Happy emancipation day everyone, and welcome to Thursday’s Casting the Net. Looking back on the last 24 hours(ish) of blogs it’s been hard to pick out anything that doesn’t reside on CiF. Must do better bloggers, you can’t rely on dodgy grades from me to get your gold star for the day! Remember that you can send in your tips for articles to be included in these round ups, we’re all happy to receive them.

Jonathan Freedland/CiF - It’s coming up to Gordon’s first anniversary of having achieved bugger all. If the cake he gets is reflective of his performance then it’ll have to be a stale chili muffin as far as I’m concerned.

Timothy Garton Ash/CiF - Timothy muses on plans D and E for the EU. Personally I’m thinking of taking bets on if we reach a plan Z before 2010.

Alex Hannaford/CiF - The death penalty has slowly come back in to being after a legal review deems it acceptable to lethally inject once more. Alex reiterates some old arguments that can’t afford to not be repeated.

Stephen’s Linlithgow Journal - Stephen talks about an issue fairly close to my heart, and questions the arbitrary limits that society is placing on natural instincts, as if laws and rules are heeded by hormones and DNA.

Happymarx - Who’d have thought that Labour just shove people in to prison and forget about them as human beings? Everyone then…

John Harris/CiF - Forget meat is murder, meat is just plain smelly. All that methane, pew-ee!

Political Betting - Have the Lib Dem’s got something up their sleeve for Henley?

Casting Back:

Stephen Pollard - One year ago Stephen Pollard made an analysis of the year ahead for Brown. It’s single issue but it’s spot on.