The ABA Journal announced its fifth annual "Blawg 100" list yesterday, and for the second year in a row, the editors have either graciously or mistakenly named Lowering the Bar to that list. Meth use is reportedly rampant over there, and so it's entirely possible that somebody just sat up in a haze and sent out last year's list again during a brief moment of lucidity, before slumping back into the pile of soiled paperwork and cans of Four Loko that apparently serves as her office furniture these days. (Sorry, Mom, but someone has to say it.) On the off chance that someone actually thought this over carefully, though, I would like to say thank you.

If you would like to vote for this and/or any of the other 99 blogs chosen by the ABA Journal, you can do that here. (Very brief registration required in order to prevent repeated self-voting by everyone but me.) Lowering the Bar is (thankfully) in the "For Fun" category, but it appears that this year you can vote for more than one blog in each category, so I won't list the others here like I did last year in a misguided attempt to seem fair. They are all very good, unfortunately, as are many of the others in the 100 (and of course many not in it). Recommendations to come.

Whether you care to vote or not, thanks to all of you for reading. I couldn't keep doing this without you. That's not literally true, of course, but it would be very much less rewarding without you and your readership, friendship, feedback, story submissions, very occasional clicks on sponsored feed advertising, potential for future book-buying, and general goodwill. (I also appreciate the agreements by some of you not to prosecute for what is apparently viewed as "stalking" in today's security-obsessed culture.)

The number of visitors here is, to my continued amazement, well into the millions now and the rate is increasing all the time. In addition to the warm feeling your mass virtual presence causes in some of my parts, I enjoy knowing that, assuming each visitor to date were an attorney who spent just one-tenth of an hour on the site at a (very reasonable) average rate of $225 an hour, Lowering the Bar would now have sucked at least $47,195,685 out of our fragile economy.

Hopefully, it will suck even more in the future.