There's been a lot of discussion this week about financial contributions to bloggers, starting with small-l Libertarian William Quick of Daily Pundit threatening to quit if he doesn't get donations, and Instapundit's agreement with Arthur Silber's article encouraging readers to contribute to bloggers they read regularly.

We agree that when you find a blog that you check in with frequently, either to see what's new or what they are saying, or because you appreciate their point of view and like the way they express it, donations are appropriate.

Our "tip jar" on the left asks for donations. We encourage them. We also really do need a new, lightweight laptop for the road so we can continue to blog and update our newsfeed when we're traveling, which we do quite frequently. So if you're a regular reader or browser of TalkLeft, we hope you will throw in a few bucks. [Or, if you are with IBM or Sony or other computer company, we'll be happy to accept a new laptop and in exchange, we will proudly display your company logo with a hotlink, here and on CrimeLynx.]

We are in the process of upgrading to MT 2.51 and experiencing some technical difficulties. We'll be back as soon as possible, so keep checking back.

Update: All seems to be working now except the search engine which we've taken off line until we can iron out the bugs.

A special thanks to Jim Capozzola at Rittenhouse Review for these very kind words about us today. (His permalink isn't working or we'd just send you there instead of reprinting.)

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"If Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft knows so much about crime and criminal law, how come she’s not a ten-most-wanted criminal mastermind by now? Or is she? Just kidding. I’ve learned more about the law from Merritt, online and off, than I have from any other resource I’ve met, or encountered rather, online or off."

Thanks, Jim!

Martin Wisse has started Progressive Gold, a weblog reprinting the best of us leftist bloggers' posts on a daily basis. He got the idea from Nathan Newman's post on Why Blogs Matter, modified it a bit, and says:

"This new weblog is a first attempt at realising his vision, though somewhat differently from what he intended (for now). What I intend to do and will invite others to join me in, is to create a daily "Best of the Progressive Blogosphere" linklist. Each entry will consist of a single paragraph from the story linked to and a link to the story. That's all. There won't be any commentary, no expounding on what's happening in the world, no big thesises. Just links to the progressive blogposts you need to read today."

We like it. Martin would like Progressive Gold to be a cooperative effort, in the spirit of Blogcritics, or more like a e-magazine. If you'd like to participate, email him at proggold.cloggie.org.

We are pleased to be a recent addition to Stand Down, the NoWar Blog. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a blog with contributions from those on the right as well as the left who oppose an Invasion of Iraq.

As soon as we can catch our breath from the elections, we'll be contributing our two cents on why this war is a bad idea.

Our reading suggestions for the rest of the day:

We highly recommend Avedon Carol on war stuff over at The Sideshow, Jim Capozzola's Rittenhouse Review tribute to Paul Wellstone, and Atrios and Lisa English's Ruminate This on just about everything.

Eric at The Hamster quotes the best of the progressive web today (as he does everyday), especially Ralph Neas on the Bush judicial nominees, Eric Alterman who is back from Europe, and Joe Conasen. My DD is doing a great job with election coverage and Skippy has the links to the pros and cons on ballistic fingerprinting.

Congrats to Daily Kos who has made his site meter public and had over 4,000 hits yesterday, and has started a second weblog chronicling his wife's pregnancy.

We are on our way home and will resume posting late tonight or tomorrow. LA was wonderful after our experience in Minn./Saint Paul last Friday. The only downside was lack of dsl or wireless so we couldn't post, surf around or even update our newsfeed as we would have liked.

We'll post on the swearing in of LA Police Chief Bill Bratton and the celebratory reception later, just wanted you all to know we have missed reading our favorite blogs, and thanks to Skippy for sticking up for us on the "editorial we" in the comments to our Wellstone post and thanks also to Eric Alterman for linking to it. We've had a lot of referrals from Liberal Oasis and Atrios, too.

We didn't disappear--we're in Minneapolis about to give a talk to criminal defense lawyers on....Representing the Despised Defendant in the Post-9/11 World. Could anything be more apt today given yesterday's arrests in the sniper case?

We're also over at Altercation today, guest-hosting Slacker Friday. Hope you enjoy it, Eric's back Monday. We'll be back here tonight. And on Fox News discussing the Sniper arrests Saturday at 5:30 p.m. ET.

In case you were wondering what the blogs covering the upcoming elections were going to do after the November 5 elections, here is Daily Kos's plan:

"After the election I will also be launching a collaborative blog called the Political State Report, featuring "correspondents" writing about political developments in their home states. My goal is to get writers from both the left and the right to cover all 50 states. If you might be interested in participating, please let me know."

Political Wire "invited some of the best political weblogs to be part of a new Political Wire feature called Blog Scan. This is one of the fastest ways to see what the political blogosphere is writing about."

TalkLeft is proud to be included in a group that includes such politically astute bloggers as Daily Kos and MyDD. Thanks to Taegan Goddard for setting this up. We are going to add it to our blogroll.

Salon staff writer Eric Boehlert is guest hosting Eric Alterman's Altercation today and he's good!

We'll be back there Friday filling in for Eric with another "Slacker Friday"-- a mix of our thoughts and readers' letters. Eric will be back Monday, unless he's decided to become an ex-pat -- unlikely, he is way too much a New Yorker.

We are guest hosting the vacationing Eric Alterman's MSNBC weblog Altercation today. It's Slacker Friday over there, meaning the column is mostly reprinting selected letters received from readers during the week. He sure does get a lot of mail.

The column will be up around 5 pm EST and stay up through the weekend.

Check out the new TAPPED weblog. They've moved to Movable Type and it looks so much better. They've added a relatively short list of blogs on the right hand side, including TalkLeft and many of our favorites, like Atrios, Daily Kos, Rittenhouse, Maxspeak, Matt Yglesias, Cooped Up and MyDD, and of course, Law Professor Glenn Reynolds's InstaPundit and Eric Alterman's Altercation, which were our role models and inspiration in revamping TalkLeft into a blog.

Tapped has a new url and would like you to update your bookmarks.