“Batting About .500 on Review; Sometimes High Court Agreed With Alito, Sometimes Not”: This article will appear Sunday in The Washington Post.

“A New Justice, an Old Plea: More Money for the Bench.” In Sunday’s edition of The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse will have an article that begins, “Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., delivering his first year-end report after three months on the job, took up the call often heard from his predecessor for increased pay for federal judges.”

“Alito, In and Out of the Mainstream; In Analysis, Nominee Defies Portrayals by Left and Right”: This lengthy front page article will appear Sunday in The Washington Post.

Accompanying the article are an item headlined “About the Analysis“; some charts; “Alito’s Votes by Case“; and “Alito’s Votes by Issue.”

The blog “Underneath Their Robes” is no longer underneath the thumb of the U.S. Department of Justice: David B. Lat, who blogged under the pseudonym “Article III Groupie,” is no longer employed by the Article II U.S. Department of Justice. The Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger today contains an article headlined “Mystery blogger quits U.S. Attorney’s Office; Spokesman: Author of spicy judiciary Web column not forced out.” And, in an amazing coincidence, the blog “Underneath Their Robes” is now back online.

It is too soon to know whether new substantive posts will be appearing online at “UTR.” Lat, who ironically just left essentially the same job as an appellate attorney with the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito, Jr. once held in the late 1970s, may find it difficult to refrain from blogging Judge Alito’s confirmation hearing, which is scheduled to get underway in a little over one week from now.

I would have posted about this news sooner, except that I coincidentally spent most of the day in snowy northern New Jersey, where word on the street was that Lat may also soon be operating a second blog under the pseudonym “Guy Who Really, Really, Honest to Goodness Wasn’t Fired for Secretly Operating a Gossipy Blog about the Federal Judiciary while Employed as an AUSA.”

Update: In regional coverage from The Associated Press, “Author of sassy judiciary Web log leaves U.S. Attorney’s Office.” The nationwide AP article is currently headlined “Spicy Blogger Leaves Attorney’s Office.”

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, you can access coverage from “Althouse,” “Appellate Law & Practice,” “Blawg Review,” “Concurring Opinions,” “The Volokh Conspiracy,” and “Workplace Prof Blog.”

“School officials will pay for D.C. trip”: The Trenton Times today contains an article that begins, “Stung by accusations they were abusing the public trust, school officials said yesterday they will not use district money to pay for their upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., for the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. Now they will pay for the trip with their own money.”

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and rewarding 2006: Thanks so much to the thousands upon thousands of readers who visited “How Appealing” in 2005, and extra special thanks to those of you who took the time to email information, ideas, links, or attachments that led to postings here.

2006 promises to be an exciting year for this web log. Before the end of April, this site will experience a redesign and will also move to a new online address. Those who arrive here via appellateblog.com will continue to be taken directly to this blog’s updated front page, while I’ll do my best to provide plenty of notice for everyone else.

On January 9, 2006, the confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court nominee, and the Third Circuit‘s own, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. will begin. Stay tuned for complete coverage. Also on that date, I’ll officially become a weekly columnist for law.com. So, instead of not having anything to write about once a month, as evidenced by five years’ worth of columns for The Legal Intelligencer, I’ll get to experience that panic four times as often. At least the pay will be infinitely better.

2005 included blog-related speaking trips to California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Texas. Thanks to all of the fans of this site who took the time to visit with me and make those trips so memorable.

2005 also marked the first full year in which my solo appellate boutique was in operation, and this year’s results far exceeded my law firm’s fine results from 2004. Being able to practice appellate litigation at an office located five minutes from home for a most appreciative and diverse collection of clients is an incredibly rewarding experience. And I offer special thanks to those readers of this blog who sent appellate work to me in 2005.

In May 2006, “How Appealing” will celebrate its fourth anniversary. When I began this blog on May 6, 2002, I had no idea I was on the verge of creating a site that would turn out to be the one place on the internet where information is transmitted instantaneously to this Nation’s entire community of appellate judges and practitioners, not to mention federal judicial nominees, journalists, law professors, and law students. It is both an honor and a responsibility to be the author of this site, and I can only hope that in the future I will perform that function at least as well as I have in the past.

In conclusion, I wish all the best for 2006 to all of this web log’s many readers. Thank you for encouraging me in this endeavor and for making it worthwhile.

“A Chorus of Hoover Critics; More conservatives join the call to take his name off the FBI Building”: The Los Angeles Times today contains an article that begins, “Every year for the last three years, Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, has introduced a bill to strip J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI’s headquarters — an initiative that has been largely ignored. Now, however, amid headlines about possibly illegal government surveillance of Americans inside the United States, the effort to rename the Hoover building is starting to attract more supporters, most recently U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman, a Republican who was a leader of the presidentially appointed commission on pre-Iraq-war intelligence.”

“California nominee for top court praised”: Bob Egelko has this article today in The San Francisco Chronicle.