Democratic National Convention

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan expressed relief at the lack of violence associated with last night’s Rage Against the Machine concert. Despite more than 100 arrests, Dolan said the situation had the potential to be explosive given the intersection of delegates and protesters.

A group of five protesters are currently being arrested on Selby Ave. in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood. They’ve been sitting on the sidewalk in handcuffs for more than an hour. “They had some weapons,” said a police officer at the scene. “Some bags of feces.”

St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington addressed reporters this morning, praising the “heroic work” of cops under difficult circumstances yesterday. “We’re looking forward to a day of a little more normality than we had yesterday,” he said at the beginning of the press conference. “They did a great job in the face of a lot [...]

Forty five years to the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, Barack Obama delivered the performance of his life before 84,000 fervent supporters at Invesco Field at Mile High stadium in Denver. Whether Obama ultimately becomes President of the United States, it will undoubtedly be a speech and a spectacle that will go down in history.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi kicked off the final day of the Democratic National Convention at about 4 p.m. Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson then led the Pledge of Allegiance and Jennifer Hudson belted out the National Anthem, complete with red fireworks shooting off over the jumbotron. People have been waiting for hours to get [...]

Following a circuitous, 45-minute bus ride — in which our driver inexplicably drove all the way up to the stadium, circled back to downtown Denver and then proceeded anew to the stadium — I am on the ground at Mile High. The setting is indeed spectacular. The stadium is lined with digital signs that read [...]

I just took the light rail into downtown Denver. People are already heading in droves to Invesco Field at Mile High for this evening’s big event. That means they’ll be sitting in the sun for five hours or more before the festivities get underway. Hopefully there will plenty of water on hand. It’s a beautiful [...]

Overheard in the hallway of the Sheraton Four Points this morning: Rep. Tim Walz on his way into breakfast discussing Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s VP prospects with an unidentified woman. “I think he has a good chance,” says the woman. “Let’s hope so,” replies Walz, frequently mentioned as a possible gubernatorial contender in 2010. “That’s good [...]

I spent the evening in the scrum of the floor. Strangely it’s not the best vantage point from which to come up with a coherent analysis of the evening. Did Bill Clinton stick a shiv in Barack Obama or anoint him the next black president? Did Joe Biden’s tale of growing up a stuttering outsider in Scranton, Pennsylvania come off as hokum or populist humility? You’re so close to the action that it’s difficult to determine. And the true believers in the Pepsi Center treat every uttered word as if it came directly from God. So I offer up instead a gallery of photos from the evening.

The elusive, but powerful PUMA has become a mythic figure at the Democratic National Convention. By reading the media coverage, you’d think these beasts are prowling every street corner in downtown Denver, threatening to overpower Barack Obama with a cloud of estrogen. But strange thing, these beasts are frustratingly difficult to locate. After three days on the prowl, I finally spotted a half dozen PUMA’s stalking down [...]