Happy New Year to all of our blog community from around the world. I get to celebrate both New Years and my anniversary on the 31st. Leslie and I eloped in Alexandria Virginia on New Year’s Eve in 1997. As has been our tradition, with the start of 2016, I thought I would share a few of our annual statistics and successes on the blog.

It has been another great year on the blog. Thanks to all of our regulars and particularly our our talented and popular weekend team of guest bloggers: Mike Appleton, Kimberly Dienes, Cara Gallagher, Larry Rafferty, and Darren Smith. We are closing in on 28 million views and we remained in the top legal blogs in the world. I can now give some figures on our last year.

In 2015, we had over 3.5 million hits. That is lower than 2014 but we ran fewer stories due to my litigation schedule. We have continued to grow internationally as well as the number of “regulars” rather than just visitors. Our top regular commentators for the year were:

1. Paul C. Schulte
2. Nick Spinelli
3. Inga
4. Karen S
5. Max

In addition to the United States, our two leading contributing countries were again Canada and Great Britain among 226 other countries. Our top ten countries outside of the United States were:

1. Canada
2. United Kingdom
3. Australia
4. Germany
5. France
6. India
7. Netherlands
8. European Union
9. Philippines
10. Sweden

The most popular post in 2015 was Report: Police Department In Massachusetts Gave Higher Points To Candidates Who Pledged Not To Arrest Fellow Officers For DUI

That blog was followed in popularity by the following (including one of Darren’s posts):

2. 10 Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free

3. Islamic Scholars Present An Open Letter To ISIS Leader Al Baghdadi (Darren Smith)

4. Why Is It Illegal To Feed The Homeless

5. Hell Exothermic or Endothermic?

We finished 2015 with over 600,000 comments — another increase from last year.

Thanks again everyone for making this site and 2015 such a great success!

Best wishes for the New Year!

Jonathan Turley