Here's Hillary! Everyone is on their feet waiting for her to come out. She is radiant. She is going to introduce the country's last great President (her words)--in anticipation of the country's next great democratic president.

Hillary has become a polished speaker. She modulates her voice perfectly. Her cadence is timed just right. She's come a long way.

She mentions stem cell research and the crowd goes wild. By the way, our own Congresswoman Diana DeGette will be addressing the convention tomorrow at 4:45 ET--be sure to watch. She's one of the country's finest congresspersons.

One thing we are noticing, as the evening goes on, there really isn't a feeling of ABB (anyone but Bush) here so much as there is genuine enthusiasm for John Kerry and John Edwards. There's a big difference, and it's one we think will matter in November. While those on the far left side of the party find Kerry acceptable and preferable to Bush, but far from ideal, it's clear to us that this crowd of delegates have become attached to John Kerry and are cheering for him not just as a replacement for Bush, but someone they want as their leader.

By the way, there's not an empty seat in the house now. We have no idea where these people all camne from but they are sitting and listening with rapt attention and clapping.

The crowd is alive again, cheering the Reverend David Alston. Can you feel it through the TV? He just mentioned John Kerry and the whole hall is on their feet cheering. This group is ready to win. They can taste it, trust us.

The audience was just told to take their seats. Restlessness is setting in. Bloggers are wrapping up their cords and laptops and heading out. Everyone is pretty beat. We're going to hang in here. We want to feel the energy and commitment to win in November that the crowd exudes when Hillary and Bill speak.

Someone's rehashing 9-11 again on the podium now. We can't hear many of the speaker's name. For some reason, the big screen monitors are projecting the city of Boston instead of the woman speaking.

Now a 9/11 widow is speaking. Can't we look ahead instead of back? Do they have anything new to say we haven't heard over and over? Yes, we've all grieved with them, but now it's time to look to the future with optimism.

We disagree that everything has changed. That's what Bush wants us to believe. Our children will have innocence again. What a negative speech this is.

Nine women just took the stage, one of them is Hillary. Looking great in a yellow pantsuit. They are the nine women in the U.S. Senate.

You probably saw more of them than we did. The big monitors aren't working thaqt well for us. They keep showing the convention sign instead of what's going on at the podium or in the hall. The wi-fi is getting iffy--kicking us and everyone around us off-line for minutes at a time. Hint to the Republicans: Get your bloggers ethernet cables so they don't have to rely on wi-fi.

What's with all this 70's soul music? One or two songs would have been enough. If we're moving into the new century, how about some current tunes to take us there? Do we sound like we're getting cranky? We are a bit. The speeches have just been okay. No shining moments yet--not even Al Gore. At least, not for us.

The crowd is now doing "the wave." Why, we have no idea. Guess someone special is about to come out. We just went from dimmed lights as if a star was on their way to brightness. Now some state delegation to our left is screaming "Kerry, Kerry, Kerry" and "Edwards, Edwards, Edwards."

Ok, DNCC, time to pick up the pace here.

Finally...some energy. The hall is erupting. The crowd is clapping and cheering. The first star of the evening. He begins....We'll update as he progesses.

Al says, "Take it from me, every vote counts!" The crowd, including us, go wild.

CNN is here. They are photographing David Sifry of Technorati--for an on air segment. They have asked us all to turn our screens toward them --the idea being to catch us all while we are in typing mode. We're happy to comply. While we're waiting, here's a picture of Atrios, whose real name is Duncan.

Copyright 2004, TalkLeft.com. All rights reserved.

Now we're on the second National Anthem of the evening. Robyn was great a few hours ago and this one is a soulful version. Everyone is standing, whoops, we better too!

Update: This post and the photo have been updated to include copyright information. And yes, Atrios gave us permission for us to post the photo and his real name before we did it.

You are all probably watching at home on tv but in case you aren't, here we go. Music--finally. Some energy, it's been dead in here for the past hour. We just looked down and the hall is full--people are standing and dancing. The lights just dimmed so we are blogging by backlight. Lots of reporters up here in blogger alley still. We suspect by tomorrow we'll be old news. That's ok.

First speaker is from Florida. We can't hear him that weel, but we see him on the same big screen you do. We're so high up he looks like a action figure when we look down to the stage. Much easier to watch the big screen.

We can trade our press pass for a floor pass for an hour and go and mingle with the delegates. We're not ready for that yet, nothing's happened yet for them to react to.

We're in! Blogger Alley is for real. We're high up on the 7th floor directly above the stage. The floor is still pretty empty. We have scored a desktop and we're sitting next to David who is the CEO of Technorati who is blogging for CNN--and Steve Olson who is blogging on Stakeholder for the DCCC.

There's McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts stations downstairs if we get hungry. We've got our camera hooked up and our cell phone seems to be working.

Jesse and Ezra from Pandagon are here. They are just the cutest and most personable, we'd like to adopt them. Markos of Daily Kos just arrived. Jerome of My DD is here too. Howard Dean this morning said he came to our breakfast because of Jerome.

We run into Tom Burka of Opinions You Should Have every place we go--here is no exception. He's trying to find someone else using a Mac with Jaguar.

And the no longer anonymous Atrios is here! He is so handsome! And he's out --his real name is Duncan. We just exchanged a big hug. We haven't met Mrs. Atrios yet and hope we get to later.

More in a bit. The hall is about 20% full, it's going to be a long fun night.

Update: Jenny 8. Lee from the New York Times is here--she's great, so spirited. She's wearing orange fishnet stockings to match her escape hood. You can read her article about the bloggers in today's New York Times here.

The Washington Post covers the bloggers here--with a pretty nice picture of us.

We moved hotels out to the hinterland, took an express bus to Copley Plaza and in front of the Fairmont was a delegates bus. A policeman is searching bags. We asked if we could hitch a ride and showed our media pass and the nice officer said yes. We're on the bus now, waiting for the delegates to load and are coming to you via a t-mobile hot spot.

The Kennedys are staying at the Fairmont Copley. Caroline Kennedy was here this morning.

The buses have a special lane that go right into the Fleet Center. No wait. The parking lot is like a carnival, it's awesome

The blogger breakfast was this morning. There were a lot of bloggers. And a lot of mainstream media covering the bloggers. But, we really aren't the story and we're not here to talk about ourselves. The DNCC knows this, and it went all out. After the greetings and a quick bite, there were speakers, including Obama and Howard Dean:

Obama was gracious and thanked the bloggers for covering the convention. He didn't speak long, he's a busy man this week, but it was great that he stopped by to give us a shout-out.

Howard Dean had a lot to say and stayed quite a while.

On his campaign: He doesn't think the Dean Scream killed his campaign. He thought coming in third in Iowa did. He's developed a good relationship with John Kerry and he gives him advice. He refused to say what kind of advice because if he did, he said, he wouldn't be doing it for very long.

According to a new report from the Department of Justice, 3.2% of America's adult population is in jail or on probation or parole. That's 6.9 million people. The number of adults in our correctional population increased by more than 130,000 this year, even though there was no corresponding increase in the crime rate.

Experts say the numbers reflect the "get tough on crime" laws of the 90's. This would be a good time for the Democrats to change course and focus on prevention and treatment as alternatives to prison for non-violent drug offenders. We got our copy of the Democratic Platform today. What does it say about prisons and sentencing laws? Nothing that we could find.

New York Times Journalist Jennifer 8. Lee writes about bloggers receiving press credentials to cover the DNC in Boston and asks, Year of the Blog?. Her article begins:

Jeralyn Merritt had expected the news to come by e-mail rather than by snail mail, otherwise known as the United States Postal Service. But she had to rip, rather than click, to open the message informing her that she had received press credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston for her Internet Web log, or blog, at TalkLeft.com, where she offers a running commentary on political and criminal justice issues.

"A big smile broke out on my face and I just went 'Yeah!' " said Ms. Merritt, ... who works as a criminal defense lawyer in Denver. "It was someone who was judging me on the work that I was doing for free over the last two years and found me worthy,

Even as many networks are reducing their coverage of the increasingly predictable political conventions, the political blogs, which have become a fruitful alternative for individual voices, have been ablaze over the prospect of officially covering conventions for the first time. Ms. Merritt is one of about three dozen bloggers who have been given press credentials for the Democratic convention in Boston, which begins Monday. Another, Ana Marie Cox from the Washington gossip site Wonkette.com, will be working as a correspondent for MTV.

Please read the whole article and check out all of the blogs mentioned. Each of us has made a commitment to be part of the process, to contribute towards a more responsive government and to allow our readers to view the convention through an alternative lens. We may not be journalists, but we are definitely media. We tell it like we see it, without editorial overseers and without divided loyalties--each of us must be true only to ourselves.

I am particularly impressed with the younger bloggers--Ezra and Jesse of Pandagon (ages 20 and 21); and Patrick and David of Oxblog (in their 20's and Rhodes Scholars.) I'm awed by their savvy and intelligence. When I was their age, I was marching on Washington to protest the Vietnam War or in law school. I never would have had the discipline or ability to write and update a daily political blog with the acumen that they display.

We're hot today--in addition to the New York Times, I'm quoted in the Wall Street Journal (free article), the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times (and check out Kevin Drum's photo of the article not available online) and Newsday. And I just got here! (actually, I did all the interviews last week.)