing an IP address with another site in the same database, causing an "accidental overblock." The company has moved us to the "news and media" category and modified their database so we are no longer subject to a "sex" block.

We're impressed, they responded quickly and corrected the problem. The company is Websense.

Thanks to Jennifer at Klyjen who has already noted the change and posted it.

If anyone else experiences a block when trying to access TalkLeft, please let us know.

Reynolds runs the Weblog InstaPundit.com, which is becoming a must-see for better known opinion-makers trying to stay informed on current events.

For the zillions unfamiliar with the concept of a Weblog -- commonly called a blog -- it's a personal Web site where anybody with the energy and/or ego can comment on anything, anytime, anywhere.

Reynolds, a congenial and entertaining fellow, does have opinions on a wide range of subjects, which he posts with almost fanatic regularity on InstaPundit. Equally, if not more important, he gobbles up other info on the Internet and provides Web addresses -- links -- enabling readers to click onto sites Reynolds has located for them.

A University of Tennessee undergrad with a Yale law degree, Reynolds insists in a phone interview, that, contrary to appearances, he has a life -- with a wife, a forensic psychologist specializing in murder, and a 7-year-old daughter"We're a household of media geeks here," he concedes.

He also teaches, has written three books, produces regular columns for the Fox News Web site and techcentralstation.com, gets $1 apiece from T-shirts he sells on his Web site, produces techno music under the name Mobius Dick -- and does go on vacation....

For his part, Reynolds explains his success this way: "People are hard-wired to gossip and what's going on the world, and I think blogs are a reflection of that. They're most like 18th Century coffee houses where people got together to talk about the latest news."

..."I get more attention than I deserve. Some bloggers deserve more than they get. I'm happy to have it. Nobody becomes a law professor without a big ego. But, I encourage you to scroll down on my Web site and look at some of the other Weblogs."

There's more. It's great to see blogs getting attention in print from mainstream media and mainstream pundits.

This new progressive weblog, Political Strategy, which its authors refer to as the "Sun Tzu Files" looks very good to us. They are looking for feedback, so go over and read and then give them some.

Kos of Daily Kos, exhausted from the debut of the wonderful Political State Report this week, has "Billmon" subbing for him tonight. Billmon has a brilliant and very, very funny post called The Shape of Things to Come looking back at 2003. Yes, 2003. Go read and enjoy.

Welcome to Digby, who started the new year with his new left blog Hullabaloo. Digby isn't starting from scratch, he's been posting in the comments section of other big bloggers for months, and won the Koufax award this week for "Best Commentor."

Another liberal blog we just came across that we like a lot is The ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose (The Noose, for short) based in Oregon.

We also want to extend a special thanks to Patrick Nielsen-Hayden of Electrolite, Jay Caruso of the Daily Rant , Lisa English of Ruminate This, and Toby Sackton of Let It Begin Here. They have been extremely supportive of us in recent weeks, and we very much appreciate their comments. They also have great blogs, and if you are not already regular readers of them, you should be.

Hamster's back after his holiday vacation, he's a must-read every day for both news and views.

And congratulations to Skippy who reached 50,000 visitors today and always makes us smile.

Filter, the Tech News Column of the Washington Post reports today on their Readers' Favorite Blogs (TechNews.com). Thanks to Mad Kane , who nominated us, TalkLeft was listed as one the readers favorites. So was Jim Cappozola's Rittenhouse Review. We're very flattered, thanks, Madeleine!

From Howard Bashman at How Appealing today:

"And, just when I've finally come to accept that my law firm uses Internet filtering software that makes it impossible for me to receive any emails that contain foul language, my firm's version of Websense decides to block my access to the blog TalkLeft. Hmm, what's up with that!"

We have no idea, and while the anti-authoritarian in us is tempted to be flattered, we'd rather Howard was able to read us--and link to us--considering how huge his readership has become. Plus, we can't remember ever using a four letter word or other foul language on TalkLeft.

After months of hard work, Daily Kos' new blog, Political State Report made its debut today. It has state-level political reports directly from the trenches, with volunteers from each state offering their time as a state coordinator/reporter. What an effort-- but what a great result--go read and comment and keep it active. Congratulations, Kos...and thanks for adding this valuable service to the internet.

PLA has announced the winners of the first annual Koufax Awards for liberal blogging excellence. TalkLeft is the proud recipient of the award for "Best Single Issue Blog." Thank you to all who voted for us--it feels great to be recognized for our efforts.

Voting in our category resulted in a close race between us and three excellent blogs we read every day: Daily Kos (our good friend as well as the designer of TalkLeft's blog and our guru on all things technical) and MY DD are unsurpassed when it comes to election coverage; and Ignatz, is a terrific law-and-politics blog written by Alabama labor lawyer Sam Heldman.

Our congrats to the other winners, including Atrios (best blog and best writing series), Jim Cappozola of Rittenhouse Review (best single entry), Jeanne of Body and Soul (best writing) and Alas a Blog (best design).

Thanks to Skippy, for his several congratulatory posts to us-- he was nominated for both best humorous blog and best special effects.

We're proud just to be in the company of the other nominees and winners. And we agree with the award host (Dwight of PLA) and others that many great blogs also warranted nomination --such as Lisa English of Ruminate This; Avedon Carol of Sideshow and Liberal Oasis, to name just a few.

Update: Next up are the Bloggie Awards. Nominations Due by January 12--and there are prizes and a real winners' ceremony in Austin, Texas on March 9.

We're taking our New Year's break now and will be mostly silent until January 1. We won't be updating the newsfeed before then, but you can access the news sites we frequent the most by clicking on the "media" link on the top right.

We've done a lot of posting this week, including this morning, so we encourage you to hang around, read some of what we have to say, and also visit the links on the right.

Happy New Year to all, we hope it rings in justice and peace.

How Appealing, the top-rated appellate law blog by Howard Bashman, got a bloglift - go take a look. Nice job, Howard, we love the new color scheme.

Update: Political Wire by Taegan Goddard got one too. Very clean looking and sharper color scheme.