Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, indicted for perjury in a text-messaging sex scandal, was arrested last week and jailed for a bond violation. He had traveled to a business event in Canada. The next day he was charged with additional offenses.

Monday, over objections of prosecutors, the Judge modified his bond conditions to toss the home monitoring (ankle bracelet) condition and allow him to come to Denver for the Democratic National Covention.

Prosecutors may appeal. Kilpatrick's lawyer is the excellent James Thomas of Detroit, a long time TL pal.

Ticket notification begins today for those who applied for "community credentials" to attend Sen. Barack Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night at Invesco Field.

Details for picking up your tickets are here.

If you offered to volunteer for the campaign and already put in your hours, you're a shoo-in:

Obama supporters who agreed to volunteer for the candidate when they signed up for credentials — and actually fulfilled their promises — can rest easier, knowing they are set to receive "all-star volunteer seats" closer than other spectators, the campaign announced Wednesday.

As to those who signed up online without clicking the volunteer box, it's first-come, first-serve. More than 80,000 applied for 30,000 slots.

Earlier this week, Adam Liptak wrote about the downside of allowing opposing litigants to select their own paid experts to render opinions as trial witnesses. He discussed the Australian concept of "hot tubbing," where the litigants' experts "testify together at trial — discussing the case, asking each other questions, responding to inquiries from the judge and the lawyers, finding common ground and sharpening the open issues," and the practice prevalent in Europe, where "expert witnesses are selected by judges and are meant to be neutral and independent."

In criminal cases, as Radley Balko and Roger Koppl discussed in a Slate article yesterday, experts who are paid "charlatans are only half the story." [More ...]

A manslaughter charge filed against a former Louisiana police officer follows a coroner's ruling that Baron Pikes' death was a homicide.

Pikes was shocked nine times with a 50,000-volt Taser as he was arrested on a drug possession warrant in January, authorities said. Winn Parish District Attorney Chris Nevils said [Scott] Nugent broke the law when he "unnecessarily" used the Taser on Pikes multiple times and failed to get him medical attention "when it was apparent he needed it."

Nevils' attitude is refreshing:

"In a civilized society, abuse by those who are given great authority cannot be tolerated," Nevils said in a statement.

Whether you are watching the Olympics as I am or want to talk about what you had for dinner or anything else, here's an open thread.

I'm also going to work on my Facebook and Twitter pages and widgets for instant updates of convention happenings.

I'm going to stop following bloggers and journalists on Twitter who use it only to upload every one of their posts. It clutters my inbox and I want to know what they are doing, not writing. I can check their blog for their blogposts. I wish bloggers would get a second twitter page for readers who want to read their blog via Twitter.

Facebook update below:

U.S. News and World Reports has a new series of articles on the primary target groups of voters for both the Obama and McCain campaigns in the swing states in November.

THE WEST

McCain is confident he'll grab the Western states with Republican tendencies, and instead plans to lay out serious campaign cash in places with big electoral troves like Ohio, Florida, and Michigan. Obama, parsing the electorate map, has sensed opportunity out west, and has a rich supply of private donations to go after those voters. And, with the Mountain West in transition, the long Democratic primary season helped the party register new and more enthusiastic voters.

More...

Senior U.S. District Court Judge John L Kane, Jr. (Colorado) issued a brave sentencing decision today in a child p!rnography case. (Opinion in USA v. Rausch, here.)

In it, Judge Kane examines the purpose of sentencing and punishment, invoking Lord Denning, Dostoyevsky and others.

The defendant was charged with possession of less than 100 child p!rn images. The Sentencing Guidelines called for a sentence of 97 to 120 months. The Government asked for 97 months. [More...]

Bill Gwatney, 49, Chair of the Arkansas Democratic Party was shot and killed today at the party's headquarters. The lone gunman is dead.

More details here.

First came the news came that Hillary Clinton would speak at the Democratic Convention Tuesday night. Yesterday came the news that the keynote speech, to be given by former VA. Governor Mark Warner, would also be Tuesday.

Now there's this: the Tuesday lineup will also include Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Governors Ted Strickland of Ohio and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania and Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana and Federico Peña, former Mayor of Denver and Secretary of both Energy and Transportation.

That's 10 speakers for Tuesday night. By contrast, Monday night, there are 5 speakers, 3 of whom are Michelle Obama, her brother and Barack Obama's sister.[More...]

Cheese whiz! Can it really be a crime for town council members to pick up their toys and leave the sandbox?

Trustees Sharon Eineman and James Ulinski walked out of Rosso Memorial Hall, where township meetings are held, about five minutes after the meeting started because they didn't want to vote on an agenda item, forcing the three remaining officials to end the meeting because they lacked a quorum. The township's attorney, Robert Huth, said the two trustees could be charged with misconduct of public office.

"It was extremely childish," Treasurer Darrin York said. "You are here to do a job. You can't walk out of a meeting because you don't like the way things are going to turn out."

If childish behavior by elected officials is a crime, the president and most members of Congress should be behind bars. Or at least on probation (with electronic monitoring, of course).

I am an Obama supporter. Who could not be when McCain is the other choice? But pols are pols and do what they do. That's why I rip them all when they do the wrong thing, by my lights. For example, as Obama did on FISA Capitulation. But a new breed of Democrat and "progressive" is emerging. Glenn's Greenwald's interview with Mort Halperin allows us to coin a new phrase - a Halperin "Progressive." What is a "Halperin" progressive? One who decides what the right position is for progressives based on what Barack Obama does. Glenn writes:

[T]here was only one meaningful change that occurred between Halperin's June 9 opposition [to FISA Capitulation] and his July 8 support [for FISA Capitualtion]: namely, it was in that interim -- on June 20 -- that Barack Obama announced that he would support the FISA bill . . .

There are many "progressive" blogs and Obama supporters who are Halperin "progressives." I am not one of them.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

I have an article at Pajamas Media today, Reframing Iowa without Edwards. It points out that the operative time period for the inquiry into the effect of an Edwards' withdrawal from the race is October, 2007, when news of his affair was first reported and he issued his first denial. The question should be what if he dropped out then? To answer it, there are other factors to consider besides second choice candidate preferences on the eve of the January 3 caucuses or during entrance polling, as others have focused on.

In the end, I conclude there's no way to know what would have happened.

But now, get ready for the next Edwards bombshell. The Enquirer is reporting (already picked up by the New York Post) that Edwards rekindled his affair with Rielle Hunter in 2007 -- during the time period when her baby likely was conceived.

If that's true, and it's a big if, regardless of whether Edwards really is the father of Hunter's baby, it gives even greater weight to the argument that Edwards should have dropped out of the race in October, 2007 when reports of their affair surfaced, rather than issue denials. [More..]