Mark Gisleson of BushWars has a good wrap up of New Year's blog offerings.

Atrios has a New Year's resolution.

Lisa English of Ruminate This has an activist agenda up with a cheat-sheet.

Damn Foreigner has the latest Maher Arar updates, including a possible new smear campaign against him. Arar is the Canadian who was seized by the U.S. at JFK and shipped off to Syria where he was imprisoned for a year during which incarceration he says he was tortured.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Electrolite and David Neiwert of Orcinus are onto the U.S. neglect of domestic terrorists. David says,

If anyone wanted evidence that the "war on terror" is primarily a political marketing campaign -- in which war itself is mostly a device for garnering support -- they need look no farther than the startling non-response to domestic terrorism by the Bush administration.

He offers the Texas cyanide bomb plot up as an example. More here, including this quote from Daniel Levitas, author of The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right:

"Excuse me, a chemical weapon was found in the home state of George Bush," says Levitas. "I'm not saying the Justice Department deliberately decided to downplay the story because they thought it might be embarrassing to the US government if weapons of mass destruction were found in America before they were found in Iraq. But I am saying it was a mistake not to give this higher profile."

Oliver Willis makes it into Discover Magazine. We hope it's MSNBC next for Oliver.

Ezra Klein at Pandagon is angry over a Dean supporter referring to Josh Marshall and Matt Yglesias as "Heathers." We have to agree that labeling Josh and Matt as conservative media is off-base.

Josh Marshall provides some possible explanations for why Ashcroft recused himself in the Plame investigation. We still think the most likely one is to avoid claims of whitewash and conflict of interest when it turns out that a certain high level White House official is found to be the leak but the Justice Department announces it will not prosecute because it cannot prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Instapundit has a variation of this view: "Instead, it seems that his recusal would make more sense if people were likely to scream "whitewash" because Rove wasn't involved."

Skippy gives thanks for the New Year. We'd like to thank Skippy back, for bringing us so many smiles over the past year.

South Knox Bubba has the Freepers on Parade: the best of 2003. Here's a sample:

Constitution? What is that? Oh I remember. That is the document that protects pornography and the media.

Avedon Carol of Sideshow has this from Media Free America: