It’s not too often you see a heavy hitter, but yesterday I was privileged to attend a panel discussion on which Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters sat.

I would have more to say about the matter (as the discussion was quite interesting) but I was exhausted from getting ready for this trip. In fact, I was in bed by 8 PM last night (10 PM "normal" time back in Tennessee) and slept straight through until this morning.

More to say later.

First let me say, as I do every time I redesign my site, CSS sucks. Big time.

After weeks of effort, I’ve rolled out my new site design (mostly). Problem is, while most things look fine in Firefox and IE7, it seems IE6 is floating the main column below the right column on my individual archive and archives listing page.

As IE6 accounts for almost 40% of my readers visitors, I think this is a problem.

So can anyone recommend a reasonably-priced web designer that I can pay to fix my problems and maybe do a couple of other things (like install captcha on my comments page because I’m getting dozens of comment spam every day)?

I don’t need much, just a little help with the more esoteric aspects of CSS. Like how to make the damn thing work.

Patterico nicely addresses the recent Washington Supreme Court ruling on McCain-Feingold, the applicability of the “media exemption”, and how the whole thing applies to blogging.

Andrew Olmsted is returning to active duty, so he is resigning from his seat on the Watcher’s Council. The Watcher of Weasels is accepting applications to fill this seat. If you have a blog, I highly recommend participating (I was a charter member of the council).

Microsoft made it’s LiveWriter WYSIWYG tool available to beta testers today (download here).

It’s a fairly massive download and can install much more than just the blogging tool (like their new Desktop Search), but the installation was painless and error free.

This is my first post using it (hence the lack of any meaningful content) so I am playing with things like inserting pictures:

This is Bubba, whom I named because he is a little bit fat, a little bit lazy and a lot smarter than he lets on.

In this picture Bubba is engaged in his second-favorite activity. His first favorite involves a lap and a hand that can be coaxed away from the laptop which he displaced when jumping up on the lap.

So far, the user experience of LiveWriter is very favorable — if you can use Word then you can use LiveWriter. On the other hand, there are some things I don’t like, but I’ll wait to write about those after a few days testing when I can make a good analysis.

Six Apart has released two new versions of Moveable Type: version 3.3 and an Enterprise version for businesses [HT to Business Logs, who doesn't seem too excited].

The 3.3 version includes some neat things like a Widget Manager (“rearrange page content by drag-and-drop, and integrate with third-party services”), the ability to customize search result pages and email notifications (can include ads) and enhanced task scheduling.

But it is the Enterprise version that I find interesting. It includes everything in v3.3 plus things like LDAP authentication and Oracle 10g database support. It looks like MT is growing up.

On the other hand, Murky.org seems to have had so much trouble with the 3.3 upgrade that he has switched to WordPress. Of course, that caused some problems too . . .

Technorati Tags: Six Apart,
Moveable Type,
Blogging News.

Today’s must read is by Nathan Tabor writing for the Canada Free Press: Attack of the Bloggers. Excerpts:

Blogs represent the voice of the people–often against the most powerful elements in our society–so they do represent a kind of high-tech democracy in action. …

Still, I have to wonder, why do media commentators devote so much attention to radically left-wing blogs–especially when these blogs hardly represent the views of SUV-driving, church-going, baseball-loving moms and dads? …

The fact of the matter is that Democrats simply cannot control their left flank for very long–hence the ascendancy of the conservative movement. No matter how much the Democratic Party chieftains claim that abortion is a tragic choice … no matter how much they talk about personal responsibility and getting able-bodied men and women off the public dole … their liberal colors eventually show.
This is why, despite claims that the Democrats are going to enjoy an electoral blow-out this fall, it would be wrong to count the party of Reagan out.

Update: Today’s other must read is a Front Page Magazine article that starts out with comments from Karl Rove in a recent interview in which he said that the internet has created a healthy dialogue on the right, helping to gain influence and broaden the appeal. However:

Among Democrats, my sense is that the blog world has tended to strengthen the far Left of the Democratic Party at the expense of liberal, but somewhat less liberal, members of their party. It has tended to sort of drive their party even further to the Left rather than focusing on good ideas that would help unite people around common goals and common purposes. Instead, the Internet for the Left of the Democratic Party has served as a way to mobilize hate and anger — hate and anger, first and foremost, at this President and conservatives, but then also at people within their own party whom they consider to be less than completely loyal to this very narrow, very out-of-the-mainstream, very far Left-wing ideology that they tend to represent.

As you can imagine, this stirred things up a bit on the lefty blogs and FrontPage doles out some of the best of the best. A sample:

I hate Rove as much as I hate Bush and all republicans, and I hate the fact that Rove said we are filled with hate. That is sooo hateful!! I wonder how far we can get riding this emotion called hate?

Read it all to bring a smile to your face.

WaiterRant is one of my favorite eclectic reads because of posts like Spuds Are a Powerful Thing. That post is so typically him — a combination of slice-of-life with a degree of wisdom gained by decades of dealing with people. I like to think that I would be like Waiter had I remained a bartender.

But then I read his post on Lust and discovered a sin among sins: scotch and ginger ale.

I know it takes all kinds, but I think I would have felt better had he ordered Cognac and Coke. Hopefully the bar scotch was something really, really bad like Green Stripe.

Full disclosure: I have been known to drink a scotch and milk back in the day, but only when my stomach was bothering me and never with a single malt.

Who know Mike Hollihan was such a party animal?

Not me, but the Half-Bakered dude is setting up another Blogger’s Bash in Midtown.

Friday, 9 June at P&H.

The last one I went to was far too long ago, considering the amount of fun that I had. And the blogging community is much larger now, so let the good times roll!

Blogs for Condi is looking for someone to help manage the blog.