Time Magazine provides a guide with highlights of the protest activity that will occur in New York during the Republican Convention. Here are a few of the more intriguing ones:

GREENE DRAGON The week before the convention, this street-theater group will re-create Paul Revere's Ride, pedaling down Lexington Avenue on bicycles outfitted with cardboard horse heads, shouting, "The Republicans are coming!"

AXIS OF EVE Demanding an end to "political cover-up," about 100 women draped in American flags and wearing anti-Republican "protest panties" will perform a "mass flash" on Sept. 1

Time also mentions that New York police and firefighters may go on strike during the convention. I'm not buying it. Mayor Bloomberg will never let it happen. Any more than the Boston mayor let it happen there. Nor would Bush.

Every day we learn of more bloggers heading to New York for the convention. Jesse and Ezra of Pandagon, Markos of Daily Kos; NYU Journalism Prof. Jay Rosen of Pressthink; Matt Yglesias and Zoe are going. Mad Kane, Anna of Annatopia (who will be blogging for Majority Report of Air America Radio), Matt Stoller. You can follow blogger related events at the RNC Tank Blog.

Having covered the Democratic Convention as a credentialed blogger, it occurred to me, why stop there? So, TalkLeft applied for a press pass to cover the Kobe Bryant trial in Eagle. I received this e-mail today:

Good Afternoon Jeralyn, Your application has been approved and is good to go. Credentials are available for pick up on the Justice Center grounds beginning at 7:15 a.m. each morning on days when proceedings are scheduled. You must present a photo identification to receive your credential. Credentials are valid for the duration of the proceedings in this case.

Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. TalkLeft has followed every development in the Kobe Bryant case since the date his arrest was announced. I'm a frequent commentator on the case on TV, and often quoted on it in national newspapers. But still, this is not a credential that's attached to any of the networks or newspapers -- it's in my name for TalkLeft. I think it's very cool.

It may not make bloggers journalists, but it does confirm we're media.

Check out A Student Pundit's Venture Into Poli-Cyberspace in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's an interview and profile of Pandagon blogger Ezra Klein about his blogging at the DNC in Boston. It's available free to non-subscribers for five days, so read it soon.

There is an annual reunion of guards and former inmates at Alcatraz, the famous island prison in San Francisco. This year's reunion was one of the biggest:

Armando Mendoza, 78, was one of seven former inmates, 10 onetime guards and 73 men and women who were children of correctional officers who came back to the island Saturday for the annual Alcatraz alumni reunion.

The gathering -- part nostalgia, part bitter history -- is perhaps one of the strangest alumni gatherings you could find. Ex-guards greeted ex- cons like old friends, people told old stories about the cold weather, others told stories about murders and stabbings, and the warden's daughter recalled how the place was so safe outside the main cell block that Alcatraz families never locked their doors. "This is living history,'' said Ricardo Perez, supervising ranger for the National Park Service. "The public has the chance to hear firsthand accounts of life on the Rock.''

Today, Alcatraz is a tourist attraction with 5,000 visitors a day. I took the TL kid there as a kid and we both were fascinated. The article is particularly worth reading for the story of Mr. Mendoza--originally from East L.A. and sentenced to 30 years without parole in 1957 for drug dealing.

Reporter James Brandon is one lucky guy. After being kidnapped, beaten, threatened with execution and held hostage by Islamic extremists last week, he was released. He tells his story in today's Telegraph. [link via Oxblog]

An article in the New York Times Magazine today asks a very interesting question: Is it time for America to Decarcerate?

There is a movement afoot today, albeit a tiny one, that aspires to get rid of prisons altogether. The members of this movement call themselves ''abolitionists,'' borrowing the term applied to steadfast opponents of slavery before the Civil War. Since the 80's, an international group of abolitionists -- lawyers, judges, criminologists -- has been holding conferences every few years. According to ''Instead of Prisons,'' published by the Prison Research Education Action Project in 1976, the first article of the abolitionist catechism is that imprisonment is morally objectionable and indefensible and must therefore be abolished. Are these people moral visionaries, like their 19th-century namesakes? Or are they simply nuts?

In some states law enforcement authorities may ask sexual assualt victims to submit to a lie detector test (a practice that is outlawed in many states). One such victim who has been asked by an investigating detective to take a lie detector test after her attacker "passed" one discusses her experience in a post to the AntiPolygraph.org message board titled, Raped.

TalkLeft discusses the unreliability of polygraphs here and here.

As far as we're concerned, polygraphs are as reliable as voodoo. Their primary usefulness to law enforcement occurs during the pre-test interview process in which they convince people to confess before taking the test. The F.B.I. is famous for this.

We've talked often about the felon vote, the hispanic vote, the female vote....now it's time to campaign for the homeless vote.

If you run into any homeless people, make sure they know that the Constitution allows citizens to vote even if they don't own property or have a permanent address. The temporary address of a soup kitchen or homeless shelter is just fine.

Analysts say the homeless favor Kerry. The homeless believe he is more interested in their issues. So let's get them out there. One person, one vote-- rich, poor, male, female, minority or homeless.

Tex at Anti-war.com has a detailed wrap-up of the latest mayhem in Iraq. Mystery bombings, a phony truce, what else is new?

Update: Unfair Witness on the U.S. giving up on the Fallujah Brigade.

No suprise here, the first four detainees at Guantanamo to have a hearing have been adjudged "enemy combatants." They only got the hearing after the Supreme Court said they were entitled to them. Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration settled on rules that ensured a lack of due process and fairness....such as the detainees would not be allowed to have a lawyer present at the hearing; would not be allowed to review all the evidence against them; and would have their fates decided by three military officers.

Elaine Cassell explains:

Rolling Stones' drummer Charlie Watts has throat cancer. He's expected to make a full recovery and be back with the Stones later this year. Charlie, 63, has been with the Stones for more than 40 years.

Get well, Charlie.

In other music news, this weekend is the 35th anniversary of Woodstock. How times change. 35 years ago David Crosby was part of the counter culture. Today, he wants to be co-President of the United States. And, he's on an anti-crime rag, bashing Enron's Ken Lay in his new song:

Arianna Huffington weighs in on the resignation of New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. She wonders whether McGreevey put his lover on the payroll knowing it would be discovered so that he'd have an excuse to come out. Arianna's ex-husband came out during her marriage, so her thoughts are all the more interesting.

By the time the curtain comes up on this drama’s Act Five we could be in the middle of a serious political scandal that may force McGreevey to step down even before Nov. 15. Or we may be in the middle of his political resurrection, looking not at a tortured politician with a secret draining away precious energy but a free man fully -- and finally -- accepting himself. Either way, he had to practically drive the car right off the cliff in order to put himself on the road to Thursday’s declaration. And that's an indictment of our society and our political culture wars.

So until the final curtain falls, let’s seize the moment to reaffirm, loudly and without reservation, that to be gay is to be normal -- whether you’re a governor or a gardener, a public figure or a very private one.

Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence agrees with her: