Small town values

Maverick! open thread

We understand that John McCain is a maverick. And a POW. Just passing that along.

Post-speech thread

Keep going.

Palin, Palin, Palin open thread!

More RNC thread

Because you're chatty.

RNC open thread

Here's tonight's schedule, with the theme being reform ("Washington is broken and the Original Maverick will fix it"). I'm sure that'll work out for them. The fireworks will be in the 10 PM EDT hour when Sarah Palin will attempt to convince us that being a corrupt Alaskan machine politician is actually a good thing.

Bon appetit!

RNC open thread

Tonight's schedule. Have at!

Hookers & Blow

EZ Polling RNC Edition

I know we are all still moping over the cancellation of GWB and Cheney's speeches, but I want to know what we think about the "change in plans." I have posted this week's poll on the right. We will digest next Saturday. Positive vibrations to all in the storm's path....please get to safety (and bring your pet)

Yikes!!!! Disturbing Developments

Glenn Greenwald and Jane from FDL report about preemptive raids of protest organizer homes. These are clear violations of the Constitutional rights of these people, and apparently the police are much more aggressive than what was seen in Denver.

Some excerpts:

those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house...Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.

There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.

He's got video at his site

What a scary country this has become...