Celebrate Hit & Run's 3rd B-Day Tonight in DC!

What: A happy hour celebrating the third birthday of Reason magazine's staff blog, Hit & Run, winner of the Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California Journalism Awards for best weblog in 2004 and 2005.

Hit & Run, which features "continuous news, views, and abuse" by the Reason staff, has been called "the best libertarian blog" by Playboy; one of "the best political blogs" by Washingtonian; and "lively and interesting" by the Wall Street Journal. (More here.)

Where: Dragonfly, 1215 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC

When: Wednesday, December 14, starting at 6:30PM.

Who: You and anyone you would like to bring.

Representing Reason at the funfest will be Managing Editor Jesse Walker, Senior Editor Jacob Sullum, Assistant Editors Kerry Howley and Julian Sanchez, Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey, and your humble narrator (read all about us here).

And these very special guest stars:

Tim Cavanaugh, the San Francisco-based Web editor of Reason Online and winner of the 2005 LA Press Club Award for Best Online Commentary;

Mike Alissi, former publisher of Reason, current vice president of operations at the Reason Foundation, and the main force behind the creation of Hit & Run;

Mike Godwin, Reason contributing editor, Yale research fellow, formulator of Godwin's Law, and the man who, as staff counsel at Electronic Frontier Foundation, helped make the world safe for Internet porn–and free speech–by successfully challenging the Communications Decency Act of 1996;

and Andrew Sullivan, senior editor at The New Republic, author of Virtually Normal, editor of Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con, Sunday Times columnist, and one of the great pioneers of political blogging.

For some blasts from H&R's past, check out the archives here. What were we talking about this week in 2002?

Hot topics included the video game Halo's purported role in the DC sniper shootings; how Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer has outlived its creator, the defunct retailer Montgomery Ward; Ralph Nader's short-lived crusade for more newspaper coverage of leisure sports; Sean Penn in Baghdad; and Trent Lott's sensational segregationism. Go here for all that and more.

And go here to pad our lead in The 2005 Weblog Awards. We're currently in the driver's seat in the "best group blog" category, up over the nearest competitor by about 2,000 votes. The polls close tomorrow and you can vote once every 24 hours, so please give us two more jolts before the tally is locked down.

On behalf of the staff of Reason, I'd like to thank the readers. Not only are you all beautiful and oh-so-smart (really, I mean it), you're damn prolific. Since we went live in December '02, my staff and I have posted some 11,641 entries. The readers have posted 302,633 comments, creating an exciting and vibrant online forum that has far exceeded our wildest dreams. Thanks for three great years–and all those to come.