Cooking blogger Kumama has just started her new blog Kumama's Kitchen. Kumama advises that her name comes from her grandson.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Kumama, and if you are indeed a Maryland blogger, I hope that you will consider joining the Maryland Bloggers Alliance. Alliance members, please drop by to give Kumama some good will and encouragement.

Zuzu, recently of Feministe and now of Kindly Póg Mo Thóin (Gaelic for "Kiss My A**"), claims that Senator Barack Obama is a politician, and cites evidence to prove her thesis. The "you" of "Obama's just not that into you" is, more or less, the more enthusiastic sector of the liberal blogosphere, particularly at Daily Kos, where Hillary Clinton can barely find a public supporter at this point.

Red Maryland and Free State Politics have reached a tentative agreement to merge their blogs to take advantage of efficiencies of scale and to reflect their increasing convergence of political and philosophical perspectives.

Red Maryland leading blogger Mark Newgent and Free State Politics' Editor in Chief Isaac Smith shook hands on the deal today in the upper back room of Chick 'n' Ruth's Delly on Main Street in Annapolis today.

The new blog will be called "Maryland Politics," a name chosen for its creativity and due to the lack of other blogs currently using of that name.

Welcome to the March 9, 2008 edition of the Carnival of Maryland. A warm welcome to all referred visitors from BlogCarnival.com!!

Our first-among-equals "Ecumenical Pillagearch" Attila is first up, though let it be noted than in matters scatological and flatulent, he clearly has no equal. Pillage Idiot presents Taking the Green Line, not the 7 Train, to Flushing posted at Pillage Idiot, saying, "There's nothing that says "GUY" quite like a synchronized flush of the toilets at a new baseball stadium. Why didn't they invite me?" Attila, please never get civilized. It would break my heart if you ever started walking upright, or discovered fire or the wheel.

I may be going to Eschacon, blogger Atrios' blogger get-together in Philadelphia at the end of March, but have not decided. Philly is close enough that renting a hotel room seems a bit of a waste of money; I would probably go up and back same-day, maybe even by bus to save automobile wear-and-tear (and to kick in some nostalgia from my Princeton days when I was too cheap and broke to pay Amtrak fares up and down the NE Corridor.) Am not committing yet due to cash flow and other more personal issues.

I would consider carpooling it if there are other Maryland/DC bloggers doing likewise.

Thers of Whiskey Fire, February 2, 2008:

"Civility" is typically taken to constitute a virtue in and of itself when it is obviously no such thing. Chamberlain was by all accounts quite civil during his chat with Hitler at Berchtesgaden.

Truth and honesty are virtues. Civility is a mechanism that facilitates conversation among individuals or groups who have some sort of commitment to such virtues: if this is not the case, "civility" itself becomes an instrument of viciousness. See as reference the last eight years of American history.

Moe Lane of Redstate on the two successful primary challenges in Maryland, February 13, 2008:

First off, congratulations to soon-to-be-Rep. Donna Edwards - it is merely a hand, madam; you will not be infected with neo-conservatism by shaking it - and soon-to-be-Rep. Andy Harris. Nice job on both your parts: it's not easy to successfully challenge an incumbent in the primary, so well done. Get used to being paired together, by the way: we're not used to two successful challenges in the same State, so the media will probably talk about both of you at the same time for a while.

...

I am informed that the Washington Post and its partner Newsweek will be providing coverage of tomorrow's primary elections in Maryland, the District of Columbia and that other traffic-ridden, negligible place with no culture or history across the Potomac whose name I just forget. For Maryland and DC returns and commentary, feel free to tune in to www.washingtonpost.com/postpoliticstv.

Andrew Ratner in the Baltimore Sun, February 10, 2008:

When Red Maryland, a conservative blog, offered up its endorsements recently, it broke down how its contributors made their choices (including one who was "anyone but McCain") and published their comments. It was a little more transparent than the united front that newspapers like to project in their political endorsements - even if, behind the scenes, publishers and editorial page editors many times don't see eye-to-eye on politics.

Red Maryland's Chester Peake thinks that modifying the Maryland statutes to allow same-sex marriages is equivalent to a "massacre." Go document the "atrocities."

In related news, gay pride parades are now "holocausts." And lesbian bars are "genocides." I think that a Barbra Streisand concert would have to be a "war crime."

Okay, that last one may actually be true.

With sadness, but much respect, I note the "Last Post" of The Candid Truth's David Kyle. David was the blogger with whom I identified politically the least in Maryland but personally much more so. I hope that he might choose to come back to this sick sport when the time is right, though I totally share his view that blogging is often a "pain in the ass."

Be well, David, and all the best.

Shark-Fu, aka Angry Black Bitch, is probably not "acceptably black."

But her shirts appear to be so: