It's not smart to taunt or to march toward police officers who are wearing riot gear and armed with tear gas, shock grenades, and pepper spray. The police are likely to overreact, as this video (taken by a citizen journalist who got caught in the middle of the police and protesters) demonstrates.

Law enforcement agencies are justifying their heavy-handed tactics in St. Paul by telling the press of ominous threats to delegate safety: [more ...]

Here's an open thread for all topics. And yes, we'll have another later for Gov. Sarah Palin's speech.

The open mic fiasco, what some pundits, including Republicans, really think of Sarah Palin. TPM has the transcript.

Here's an interesting article on Gov. Sarah Palin from CQ that posits Palin would be more like Spiro Agnew than Dick Cheney on foreign policy.

What about on the other issues, from health care to social security to prisoners' rights to reproductive rights to global warming, energy and the economy.

Dick Cheney fortunately will soon be history. It's up to us, the voters, who we get next.

Since 2006 when TalkLeft moved to Scoop, more than 9,200 readers have registered with the site, enabling them to comment. More than 1,000 comments a day are posted here.

Here's what I've learned: The greater the number of comments on a post, the greater the drop in the quality of the discourse. It's one reason we cut comments off at 200 per thread. (The other is it's a giant drain on our bandwidth, slowing the site to a crawl.)

I'm concerned about the poor quality of the comments, particularly by those who disagree with any particular post. They usually consist of little more than childish insults like "What about X" (who through the primaries was Hillary and now is Obama). Or they are off-topic. They degrade the level of discourse on the site.

So, here's the deal: [More...]

Gov. Sarah Palin will give her speech tonight to the Republican National Convention. CNN provides punditry on what she is expected to say and what she should say.

The time to listen to Gov. Palin for clues as to who she is and what she believes has passed. That was last week, before the McCain campaign professionals took control to remake her in their image.

Whatever Palin says tonight is practiced, scripted and reflective of the Repubicans, not her. They would no more send her out there to speak on her own than they would their surrogates. In fact, as I reported the other day, the McCain campaign acknowledged pre-scripting her speech:

[McCain spokesman Rick]Davis said a generic, "masculine" speech was being prepared before the pick was made and, now that Palin is the choice, she is adapting the speech to her own needs and personality.

That's why its so important to review what she said and did and who she was before becoming a VP candidate. She's the product of image makers now, not reality.

Moving on to issues closer to home for us, I was wondering about Governor Sarah Palin's record on prisons and prisoners. As Governor, the Alaska Department of Corrections is within her purview.

Alaska's prisons are sorely overcrowded. Since I don't have access to Alaska state court pleadings, I searched PACER for federal lawsuits against Palin on civil rights violations. Palin has been sued at least twice in federal court in Alaska during her year and a half term, once by a prisoner named Berry Jack who claimed he was raped for 3 days, treated at a medical facility, and then denied recommended therapy thereafter. His complaint is here (pdf.)

The Court ordered him to file an Amended Complaint. In his Amended Complaint (pdf), he said he wrote to Gov. Palin and she wrote back, saying she stood behind Anchorage Correctional Complex Superintendant Debbie Miller's decision to refuse him therapy. He states he wrote her again and "she called Alaska State troopers on me." He put in another request for treatment after which, he alleges, the Department of Corrections destroyed all his records. [More...]

Cindy McCain was interviewed by Katie Couric this morning on CBS about Gov. Sarah Palin's views on abortion:

COURIC: Some, even Republicans seem surprised that Senator McCain picked a running mate who opposes abortion even in-- in the cases of rape and incest and believes creationism should be taught in schools. And I'm just curious, do you believe--or do you agree with that?

More...

President Bush can't (and won't) do much about the economy before November. Is he trying to change the national conversation?

Two helicopters carrying American-led forces landed in a Pakistani village in South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan in the early hours of Wednesday morning and the soldiers opened fire on villagers, killing seven people, according to a spokesman for the Pakistani military.

There are legitimate reasons to pursue Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Perhaps NATO and the American military had strong intelligence to justify this incursion. Perhaps not. If it is true that soldiers "opened fire on villagers," however, there had better be strong evidence that they knew they weren't shooting innocent people. And there had better be strong evidence that this wasn't a ploy to focus voters on national security issues, the one area in which John McCain is perceived to have some strength (despite his questionable knowledge of modern geography), in order to influence the election.

Like many other people who have no connection to terrorism, Erich Scherfen's name appears on Homeland Security's secret terrorist watch list. Scherfen is a pilot and a Gulf War veteran who converted to Islam in 1994. His employer, Colgan Air Inc. (which operates Continental Connection, United Express and US Airways Express), suspended him and threatened to terminate him after the Transportation Security Administration advised Colgan that Scherfen was a "positive match."

Scherfen has no criminal record and no affiliation with any terrorist organization. So why was he being "watched" for terrorist activities? Scherfen believes his conversion to Islam and his marriage to a Pakistani who sells Islamic books was all the evidence Homeland Security needed to view him with suspicion.

Scherfen sued the government last month for violating his right to religious freedom. The response was good news for Scherfen: Colgan has withdrawn its attempt to terminate his employment and is reinstating him as a pilot. Scherfen is nonetheless pressing forward with his lawsuit. He deserves to win it.

Be nice.

On Sunday, before the news about Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter was announced, I initiated a ban on TalkLeft prohibiting mention of her personal or family matters. I was one of the only, if not the only, liberal blog instituting this policy.

I was determined that my criticism of her, which has been limited to her lack of experience and preparedness to take over the Presidency if the need arises, her record and her lack of record while in Government service, the pending allegations of misuse of power while in office, and her position on issues, not be misconstrued by others as an attack on her gender or her personal life. By never mentioning her personal and family issues, I thought that it would be clear that gossip, rumor and innuendo of a personal nature were not related to my criticism.

Readers on both sides were upset with my decision. Some wanted to praise her, others want to point out her hypocrisy given her adverse positions on teaching sex-ed and making birth control available, even in her state which has one of the highest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases in the country. I have spent hours deleting comments and banning commenters who violated my ban over the past few days. That's fine. Almost all of the comments were objectionable under any standard, and I refuse to have a site that bears my name be associated with them.

Now, I feel tooled. [More...]

Thousands of people attended Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis today. Paul explained the minimalist philosophy that motivated his presidential run.

"I did not want to run people's lives, I did not want to run the economy and I did not want to run the world. I didn't have the authority to do it, and I didn't have the Constitution behind me to do it," said Paul, who has served in the House of Representatives for more than 30 years.

Paul was only a little bit welcome at the Republican National Convention.

The Republican National Committee told Paul he would have to pick up his pass at the gate and couldn't have any guests.

Jesse Ventura wowed the crowd by suggesting that he might be a presidential candidate in 2012, promising (or threatening) to "give them a race they'll never forget."