It has been quite a year here at Legal Insurrection.
The big event was the blog format switchover in mid-June. I’m very happy with the transition, and even happier with the new software and format. If you need help with a new or old blog, I highly recommend Ed Burns.
We now have over 3100 registered users, and monthly visits and page views have steadied at about 500k+/700k+. As always, I am dependent upon the kindness of others who link, particularly Glenn Reynolds, HotAir, Ace, Ann Althouse, and many others in the vast right-wing blogosphere. They have my thanks.
The political season has brought both good and bad. The number of comments and the vigor of the commenters seems to have picked up. And so has the rancor, but this place still is a model of civility compared to many blog comment sections.
I don’t regret my endorsement of Newt, or my blogging about the primaries even if it has turned some people off. It is what it is, and I will apply that same obsessiveness to defeating Obama when the time comes.
I try not to lose sight of the fact that we all are on the same team, even if we fight over who will be the starting pitcher.
The challenges ahead will be many. Operation Counterweight will become more important than ever. I’m still sorting out the races to focus on, and I continue so solicit suggestions.
Thanks to Kathleen and Matthew for their help the past year.
[insert obligatory thanks to the wife here]
I’m not sure what direction the blog will take. I’d like to add one or two regular bloggers, but I have trouble letting go; I was not good at sharing as a child.
This whole blogging thing, started on a dare, has been interesting. I’ve made new friends and created enemies; I’ve learned to cherish the former and disregard the latter.
I worry more than ever about the future of our country and our closest ally, Israel. 2012 will be a year of decisions and actions which will determine the fate of generations.
The Official Legal InsurrectionNew Year’s Resolution remains the same:
To keep up the fight against a seemingly unstoppable expansion of government into every aspect of our lives, and to restore a Constitutional balance between government and citizen.
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Comments
Professor, you’re my first choice for news & commentary. Have a wonderful new year and please continue the conservative battle against progressive liberal government expansion. I pray for a great 2012 in America and Israel. Keep up the good work!
Ann Althouse, and many others in the vast right-wing blogosphere
Careful with that – too many on the left have “ripped” her a new one for providing a forum for commenters to express what could be perceived as the conservative viewpoint. Somehow, she is supposed to filter out or challenge any comments that contradict the liberal worldview. To do any less makes her the enemy of the liberal cause, and hence, a “right-wing” blogger.
Professor, Happy New Year to you and your family! And Happy New Year to Kathleen and Matthew, too!
I like the fact that recently you have posts with links to a number of unrelated news events … adds a good bit of variety!
“I’d like to add one or two regular bloggers, but I have trouble letting go; I was not good at sharing as a child.”
Were you an only child? 🙂 If that’s hard, why not solicit guest posts from your readers on issues about which they are passionate/knowledgeable? I see some potential problems there, such as, perhaps a time-consuming need to fact-check their writing. Maybe a better way would be for them to critique recent columns by others … have someone tear apart the latest Thomas Friedman column or Andrew Sullivan post. Not as much need to verify their pointing out obvious fallacies of logic and false premises. I was doing a little daydreaming once and thought it would be interesting if there were a conservative blog staffed with bloggers who were each assigned to follow a particular lefty writer(s) and rip into each of their columns/posts.
Just a suggestion … no skin off my nose. I’m sure LI will continue to flourish and expand its readership. I’m thankful you continue to fight the good fight and look forward to a great 2012!
LukeHandCool (who is always full of unsolicited suggestions … or, as his older sister says for short … “just full of it.”)
Professor,
Many thanks for your hard work this year. You are on my lists of top favorite blogs I read daily. I know I will always find the truth when I read here….the good, bad and ugly TRUTH is a beautiful thing!
I also worry about this upcoming year. I have so much to be thankful for…my first grandchild due in March and my youngest graduating college in May. I try to focus on the many blessings in my life but a nagging fear is always close by!
Happy New Year to you and your family.
A suggestion for the New Year – how about linking to Hope n’ Change Cartoons? Bloggers are free to repost his cartoons – I wish I knew how to insert them into blog comments. Stilton Jarlsberg has put his heart and soul into defeating Obama by using cartoons and commentary, three times a week (used to do 7 days). He just published a satirical book called “Obama Sutra – An Illustrated Guide to 57 States of Ectasy”
Here’s the commentary from his latest, which I include to show as an example. I hope my friends at this blog check it out – conservative cartoonists need “love” too, and we all need a good laugh:
Hope n’ Change Cartoons would like to be the first to wish everyone a very “Happy NO Year!”
Because 2012 is finally the year when we can go toe-to-toe with the “Yes We Can” crowd and tell them in no uncertain terms “No You Can’t!”
No you can’t continue to divide Americans and set one group against another. No you can’t turn your backs on America’s allies and military commitments. No you can’t continue to steal trillions of dollars from future generations and enrich yourselves at our expense. No you can’t kill individual initiative and turn this into a socialist state. No you can’t continue to pretend that patriotism is the same thing as racism.
No you can’t re-elect Barack Obama.
2012 is the year that we just might save the United States of America and that’s damned exciting. It’s going to be a hard and ugly fight – probably the ugliest political battle ever waged in this country. Conservatives will be demonized, lied to, and lied about – and the Left will do everything in its considerable power to demoralize us if we let them.
So we won’t let them.
Knowing what we believe in, and the importance of what we’re fighting for, we must ignore the angry and distracting buzz which will arise in the media and amongst the naysayers – and be energized by knowing that this is a battle we’ll win.
Personally, I’m excited, revved up, and looking forward to a real bare-knuckle brawl as we head into November and I hope you are too.
Because 2012 is our year. Our very Happy NO Year!
Happy New Year. I found you through Ann Althouse’s blog during the height of the Madison protests. I like to keep up on the wacky escapades at my commie alma mater.
The blog pace has accelerated considerably since last spring. I’ve been wondering how you keep up with it.
I agree that we must support Israel as the last bastion of civilization in that jihadist snake pit of the middle east. I’m still chewing on “closest ally,” though. For 2012, I’d be inclined to pick Japan or Australia in anticipation of a ChiCom expansion.
Hi Professor Jacobson – Congratulations on your success with this blog.
I just read about your early days at the link above, how you started on a dare back in 2008. I also had a meltdown back in 2008 — your analogy to the the tulip-mania in Europe is a good one for the headlong rush we saw in 2008 of people eager to elect the current president with no idea what he really wanted to do, who he was, where he had been, or what ha had done with his life so far. I actually heard someone say that it didn’t matter if he was the worst president ever, we had to elect him.
For those of us who had done the research and already knew about Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis, Cloward-Piven, ACORN, Soros, Axelrod et al., it was a nightmare to watch. How I prayed.
But actually, McCain was not an answer. The Republicans deserved to lose, nominating someone like McCain, a “me-too” guy who loved to be a “maverick” to the Republicans, darling of the MSM until the general election, totally blindsided by the financial meltdown which was engineered by the likes of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and their friends in Fannie Mae. What a nightmare.
Which brings me to thinking about today. I want to thank you again for endorsing Newt Gingrich so early in the primary process.
I have been watching Newt’s speeches on YouTube. Newt’s proposal that the American people team up and return our country, that we love, to constitutional principles, gives me hope. I can actually for FOR Newt, and not just against the other person. 2010hope2012change.
We don’t know the future, of course, and whether Newt’s campaign will catch on with the American people. However, Newt has actually organized the American people before, helping as a young congressman with Reagan, and then in 1994, leading with the Contract with America. So it’s realistic to hope for change.
American love to have a chance and Americans like big ideas. So Newt’s current campaign really might work. If any people on earth can actually make the kind of profound transformation Newt is talking about actually work, it is Americans. How thrilling it would be to participate as we turn the country back to prosperity and constitutionally-based rule of law.
But it’s tough when all this consultant-driven negative advertising FROM OTHER REPUBLICANS is lowering Newt’s poll numbers. I know we have to go through this, and I know that, in the final analysis, it will be up to the American people. But it is very hard to go through.
So I have turned to LEGAL INSURRECTION as a place for insightful commentary and new facts. And I appreciate your commentary SO MUCH, because you see through the charades and misdirections and MSM chicanery to get us to believe that Newt is failing, and you say, “don’t fall for it.” THANK YOU.
I had read LEGAL INSURRECTION before, mostly from links from InstaPundit (one of my all-time faves), but now LEGAL INSURRECTION is a stand-alone fave, go-to, must-read blog. It’s one of my leading personal blogs!
As to the new year, I think there may be some people who plan to try to make 2012 extremely challenging. I pray that we as Americans live up to our awesome heritage, and have the smarts, insight, stamina, endurance, willpower, love and determination to keep our freedoms; our freedoms which were won for us at such cost to those who have gone before us, so many times in our history.
The year 2012 may try our souls. I pray that, together as Americans, ALL AMERICANS TOGETHER, because we ARE all Americans together, we will see to it that freedom prevails. We owe this to those who will come after us. We are the guardians today, and let us not let freedom fail on our watch!
And I plan to turn to LEGAL INSURRECTION for the comfort and intellectual joy of reading the words of a knowledgeable friend. THANK YOU, Professor, and Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, Professor!
I don’t mind your blatant shilling for Newt as long as you don’t mind my “Half-heimer” rambling, incoherent posts.
I suspect you will regret supporting Newt about 9 months after the election if he should win. But until then, thanks for taking the time to keep this place open and updated!
Never a dull moment. And 2012 is likely to be even more exciting…
Happy New Year, professor, and keep up the fight!
I know what would help in the new year. I could do regular Auburn/SEC Football updates during the season. And with pre- and post season updates it could be year-round.
That would really provide that “something extra” that could push this site right into the stratosphere.
(I have noticed the sports coverage here is terribly lacking.)
The WarEagle Auburn/SEC Report
In a stunning display of the ultimate superiority of SEC football, the 25th ranked Auburn Tigers destroyed the Virginia Cavaliers just before midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Proving once again why “medical marijuana” is a flawed and dangerous concept, several obviously “self- medicated” and delusional sports prognosticators predicted a close game or even a Virginia win. Yet back in smoke-free reality, Auburn’s 2nd string quarterbacks and running backs demolished Virginia by a score of 43 to 24.
Supreme football coach and great humanitarian, Gene Chizik, mercifully declined to run up the score in the final minutes choosing to run out the clock inside Virginia’s “red zone” rather than humiliate another hopelessly inadequate ACC opponent.
In a year when SEC teams only held 7 of the top 25 slots in the BCS poll and two SEC teams from the same division will face off for the national championship later this month one ponders why other conferences bother to field teams. When was the last time an SEC team wasn’t the national champion? Will another conference ever reclaim the coveted spot without cheating like Democrats? Inquiring minds want to know!
Friends don’t let friends watch non-SEC football.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! Thank you, your blog is my favorite and the first place I go.
Professor, thank you for all your hard work. It is greatly appreciated. To all those who frequent this site and to you Professor, good wishes and blessings for the New Year!
Happy happy New Year … has been good to read your blog. For several months I’ve put you at the top of my list.
Somewhere it seems you went “wrong” though .. for a lawyer. Did you skip the “Lawyer 101” secret class … where the ground rules are laid that you must first join a firm, and help subvert justice with a city politician/lawyer cabal?
I’m pretty sure that is the only class Obama legitimately passed. The exit clause from joining, is you have to go along with, or at least ignore the collusion and rampant obstruction of justice.
Yet here you are speaking out against political correctness and even “establishment” posturing. Of course, you could just be deep undercover … luring in some that think there is still hope.
” I worry more than ever about the future of our country and our closest ally, Israel. 2012 will be a year of decisions and actions which will determine the fate of generations.”
I think maybe that is the tie that binds … I’m amazed that so many seem so willing to watch this country be sold out to such destructive ideals and obvious malfeasance.
Thanks for your efforts Professor … we need more like you … if only 1% read you, that would be 3,000,000. What is wrong with these people … that would rather watch talking dogs than read insight that might save the country?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AMpugNjTKk
Now if they just did a promo for you … we could change the world!
Happy New Year!
I found you when I went looking for a copy of the actual Arizona immigration legislation as passed. I cam to your blog via either Hot Air or Gateway Pundit, I think. You got it right. The New York Times, in an embarrassing lapse for column by an alleged lawyer wrote a scathing critique of a draft.
Thanks for the great work. Thanks also for being willing to go out on a limb regarding your choice of Newt. At least for now I agree with that choice. As others have said, we are not looking for a priest or rabbi, but for someone who has the guts, intelligence, and likely desire to start making the course corrections that our once great country needs.
Great blog, as always, immediately from the start. My first and last visit of the day, every day, and multiple visits when I can. Wifey probably deserves more than obligatory thanks though. And the people who link to you and you link to, eg, Instapundit, Hot Air, Althouse, get my next visits thanks to you. Thanks for fighting against our having “Big Brother” in our lives; “the One” is like having an overbearing parent who knows what’s best, for everyone. Ya know what I mean? Keep up the great insights, snarky comments, and the good fight for truth, justice and the American way…
got another one (new) linking to you now also.
http://www.davemacleod.net/forums/links/link/5-legal-insurrection/
Happy New Year Bill.
Happy new year! Thanks for all that you do here, looking forward to Legal Insurrection in 2012!
Happy New Year. And thank you for all of your hard work in maintaining this blog. It is one of three that I routinely visit, pretty much every morning. And yes, the discourse on here has become more strenuous of late, but that is unavoidable in election season. You are correct that even the most passionate and heated debate on here is a hallmark of civility compared to many other blogs. I appreciate that.
Keep ’em coming Professor. The “we all are on the same team, even if we fight over who will be the starting pitcher” is particularly well said. Yes, there are challenges in 2012, but one reason for optimism is the new Electoral College numbers that illustrate that Obama has a much steeper hill to climb than he did in 2008 … http://bit.ly/qVdDUt. Time will tell. Happy New Year to you and all!
I commend your diligent work Prof.
As I think about the new year, I am as hopeful as I have ever been about the future. My wife and I are expecting twin boys in the next few weeks. They will be our first. We are both so excited beyond words as we await their arrival. As crazy as it may be for me to proclaim, those boys will undoubtedly keep me sane in what will truly be an insane election season.
So hears to twins and the defeat of Barack Obama.
Happy New Year!
Professor, as so many others have already said, your blog is in my top three I check everyday, sometimes several times a day. Thanks for all your hard work. Let’s hope and pray in 2012 that we get some stuff ‘right for a change’! Happy New Year to all!
I found you through a Michelle Malkin link, and you’ve made your way to the top of my list. Now I’m hooked, and I find myself visiting your blog several times a day for my LI fix.
A toast to Operation Counterweight in 2012! Cheers!
Speaking of weight, the majority of Americans need to resolve to lose 180 pounds in 2012 – the 180 pounds known as Barack Obama!
New Year’s Resolution
Happy New Year. Thank you for a great blog. Yes, in my top 3 also. And I also compliment all those who are commenters (other than myself), as you are sharp and well informed. Most grateful. Gabi L.
USA 2012.
I rented 4 dvds –
Sofia Copola’s -Marie Antoinette.
Gone with the Wind.
Deliverance.
War and Peace (1956)
Each of the above I found to be very relevant.
2012 be a mix of all 4 without the beautiful ladies & handsome men. Hehe Burt was hot!
If we didn’t get excited and argue about stuff, it would mean we don’t care.
That the blog has increased viewership (readership? commentership?) is an indication of the attractiveness, timeliness and thoughtfulness of the poster, the posts and the comments and commenters. All those are of your inspiration and authorship.
Well done.
Happy and safe New Year to all.
I could say many words of praise to you in regard to your Official Legal Insurrection New Year’s Resolution…but I’ll limit my response to just five….Thank’s for accepting that dare. 🙂
Happy New Year, Professor! I so appreciate your even-keeled, rational posts. Seems the majority in the blogosphere holler and shout, so your calm observations are refreshing.
BTW, just thought I’d let you know–your blog was a centerpiece in my graduate paper and presentation on political rhetoric. It was fun to see my prof struggling not to go ballistic during my presentation.
would love to see the paper
I’m flattered. I e-mailed it to you, for your amusement…!
I found your blog about a year ago, and since then it has been at the top of my “must read” list. I especially value your political passion that is informed with civility and respect for others.
Even more, your Zero Tolerance policy pushes back against personal attacks by those on the right. Your calling out personal attacks by the right on conservative political leaders (from Palin to Bachmann to Cain to Gingrich) targets a major poison that threatens conservatism. Intemperate attacks by conservatives against conservatives is, alas, becoming the norm. I can’t think of anyone who is fighting against this as well or as consistently as you. Thank you!
Finally, and maybe most importantly, my non-obligatory thanks go to your wife.
Happy New Year, Professor, and congratulations on another successful blog year. Legal Insurrection is one of the few blogs I visit daily. Here’s hoping that 2012 will see a return to some semblance of sanity in this country. Please keep up the good work.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words. Happy New Year.
TD:
“Finally, and maybe most importantly, my non-obligatory thanks go to your wife.”
Yep! To Mrs. Jacobson: Happy New Year from all of your husband’s fans! Your patience and understanding make it all possible. God knows he’s an absolute pain to live with … especially when he’s blogging. Bet you have a million stories to tell … ?
… but in all seriousness, I sense something great being formed. It’s like being some 14-year-old Liverpudlian girl taken to the Cavern Club by her friends, circa 1961, thinking … there is really some vibe here … a bit more time and polish … and who knows what might happen?
To the toppermost of the bloggerposts! We got a world out there to save!
Amen and amen, sir.
What the professor said.
In 2012 I want to see LEGAL INSURRECTION: THE MOVIE
One of the best sites on the internet. Thank you for all that you do, Professor! May 2012 be the year that Obama and his progressive ilk are removed from office.
I’m not sure what direction the blog will take. I’d like to add one or two regular bloggers, but I have trouble letting go; I was not good at sharing as a child.
There’s something to be said for keeping a unique voice. (Kathleen’s and Matthew’s contributions add value, but they are not co-bloggers.)
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