The visuals in this video are the point of it.

I've been feeling sad that our good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson will not be in Denver next week to share in the craziness. I sure will miss reading his take on the whole scene.

My good friend Anita Thompson, Hunter's wife, who has been spending fall and winter in NYC to attend and study journalism at Columbia, is now blogging, in addition to her excellent Owl Farm Blog, at The Huffington Post. How'd that come about? [More..]

Mother Jones has a new issue, much of which addresses the failure of the war on drugs. Among those they interviewed was David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire. Here's what he had to say (sorry, no link):

"We are the jailingest motherf*ckers on the planet. More than that, the number of violent offenders in federal prisons has gone down to its
lowest level ever in the history of the country -- in the single digits, by the Bureau of Prisons' own statistics. And the political party that
let this get out of control? It was the Democrats.

The drug war has actually destroyed the deterrent in inner cities by teaching whole police departments to chase drug stats when they should be solving crimes. And, of course, because they can't put all those people in prison, it doesn't even work as a draconian policy. Most people are just thrown back onto the street.

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Criminal charges against seven New Orleans police officers accused of shooting unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina have been dismissed due to the prosecution's misconduct.

According to the Times-Picayune, District Judge Raymond Bigelow agreed with defense arguments that prosecutors violated state law by divulging secret grand jury testimony to a police officer who was a witness in the case.

The shootings were gruesome. A developmentally disabled man was shot in the back. Part of a woman's arm was "blown off." Two men died. Yet the officers were cleared by the New Orleans Police Department's internal investigation. And thanks to the inability of the district attorney's office to play by the rules, they've escaped criminal prosecution.

This is really big news. For the first time in U.S. history, a state commission will investigate whether an innocent man was executed.

A Texas panel will investigate whether a man executed for setting a fire that killed his three daughters actually started the blaze.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission agreed Friday to review conclusions that Cameron Todd Willingham set the fire in 1991. He was executed in 2004.... The Innocence Project, a legal group that works to overturn wrongful convictions, says experts in a report it commissioned concluded the fire was not intentionally set.

You can read JR's diary about it on Daily Kos . One of the experts who co-authored the Innocence Project report is his father, John Lentini, who has written extensively on fire science and errors made during investigations.

The executed inmate was Cameron Todd Willingham #999041. Read the results of a 2004 exhaustive investigation into the case by award-winning Chicago Tribune investigative reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills. [More...]

I was waiting to hear from the smartest guy in the room on this and here it is :

Another press release received today from the DNC announces a "Unity Breakfast." It's an event that marries civil rights and faith.

DENVER – The Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) today unveiled plans for a unity breakfast to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington on Thursday, August 28 during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. Martin Luther King III will join with civil rights leaders including Rev. Al Sharpton and faith leaders including Rabbi Jack Moline and Sister Simone Campbell to honor Martin Luther King Jr., the message of his “I Have a Dream” speech and the movement behind the March on Washington.

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Kos wrote a mocking post about the crumbling PUMA movement. I happen to think the PUMA movement is nuts. But these are just citizens and voters expressing their views, however wayward and stupid I may think them. What really amazes me is the anti-PUMAs, those erstwhile Obama supporters who are attacking Obama for making unity noises with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Leading the charge of course is the foolish and harmful Andrew "Bell Curve" Sullivan, along with the usual Clinton haters in the the Media, with MoDo playing her usual fool's role. Sullivan writes:

The total capitulation to the Clintons at the convention is particularly lame[.]

This is nuts. Having the last Democratic President, a two termer at that and still incredibly popular President and the Dem Senator from New York, who won half of the vote in the Democratic primaries, speak at the Democratic Convention is capitulation? Hatred is blinding. And when you could not see well in the first place, the Mr. Magoo act gets to be very serious. For people like Sullivan, hating the Clintons trumps all. They are at least as silly as the PUMAs.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

TXpolitico 67 says check this out: a school in Texas is allowing guns in the classroom.

Our morning thread is full. Here's another open thread for you.

Chris Cillizza at the WaPo's The Fix puts out his (and I stress the word "his") Friday afternoon line on whom Obama will pick for Veep.

He has Joe Biden in top place and Kathleen Sebelius in bottom place at #5. In between: Jack Reed, Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh. (Big Tent Democrat thinks Obama's smartest move would be to pick Biden. Biden is a dealbreaker for me.)

Gen. Wesley Clark, my favorite, doesn't even make Chris' list.

Who do you think he will pick? Any dealbreakers out there for those of you who are planning on voting for Obama? Anyone who would make you stay home?

I think he will pick Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. Am I happy about it? No, but I can live with it. Same for Evan Bayh. Sebelius would be better than than either, but he's obviously not going to pick a woman other than Hillary.

In a strange article, Robert Borosage and Katrina Vanden Heuvel "advise" progressives not on how to forward progressivism, but on how to forward Obama's victory in November. The whole article is just strange, but this part REALLY is bizarre:

Progressives generally--and independent media and the blogosphere specifically--can contribute by reminding voters there's a clear choice in this election . . .

Ummm, isn't that Obama's job? There is a whole "poor Obama can't stand up to the Beltway Establishment and we need to prop him up" quality to the article that is just surreal. Let me put it this way, I found this article pretty demeaning to Obama as well as progressives.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

This just in from the DNCC on rules for attending events at Invesco Field Thursday, when Sen. Barack Obama will make his acceptance speech.

Doors open at 1:00 pm. They recommend coming early as while you will be assigned a section, the seats with the section are first-come - first serve.

The list of items not allowed on-site is long, and includes but is not limited to: [More...]

With 5 months to go in the term of the worst President in the history of the Nation, a question must be asked - has the Bush Administration ceded control of U.S. foreign policy to John McCain? Which leads to the next question, is it really possible that John McCain could be a worse President than George W. Bush? The answer seems to be yes and yes imo. Condoleeza Rice, acting on behalf of the interim McCain Administration, talks tough to Russia in Georgia:

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice standing by, the Georgian president signed a cease-fire agreement with Russia on Friday. Ms. Rice then declared that all Russian troops must leave Georgian territory immediately. Ms. Rice, who was in Tbilisi to show support for President Mikheil Saakashvili, said that “with this signature” there had to be “the immediate and orderly withdrawal of Russian armed forces and the return of those forces to Russia.”

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