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..]

The efficacy of a crime fighting technique is often used as its justification, even at the expense of privacy. Police agencies using infrared heat sensors to uncover marijuana grow lights inside residences, without bothering to obtain a search warrant, argued that they were merely measuring heat in the public air to catch bad guys before the Supreme Court concluded that their efforts violated the Fourth Amendment.

The latest controversial use of technology to invade privacy is GPS tracking. A transmitter is surreptitiously attached to a suspect's car, and the police follow the suspect's movements electronically.

[more ...]

Welcome to Gitmo of the Rockies, or as Denver locals are calling it, Gitmo on the Platte (for the nearby Platte River.)

Denver's CBS4 News reporter Rick Salinger scores an exclusive on Denver's plans for arrested protesters in the event of mass arrests -- as proof, he and his camera people got inside and shot this video before being asked to leave.

The facility is a city owned warehouse.

Inside are dozens are metal cages. They are made out of chain link fence material and topped by rolls of barbed wire.

"This is a secured environment," Capt. Frank Gale of the Denver Sheriff's Department told CBS4. "We're concerned about how that's going to be utilized by people who will be potentially disruptive."

More....

The Antonio family owns a little grocery store in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. Plagued by taggers who covered their walls with graffiti, they finally paid $3,000 to a team of graffiti artists to paint murals on the building. Because the artists they hired had "street cred," taggers respected the work and left it alone. Problem solved? Not exactly.

"ORDER TO COMPLY," said the letter from the Building and Safety Department, which required the Antonios to remove "excessive signage" under threat of a $1,000 fine "and/or six (6) months imprisonment" for each of four alleged violations.

The Antonios called the office of Councilman Ed Reyes for help, but to little avail. One day the city sent out a work crew and just like that, the Antonios' $3,000 investment was gone, covered over with dull beige paint.

You know what happened next: taggers covered the blank walls with graffiti by the next morning. Great work, city government. You managed to respond to a problem that had been solved by making it worse.

Barack Obama take notice - according to a new Greenberg poll (PDF), Americans are ready for REAL change (PDF), not post partisan unity schticks. Greenberg writes:

When asked to compare the current times and the types of solutions needed to deal with their problems to three other difficult eras – FDR’s “New Deal” era in the 1930s, the late 1970s and early 1980s when Reagan was elected, and the early 1990s of Bill Clinton – voters’ preferences are striking: By significant margins, voters believe Roosevelt’s times and solutions are more analogous to ours than Reagan’s, but that Reagan’s are closer to ours than Clinton’s. These feelings center largely around a desire to restore an American middle class that has declined steadily in recent decades.

More . . .

Apparently John McCain believes the presidential election will come down to which candidate is the bigger (or lesser) celebrity:

Here's proof, if proof were needed, that the McCain campaign's advertising strategy is in fact being run by a crack team of six-year-olds, out of their minds on Sunny Delight. Yesterday they released a new ad, Fan Club, which continued to mock Barack Obama as a celebrity, this time on account of his "dreamy eyes". It included a brief clip of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in Wayne's World ("We're not worthy!") -- but Myers objected, claiming copyright violation, and the ad was reissued without the clip.

Doesn't the McCain campaign realize that voters love celebrities? How else to explain the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in California or Jessie Ventura in Minnesota? If McCain had ideas that were worth listening to, perhaps he wouldn't have to spend his time mocking his opponent's popularity.

The Vice Presidential candidate speaks at the Democratic Convention on Wednesday night. The theme that night is "Securing America's Future."

So the VP candidate is someone who fits with that theme. Also, according to another report I read elsewhere, miltary veterans are part of the night's theme.

Could Gen. Wesley Clark be back in the ballgame? His organization is Securing America's Future, the same name as the night's theme. More on that here.

Gen. Wesley Clark would be just fine with me. He's actually got progressive views on criminal justice issues and constitutional rights: [More...]

Sen. Hillary Clinton will be one of four speakers on Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention.

The convention keynote speaker, who will also be speaking Tuesday, has just been announced. It's former Governor Mark Warner.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival during the Democratic presidential primaries, is also scheduled to speak that night, Aug. 26. But Warner is being given the plum position, according to an e-mail that Obama campaign adviser Mike Henry sent to Virginia supporters late Tuesday.

Other newly announced speakers: Michelle Obama's brother will introduce her on Monday night. Nancy Pelosi, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, will also speak Monday.

Each night has a theme: [More...]