I was on the floor tonight, and spent some time with the Minnesota delegation. I shot some footage from the floor and from the press area where I watched the main speeches. Then I hurried back to where I'm staying, and, after another long, hot, sweaty day in New York, stopped in the bar for a beer--OK, two beers--before turning in. Tomorrow I'll post more extensive comments, along with a short video of some of tonight's highlights.

My grades of tonight's speeches:

Rod Paige: B
Michael Steele: A-

But why is it that no one gets very excited about education? I'll have some thoughts on this tomorrow.

Arnold: A

Just a great performance, and a perfect way to keep the "compassionate" theme of tonight's show from turning hopelessly sappy with consequent low ratings.

The Bush twins: D

A big disappointment. Who wrote that script? Fire him.

Laura Bush: B

She is very popular and certainly didn't do any harm, and having W. introduce her on video was a nice touch. But it was all too predictable to have much impact. On me, anyway.

More tomorrow.

wasn't bad but, for my money, it fell well short of night one. Of course it could just be me. I tend to like the more cerebral stuff. For all I know, Arnold and Mrs. Bush may have won the president more votes than McCain and Rudy G. In any case, here's my quick take on what I saw:

Michael Steele -- He was an impressive guy more than 15 years ago when he worked as a legal assistant at the law firm I was with. He's a hell of a lot more impressive now. I was particularly moved by his tribute to his mother, who refused to accept public assstance as she single-handedly raised Steele and his sister who is now a doctor (and, if I'm not mistaken, was once married to Mike Tyson). Steele also borrowed my all time favorite convention speech device -- Hubert Humphrey's "but not Senator Goldwater" riff -- and hammered John Kerry with it. (Example, nearly all Senators voted in 2002 for funding to support our troops in Iraq, "but not John Kerry"). Soon the audience was joining in. This one certainly beats "hope/help is on the way."

Arnold -- Terrific. Of the three members of the Power Line crew, I've been the least enthusiastic about Schwarzenegger. It may be time to rethink this. As politics and showmanship, the speech was splendid. But the speech also showed that, as Rocket Man told me before the convention, Arnold has important core values and beliefs in common with conservatives. Plus, you have to love a guy who is willing to admit that Richard Nixon inspired him to become a Republican. No girlie man would do that.

The Bush daughters -- I hate to say it, but that's as embarrassed as I can remember feeling in front of a television set. Five more minutes, and I might have become a swing voter. Again, this may just be me, but I kind of hope it's not.

Laura Bush -- She did well. I think she was at her most effective when she reminded us of the president's record on domestic issues. From an electoral perspective, I wish she had spent more time on that area -- we've already got 9/11 covered. On the other hand, the party's strategists may believe that most viewers won't have seen McCain and Giuliani. As I suggested earlier, Mrs. Bush's speech probably was directed largely at an audience that does not include me, so I'm not really the one to evaluate its effectiveness.

Tom Daschle has spent millions of dollars on television ads, beginning months before any campaign was otherwise underway. Only recently has John Thune begun his media campaign. But the latest South Dakota poll shows Thune with a two-point lead. There are a number of signs that the tide is turning against Daschle.

Daschle's basic problem is that he can't tell South Dakota's voters anything they don't already know. His whole career has been based on pork, not principle. But no matter how many millions of dollars Daschle spends, he can't materially add to the pork factor. He's already got that.

Meanwhile, Thune is running as a man of principle, and, as it happens, his principles match those of the majority of South Dakota voters far better than Daschle's. Daschle can't hide this fact by running ads showing him hugging President Bush.

Jon Lauck's Daschle v. Thune is the place to go for information on what could be the year's most important Senate race.

Last night at around 8 p.m., Al Franken, who is here on behalf of Air America, got into a shoving match with Laura Ingraham's producer. The two men argued about whether Franken had agreed to go on Laura's show and then reneged. The producer started to walk away, but Franken chased him, yelling insults, and the altercation followed. Here is a photo:

As I recall, this isn't the first fight Franken has been in in recent months. Maybe the strain trying to prop up the Kerry campaign is starting to tell.

Or maybe of the decade. I mean, of course, the teapot tempest over President Bush's purported sudden defeatism in the war. The idea that Bush may suddenly have changed his mind and decided that the war is a loser is so ludicrous that the current media storm can only be accounted for by panic over the prospect of the Kerry campaign's implosion.

Michelle Malkin tracked down the transcript of the Lauer interview, and the one sentence being denounced by the Dems and repeated in the media is even more absurdly out of context than I had expected. The question from Lauer that started the discussion was, "Do you really think we can win this war on terror in the next four years?” The discussion that followed was obviously about the time horizon in which the war on the Islamofascists can be won. Lauer obviously understood this, and did not think that he had gotten a scoop: the President's surrender in the war on terror.

In fact, if you go on a minute or two after the one sentence the Democrats are braying about, Bush said this:

I know if steadfast, strong and resolute — and I say those words very seriously — it's less likely that your kids are going to live under the threat of al-Qaida for a long period of time. I can't tell you. I don't have any … definite end.  But I tell you this, when we succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's the beginning of the end for these extremists. Because freedom is going to have a powerful influence to make sure your kids can grow up in a peaceful world. If we believe, for example, that you can't win, and the alternative is to retreat … I think that would be a disaster for your children.

For the media to promote the idea that Bush seriously suggested that the war on terror can't be won, and is now "recanting," as the Associated Press reported today, is journalistic malpractice of an appalling sort.

This morning, a colleague asked me what I thought of a legal brief recently filed in opposition to a motion I wrote in one of my cases. I answered, "oh, you know, it's just a bunch of lawyer talk." I was joking, partly. Unless a lawyer is committing malpractice, everything he or she says or writes is lawyer talk. Good legal writing takes the less offensive forms of lawyer talk and uses them effectively enough to make one's points without constantly reminding the reader that the lawyer is talking. Alternatively, and less often, some good legal writing uses certain conventions so well that the reader celebrates the writing as lawyer talk at its best.

So too with political speeches. Any speech a politician gives is politician talk, designed to promote the politician and/or the politician's party. Last night, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani were promoting themselves and also lending President Bush a hand. McCain's speech employed less overt forms of politician talk so that he (true to his image) would sound less like a politician. Giuliani used some of the most overt forms in order to present a classic political stem-winder.

There is one key difference between lawyer talk and politician talk. When we hear or read lawyer talk, we usually don't consider the source (other than that it comes from a lawyer). When we hear political speeches, we always consider the specific source -- the identity of the politician who is speaking. I think this is central to understanding what was going on last night. Giuliani and McCain are special sources in ways that even big-hitting Democratic speakers like Clinton and Gore are not. Giuliani, having risen to the challenge of the most monstrous event ever to take place on our shores, has special standing. McCain, hero, political independent and, yes, media favorite, does too. Thus, their most effective endorsement speech is not the usual one ("I support a man who. . .") Their most effective approach is to talk less about who should be president than about the vital subjects that they have special standing to address. The proposition that Bush should be re-elected ought to flow from that text. It should be a conclusion, not a starting point.

Giuliani executed this brilliantly. His avowed text was 9/11. But he missed no opportunity to insert Bush into his story of that event or to infer from the lessons of 9/11 the urgency of re-electing the president. McCain proceeded differently. His speech was a lecture, not a story. His subject was the war against terrorism. Bush was not often mentioned. Yet, McCain drew two lessons from his lecture -- that Bush's most controversial decision in prosecuting the war on terror was correct and that Bush should be re-elected.

Clearly, McCain could have trumpeted Bush more than he did. But it's not clear that doing so would have been the most effective way to promote Bush's interests. As I said, voters consider the source. It's well known that McCain isn't a Bush fan. And it's a truism that undecided voters, the folks McCain can help Bush with, aren't Bush fans either. Thus, McCain's pitch -- that voting for Bush, like it or not, is the proper choice given what we know about the war on terrorism -- may (intentionally or unintentionally) have been the best politician talk McCain could have provided on the president's behalf.

I don't think we've commented yet on the abduction of two French journalists by Muslim extremists in Iraq. The extremists are demanding that France rescind its ban on the wearing of head-scarfs (as well as religious accessories worn by members of other religions) in public schools. In attempting to secure the release of the journalists, France has taken pains to point to its record of support for various Muslim and Arab groups and causes, such as the PLO. Indeed, they have enlisted Arafat to plead their case. And French foreign minister Michel Barnier has proclaimed that the "abduction is incomprehensible for all those who know that France, country of human rights, is a land of tolerance and respect of others."

Is it possible, three years after 9/11, to remain this clueless? Apparently, France is still proceeding on the assumption that Islamofascist terrorism is doled out only to citizens of countries that don't sufficiently respect Muslims and their causes. Thus, it is "incomprehensible" that a nation that thinks it has no guilt in this regard would experience terrorism.

Most Americans, and even most liberal Democrats, have figured out that this "why do they hate us" appproach is folly. Unfortunately, though, most liberal Democrats have not figured out that it is also folly to give a substantial say in how we combat global terrorism to countries as clueless as France.

Wayne Rooney, at 18 one of the very best forwards in the world, has left my beloved Everton to play his soccer for Manchester United. Everton received about $30 million which could rise to about $40 million depending on various contingencies. This is nowhere near Rooney's value, in my opinion.

The deal was completed just four hours before the transfer deadline, but became more or less inevitable on Friday, when Rooney requested the transfer. Most Everton fans are enraged at the "lad," as they made clear during Saturday's match. In my opinion, though, the player didn't let the club down; rather Everton let Rooney down. It did so by degenerating into a second-rate, debt-ridden, conflict-riven outfit. Sure, Rooney supported Everton as a kid and Everton did a great job of developing his talent. But remember that top European clubs like Manchester United get to compete in the Champions League against other great clubs like Bayern Munich, AC Milan, and Real Madrid. Everton fans have no right to expect a world class player like Rooney to forgo the opportunity to appear on that special stage.

It would be different if Everton had any reasonable hope of making the Champions League in the next year or two. But the reality is that next year and the year after, we are far more likely to be playing in a lower English division than in the Champions League.

So long Wayne. All the best.

It's official: General Tommy Franks just told the bloggers that he is endorsing President Bush for re-election. This was the first time, I think, that he made the announcement.

Franks sat down at a laptop to do a rather silly photo-op, impersonating a blogger. Our interview wasn't supposed to come until after his upcoming appearance on Hannity's show. But I couldn't resist asking, "General, can we ask you a question?" That led to a great interview session. I'll post video excerpts in a little while. In the meantime, I'd just note that Franks is an extremely impressive guy. If you assume that you have to be very smart to be put in charge of an invasion force of 150,000 troops, you're right.

UPDATE: Here it is, one minutes's worth of excerpts from the bloggers' interview with General Franks. Don't miss this one.

As I mentioned yesterday, Bloggers' Corner is only about twenty feet from Sean Hannity's booth. The action is fast and furious. A few minutes ago, Terry McAuliffe appeared on Sean's show. They went at it pretty hard, arguing about Vietnam and the war on terror. McAuliffe was stumped when Hannity asked him whether Kerry was lying when he said he spent Christmas in Cambodia.

I posted a little footage of McAuliffe's appearance, and of the impromptu press conference he gave immediately after, right in front of us, where he talked about the protests against the RNC. McAuliffe strikes me as an amiable rogue, much like his pal Bill Clinton. As Hannity was going into a commercial break, McAuliffe got in one last cheap shot: "How's your Halliburton stock doing?" To which Sean replied, "Not bad. How's Global Crossing doing?" I loved it.

The action is so fast that it's hard to keep up with. We'll be interviewing Tommy Franks in a little while; he will be "making an announcement" in a few minutes. Presumably he's announcing that he supports President Bush for re-election.

Anyway, here is a very brief film of McAuliffe and Hannity.

Rudy Boschwitz is the former United States Senator who represented Minnesota for twelve years, from 1978-1991. He is a friend for whom I was proud to serve as treasurer in his 1996 campaign.

His life story is a tribute to the United States that he has never tired of retelling. As a child, he came with his family to America when his father had the foresight to leave Germany upon Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933.

Senator Boschwitz made a name for himself and even became something of an icon in Minnesota as a businessman before he ran for office in 1978. He served in the Senate with distinction and continued the private good works that have enhanced his reputation both before and after his public service.

It should therefore count as something of a fourth and fifth strike against our old-media adversary Jim Boyd, the cowardly lion of Portland Avenue, that he went substantially out of his way to smear both incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and Senator Boschwitz in his Star Tribune column this past Sunday after smearing Rocket Man and me in his column the previous Sunday.

We have already noted Boyd's disgraceful treatment of Senator Coleman in his most recent column. We have held off commenting on Boyd's assertions regarding Senator Boschwitz until now. In his column this past Sunday Boyd wrote:

About six weeks ago, former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz submitted a piece that took on former counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke. The piece contained demonstrably false statements. I required that they be stripped from the piece, and they were. The piece ran.

Let us observe preliminarily that when Jim Boyd talks about "demonstrably false statements," we enter the paradoxical world in which one is asked to judge the veracity of statements such as "all men are liars."

Speaking for himself, Senator Boschwitz has responded to Boyd's smear with a letter to the editor of the Star Tribune that he sent earlier today. He has kindly granted us permission to share it with our readers. Here it is:

Imagine my surprise when I returned from vacation last Sunday, and saw in the Star Tribune an assault on my good name.

In an angry article by Jim Boyd, in which he congratulates himself for preventing "political smear" on your opinion page, he states:

"About six weeks ago, former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz submitted a piece that took on former counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke. The piece contained demonstrably false statements. I required that they be stripped from the piece, and they were. The piece ran."

My my. This indeed was a surprise. I never wrote a piece about Clarke and I haven't talked to Jim Boyd in several years.

I did write a piece, however, about Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser. I had a couple of very nice conversations with Sue Wolkerstorfer of the [Star Tribune] editorial page who did object to certain things I wrote, facts that I had checked with my Washington sources, and with which she disagreed. I recognized that if my piece was to be accepted by the Star Tribune, it needed to be changed. So I made the requested changes. The changes certainly did not alter the substance of the article.

Jim Boyd doesn't consider himself a purveyor of political smear such as he accuses others of being. Yet he calls John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, who wrote two columns that appeared on your pages, "fraudulent" and "smear artists" engaged in "immorality." Strong words indeed for a fellow who abhors political smear and accuses others of engaging in it! I know both of those young men well and find their work particularly well written and painstakingly researched.

They are clearly more accurate than Boyd.

Since his retirement from office by the voters in 1990, Senator Boschwitz has returned to the Twin Cities, rejoined the family business, and resumed an active civic and political life. For Boyd to drag Senator Boschwitz into a discussion that he has literally nothing to do with and to perform a kind of drive-by smear of his good name in the community prompts the following observation.

Jim Boyd's professional behavior seems to have reached the point where we may have to ask of him the same question that Joseph Welch posed to Joe McCarthy, and that made Welch a political legend: "Have you no decency, Sir? At long last, have you no decency?"

Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, will speak to the convention tonight at around 9:00. Years ago, Steele, who is African-American, worked at the same law firm I did. The few times we discussed politics, I found him to be more conservative than I was. That may no longer be the case, but John J. Miller accurately describes Steele as a "rock-ribbed" conservative in this portrait for NRO. I'm very much looking forward to hearing Michael's speech.

I made a ten-minute video of highlights from last night's speeches. If you caught them on television, it may not add much, other than putting the speakers in the context of the audience, and conveying a sense of what was going on in the hall.

It's a big file, over 50 MB, so don't even think about it if you don't have a good broadband connection. And even then, give it a minute or two to download.

Here it is: Night One.

Our friend Steven Hayward is the author of The Age of Reagan. Steve is a gifted, ambitious and audacious historian. The first volume of his two-volume history was published in 2001 and covers Reagan's ascent to the presidency in 1980; the second volume, on which Steve is working, will cover Reagan's presidency. When he completes the second volume The Age of Reagan will constitute a conservative counterweight to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s endless, unfinished The Age of Roosevelt.

Steve's terrific essay on the development of Reagan's thought is featured in the new issue of the Claremont Review of Books, a quarterly magazine that has become my favorite periodical. Steve's essay is "How Reagan became Reagan."

Here are some more detailed thoughts on my observations inside the Garden last night.

First, John McCain. He got a warm reception from the crowd, but nowhere near as warm as Giuliani's. Of course, his speech was nowhere near as good as Rudy's. But I don't think I'm the only Republican partisan who doesn't quite trust McCain. Not as a soldier or as a man, but as a Republican. He never is quite willing to do what it would take to prevent himself from being used by the media and by the Democrats in ways that are damaging to his fellow Republicans. Crazy as it sounds, it was not, in fact, absurd for the Kerry campaign to believe that the co-chairman of Arizonans for Bush might be available to Kerry as a Vice-Presidential candidate. I think this suspicion of McCain showed in the delegates' response to him.

By far the loudest response McCain got--probably the strongest response anyone got--was when he denounced Michael Moore as "a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace, when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty...” I think the Republicans should do more of this. The problem with Moore isn't that he is fat, crude or unpatriotic, although all of those things are true. His main fault is that he is a liar. He is also the intellectual leader of today's Democratic Party. The Republicans need to do more to hang him around the Democrats' neck, while empasizing his untruthfulness.

I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen more in the commentary on last nights festivities about what came between McCain and Giuliani--short talks by three relatives of those who perished on September 11, Deena Burnett, whose husband one of the leaders of the uprising on Flight 93; Debra Burlingame, whose brother Chip piloted the American Airlines flight that crashed into Pentagon, and Tara Stackpole, whose husband, a fireman, died in the World Trade Center.

It has been widely remarked that the main theme of the evening was September 11, but it was these three short speeches that made that theme most explicit. They concluded with a moment of silent commemoration of September 11, followed by the singing of Amazing Grace. (I hate to quibble, by the way, but if there are two songs I never need to hear again, they are Amazing Grace and New York, New York. Both, predictably, were sung last night.)

The speeches by these three women were powerful. But not only were they non-partisan, they were completely apolitical. They never mentioned President Bush or suggested any political loyalty or affiliation. But this kind of thing makes the Democrats squirm, and no doubt some Democrats will denounce even these exquisitely neutral presentations as "politicization" of the September 11 attacks. Which is their way of saying that they can attack President Bush, but it is dirty pool for him to defend himself.

All of last night's main speakers articulated the arguments for the Iraq war, and all drew the connections between that war and the terrorist attacks. But is was Tara Stackpole who did so most effectively when she concluded her speech by saying:

Timmy [her husband] is my hero. I am honored to share him with you. Just as I am proud to lend America my oldest son, Kevin, who is headed to Iraq in December with his Navy unit. America must never forget the sacrifices of September 11th or those that are made every day by our sons and daughters in the military service.

This was the most moving moment of the night; you could hear the crowd gasp when Mrs. Stackpole said that her son was going to Iraq. She was emotional but serene; if John McCain were as good a speaker as Tara Stackpole, he would have brought the house down.

Giuliani was great, of course. Several major themes wove through his speech. One was an appeal to independents and Democrats. Giuliani said:

I don’t believe we’re right about everything and Democrats are wrong about everything. Neither party has a monopoly on virtue. But I do believe that there are times in our history when our ideas are more necessary and important for what we are facing.

This is not the year, in other words, to base your vote on Medicare or environmental policy.

Another persistent theme was an appeal to Jewish voters. Giuliani's recounting of the modern history of terrorism began with the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. He told the story of the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro, although as the Trunk brilliantly pointed out last night, he missed the opportunity to link that terrorist attack to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. And Giuliani used Kerry's contradictory depictions of Israel's security fence as an example of Kerry's flip-flopping. Giuliani's appeal to Jewish voters was subtle, but unmistakable. Let's hope it works.

Giuliani spent the first part of his speech recalling the events of September 11 and their immediate aftermath. This was important and necessary because of the media embargo on images of the terrorist attacks. Giuliani described watching people jump to their deaths from the upper stories of the World Trade Center and the wall of smoke and dust that rolled down the street when the first tower collapsed. His own leadership, and even heroism, on that day are well known, so the Democrats can't challenge his right to tell those stories. But it is shameful that the media, and in particular the television networks, have adopted a policy of not broadcasting images of September 11, for what appear to be transparently political reasons. So it falls to the Republicans to remind voters what that day was like.

What made Giuliani's speech great and the crowd ecstatic was, of course, his evisceration of John Kerry in the middle portion of the speech. It is well known that Giuliani was once a top-notch trial lawyer who successfully prosecuted Mafia chieftains--not a job for the faint of heart. But his timing and delivery are beyond that of even a superb trial lawyer; in another life, Giuliani could have been a comedian. His facial expressions, his shrugs, were professional-quality ridicule.

Watching Giuliani reminded me of one of the costs of the party's decline in the Northeast. The party's leaders are now generally Southwestern and Midwestern; as such, their styles tend to be laconic and soft-spoken. Giuliani is urban, Italian and Northeastern to the core, and he needed those traditions to deliver the speech he gave last night.

There was nothing new in Giuliani's denunciation of Kerry as a flip-flopper. What made Giuliani's speech nuclear, as I described it last night, were two things: Giuliani's brilliant delivery, and his stature as a hero of September 11. John Kerry simply cannot stand up to Giuliani's ridicule; the contrast between the two men, in style and substance, could hardly be greater. Let's hope the Party finds many opportunities to get Giuliani before the voters between now and November.

Glenn Reynolds explores the sorry performance of the mainstream media in the current campaign and uses our struggle with the cowardly lion of Portland Avenue to illuminate it in his column for TechCentralStation: "A media meltdown?"

We are grateful to Glenn in his capacity as the proprietor of Instapundit for shining his spotlight last Thursday on our continuing efforts (summarized here) to bring Jim Boyd to justice last week. This morning Glenn summarizes his TCS column on Instapundit with this precis: "LAZINESS, BIAS, AND INEPTITUDE: My TechCentralStation column looks at how these characteristics have combined to produce a media meltdown this election year." (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.)

With Rudy Giuliani's speech still echoing in my mind, I'm looking for serious writtten reactions to it. Richard Brookhiser has taken the occasion of the speech to supply the perspective of Giuliani's career as a public man: "Rudy!" A footnote: He mangles the Woody Allen quote, but he finished the column past midnight.

John Podhoretz reflects on the speech itself in his New York Post column: "Stemwinder."

HINDROCKET adds: Shortly before the main speeches began last night, Podhoretz told Hugh Hewitt and me that he expected a great performance from Giuliani, noting that most people didn't yet realize what a great stump speaker Giuliani is.

This has been one of the longer days in recent memory, beginning with a blogger breakfast at 8:00. The day included technical problems with our internet connections; our first video post; interviews with a number of luminaries including Ed Koch, Ken Mehlman, Ari Fleischer, and, most memorably, recent Miss America Erika Herald; a National Review party at which I met Rich Lowry and Byron York; an appearance on Hugh Hewitt's radio show along with John Podhoretz; and, finally, an evening spent inside the hall watching the first night of the convention. I just got back to my hotel a few minutes ago, and will wait until morning to post detailed impressions of the speeches.

A few preliminary comments: John McCain is at best an adequate speaker, but it is hard for me to believe that he can't muster a more enthusiastic delivery for his endorsement of President Bush. I think his speech was important simply because of who McCain is, but it could have been much more effective if delivered better. McCain waited until the last fifteen seconds to show any emotion.

Rudy Giuliani was nuclear. He went on a little too long, but the middle portion of his speech, in which he eviscerated John Kerry, was a brilliant performance. Kerry cannot withstand that kind of ridicule from a man with as much credibility as Giuliani. And Giuliani's reminiscences of the events of September 11 were important, if only because the media studiously avoid recalling them or showing images of them, lest Americans be roused to fury and tempted to support President Bush.

I'll elaborate on what I observed in the hall in the morning, and probably post some video footage too, but for now I want to go back to our interview with Erika Herald, who will address the convention Wednesday evening and begin her studies at Harvard Law School on Thursday.

She is an attractive young woman, as one would expect, but that really is secondary. I've rarely met a more impressive young person of either sex. She is intelligent, extremely poised and articulate, and has a lively, immensely likable personality. And she projects an impression of kindness that is rare, especially in one so young. Herald is a strong conservative, whose views sometimes brought her into conflict with the Miss America people, and she could have a very bright future in Republican politics. She couldn't possibly have been friendlier to a group of bloggers, who, contrary to what you might expect, tend to be a bit nerdy. Here she is:

Good night.

when Chris Matthews and his mostly liberal panel can't think of anything negative to say about the proceedings. I'm sure the spin has started by now, but immediately after the one-two combination of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani was administered, Matthews and company could only express awe at what they had witnessed. Finally, good old Andrea Mitchell was able to get in a shot at Bush. Mitchell opined that McCain and Giuliani both had succeeded in showing the relevance of the war in Iraq to the war on terrorism, while Bush has never been able to do so. Actually Bush makes that same showing in his standard stump speech. But we excuse Mitchell for not knowing this, and we appreciate her concession that our fight in Iraq is relevant to our fight against terrorism.

We may be witnessing two of the most emotional political conventions ever to take place in the same year. But the emotions in question are very different. The primary emotion at the Democratic convention was hatred, the hatred Democrats feel towards President Bush. The primary emotion at the Repubican convention, at least tonight, was love -- love for our country, love for our fallen heroes, and love for freedom.

The emotions of the two conventions did converge briefly when John McCain called out the number one anti-Bush hate monger, the "disingenuous filmmaker" Michael Moore. For a few moments, the love turned to hate, but it was worth it. And what a brilliant stroke to direct the pent up anger of Republicans, who have seen their president vilified for the past two years, against an unlikeable gadfly rather than a true political opponent.

Twice in his speech McCain referred to the war on terrorism as, in part, a conflict between love and hate. The second time, McCain assured us that love is more powerful than hate. That's the way it looked to me tonight.

That's what one New York City cop told Roger Simon yesterday, during an anti-Bush protests. The overriding purpose of tonight's session of the Republican convention -- from Ron Silver's speech, to John McCain's, to the tributes from the loved ones of the 9/11 heroes, to Guiliani's remarkable address -- was to remind us that 9/11 did happen. We know in our hearts, and the polls confirm, that if Americans really remember, and therefore focus on, 9/11, they will re-elect President Bush and it won't be all that close.

God bless Rudy Giuliani for invoking the memory of the slain Israeli athletes and of Leon Klinghoffer in his declamation on the genesis of the war in which we are engaged. I waited in vain, however, for Rudy to note that the leader of the operation that resulted in Klinghoffer's murder -- Mohammed (Abu or "Daddy") Abbas -- had been holed up in Baghdad and sheltered by Saddam Hussein until his apprehension by American forces last year. (He died in American custody earlier this year.)

Fine as his speech was, that omission seems like a missed opportunity. Among other things, its addition to the history would have implicitly made the point that the lines dividing Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Osama bin Laden, the mad mullahs of Tehran, the Syrian Baathists et al. are blurred and indistinct. Contrary to one version of the Democratic arguments criticizing the war against Saddam Hussein, our enemy does not fit neatly within a box marked al Qaeda.

Rudy also left out another pertinent fact that had a place in his brief history. Among Yasser Arafat's first terror victims were two Americans murdered on the direct order of Arafat -- Ambassador Cleo Noel and his deputy Curtis Moore. Arafat ordered their murder in a PLO operation conducted in Khartoum, Sudan in early 1973. We told the story of that operation and tried to shed some light on the war in which we are engaged in "America's unsettled score with Yasser Arafat."

Judged simply on its own terms, however, it's hard to believe the convention will hear a better speech than Rudy's.

The list of Republican convention speakers for tonight and tomorrow is dominated by moderate and liberal Republicans. Although I'm eager to hear John McCain, I'm not thrilled with the moderate tenor of the proceedings because I'm a conservative. The MSM isn't thrilled either, but its leading lights offer a different reason -- they contend that the Republicans are concealing the true, conservative face of the party. I hope the MSM is correct that the true face of the party is conservative, but let's remember that this is President Bush's convention, not Tom Delay's. Thus, to the extent that one wants to evaluate the MSM charge of false advertising, the appropriate question is whether moderate speakers conceal the true face of George W. Bush.

The answer, I think, is that they don't. Though the MSM has chosen to portray Bush as a right-winger, the evidence doesn't really support this label. Sure, Bush is a "hawk" on foreign policy and the war on terrorism, but so are McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (what Mayor Bloomberg's position is, I don't know). On most domestic issues, Bush is not especially conservative, as we have pointed out many times and as Terry Eastland shows here. For example, Bush has increased domestic spending, enlarged the federal role in public education, conferred a huge new prescription drug benefit, supported certain forms of race-based preferences in college admissions, proposed immigration reform involving something like amnesty, and attempted to carve out a middle ground position on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

The one issue where Bush is clearly to the "right" of tonight's leading speakers (and apparently his own Vice President) is gay marriage. But this disagreement over one issue (no matter how obsessed the media may be with it) is hardly grounds for claiming that, on balance, Bush is immoderate, much less for suggesting that featuring moderate speakers constitutes some sort of fraud on the voters.

The gall of the MSM is staggering. It pins a misleading label on the president, and then argues that he is misleading the electorate by not embracing its label.

HINDROCKET adds: While grabbing some dinner before heading back to the convention, I watched one of the local news shows. The announcer referred to Giuliani and McCain as "moderate Democrats"--a revealing slip of the tongue, I thought. This was followed by Peter Jennings' unctuous interview with John McCain, in which I kept waiting for Jennings' logical next question: "You really have to hold your nose when you say you support President Bush, don't you?" It never quite came, but the implication was very strong.

In "Won't get fooled again?" I somewhat angrily noted the family lineage involved in the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi's grandson to assist in the destruction of Israel. This article from tomorrow's The Age provides additional evidence: "March home, urges Gandhi grandson."

If you're interested in what our little corner of the convention looks like, I've done a quick video that shows Radio Row and Bloggers' Corner. A few celebrities and near-celebrities make appearances, including Roger Simon, Ed Morrissey, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved and Gereralissimo Duane. The video is here.

Hopefully, as the convention goes on the video footage will be a little more newsworthy.

As our readers know, we are fresh from a bruising battle with Jim Boyd, assistant editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. So John Podhoretz's piece in today's New York Post seems timely to us:

This democratization of the news [through blogs and talk radio] is clearly a good thing, if only because it increases available sources of information in a democracy.

But it isn't a good thing if you're a proud part of an Establishment whose authority is being eroded and whose control of the marketplace is being successfully challenged.

What these Establishment-media types will never do — what they can never do — is consider the possibility that the 24-hour news cycle and the rise of talk radio and the Internet are all positive developments.

And I would argue they can't consider that possibility — not only because their platforms are slowly sliding into the quicksand, but because these alternative phenomena have been of great benefit to conservative ideas, anti-liberal attitudes and Republican politicians.

They hate the Swift-boat story. Hate it with a passion. Some of it's based in genuine conviction. Some of it's patently ideological. And some of it's based in fear. They are worried the bell is beginning to toll for them, and they're right.

I said on our radio show on Saturday that the old, print-based media are selling buggy whips. They have tens of millions of dollars invested in technologies and distribution systems that are basically obsolete. So it's no wonder that they view the rise of new media with loathing.

Still, being the medium-of-the-moment gives us only limited pull. When our convention minder asked us what luminaries we'd like her to bring by Bloggers' Corner for an interview, our first choice was the Bush twins. This, however, was impossible; we'll have to settle for a Senator or two instead.

This colloquy started the wheels turning, however, and Kevin Aylward of Wizbang nominated one of our convention staffers, Megan Mollman, as GOP Babe of the Week:

As I say, it's a slow news day so far, even here in the epicenter of trendy media.

Captain Ed catches Rocket Man (left) in mid-keystroke when he should be networking with Roger L. Simon (center) and Tom Bevan (right) of RealClearPolitics. (Photo by Ed Morrissey courtesy of Kevin Aylward and Wizbang.)

Finally, the convention staff has our internet connections up and running. I've felt like a fish out of water, being cut off from the internet. On the other hand, nothing significant has been happening, so it's not as if I would have had anything to report anyway. The action won't really start until tonight, when McCain and Giuliani speak.

In the meantime, for the curious, here is what Bloggers' Corner looks like:

Former Mayor Koch came around and entertained us for a while. He is a delightful guy, and makes great sense when he talks about why he is supporting President Bush. Unfortunately, very few New Yorkers seem to be following his lead. Here is Hizzoner:

Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics and I went looking for the convention floor. This turned out to be more of an expedition than I thought, partly because the security people we approached seemed to think it was a novel request to find a spot from which the floor can be seen. We got there eventually, and here is what the convention floor looks like when the action is just getting underway:

And I hope they're keeping a close eye on these guys.

Well, I'm here at Bloggers' Corner at Madison Square Garden, ready to start blogging. But there is one small hitch: no internet access. This rather basic requirement for Bloggers' Corner seems to have been overlooked. They are working on fixing the problem, and I'm sure it will be up and running before anything very interesting happens. In the meantime, a few of the bloggers have been able to pick up stray wireless connections, including Captain Ed, who graciously loaned me his laptop and connection to post this status report.

Right now Alan Keyes is giving interviews a few feet away from us, and we're told that Mayor Koch will be around shortly to speak with the bloggers.

I think it's a good sign, from a mental health perspective, if one can say of some politicians, "I disagree with him/her most of the time, but I have great respect for him/her." Unfortunately, there are very few politicians about whom I can presently make that statement. Maybe it's the times; maybe it's me. Probably it's a bit of both. Fortunately, there is John McCain. Although I agree with him only about half of the time, I consider him a great American. That's why I'm really looking forward to his speech tonight. That, and the fact that I expect I'll agree with much more than half of what he'll choose to say tonight.

Fred Barnes compares this Republican convention to that of 1944. At that time, "President Franklin Roosevelt was a commander in chief whose popularity had been worn down by nine years of economic downturn and three of world war. He was politically vulnerable. But he rallied the natural Democratic majority in the country with a convention speech vigorously defending his war record and presenting an attractive vision of a new term. He won going away, 54% to 46%." As I said yesterday, this is what the Republicans need to do this week.

BIG TRUNK adds: Thanks to the readers who wrote in pointing out that our original attribution of the column to Barone was in error. Barone also has an outstanding Wall Street Journal column today on the three previous elections involving incumbent wartime presidents. We'll post it when it becomes available online.

In today's Wall Street, Journal James Taranto follows up on Deacon's "Truth and consequences" with "The Democrats' patriotism problem." Taranto's column also bears on our report from Thomas Lipscomb immediately below regarding the masks of John Kerry.

Taranto observes that this year the Democrats have both decried imaginary Republican attacks on their patriotism and falsely impugned the patriotism of their Republican adversaries. The column places the campaign in the context of the post-McGovern Democratic Party -- i.e., the post-Vietnam Democratic Party. The column is full of insight, but here is one especially pointed observation:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, it seemed possible that the antiwar counterculture was a thing of the past. But old habits die hard, and for the most part the Democratic left soon returned to its Sept. 10 mindset. Democrats nominated John Kerry, respected on the left for his antiwar agitation, on the theory that his war-hero pose would establish his patriotism and be sufficient to compensate for his lack of a muscular foreign policy.

Instead it has raised questions about his character. One veteran quoted in "Unfit for Command" puts the matter pungently: "In 1971-72, for almost 18 months, he stood before the television audiences and claimed that the 500,000 men and women in Vietnam, and in combat, were all villains--there were no heroes. In 2004, one hero from the Vietnam War has appeared, running for president of the United States and commander in chief. It just galls one to think about it."

Over the weekend we took note of the fact that the Washington Post's Saturday story on John Kerry's days as the leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War blurrily retraced the reporting of Thomas Lipscomb six months ago: "The Post picks up the scent."

In recent days Lipscomb has been breaking new ground in the coverage of John Kerry's medals and citations. We are huge fans of Lipscomb and his journalistic doggedness. Last night Lipscomb wrote to update us:

This is straight HARD NEWS not editorial advocacy...The war between the Swiftees and the Kerry Campaign has just entered a new phase…

The US Navy vs John Kerry.

Now it isn’t a question of conflicting reminiscences of sexagenarians… about whether there was or wasn’t 2 ½ miles of riverbank gunfire on March 12, 1969, and how many men were in the boat with Kerry when he claimed to be wounded under enemy fire, that may or may not have been present. It is a question of the official Navy records Kerry has asked us to look at.

We did -- here and here.

There has been a lot of print and internet pickup…Here are two this morning: "'V' for valor or Kerry's version?" and "Kerry's war vs. Kerry." Nice as a reporter to be mentioned by name. And I have a lot more coming.

No Kerry spokesperson has returned calls except for David Wade who referred me to Michael Meehan, the expert on Kerry records. No call back after 8 calls over three days to Meehan. Scarborough Country bookers couldn’t get a spokesperson for Kerry to come on the show with me last Friday.

There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation. The American electorate and 25 million veterans certainly deserve to hear one. Kerry should sign the SF-180 and get it over with. He has NOT released his complete records which might well clear this up…no matter what Mark Meehan told Tony Snow on Saturday.

But the lame explanation the Kerry spokespeople have come up with is hilarious. You have to be totally brain dead to accept that explanation without a followup. Supposedly, Kerry “lost” the first two citations, and asked the Secretary of the Navy for a replacement. Outside of the fact that Kerry “forgot” a few little details like voting on an assassination plot against 6 US senators…“forgot” where he was on Christmas 1968 (wasn’t Sa Dec in Cambodia?), “forgot” his first purple heart was a self-inflicted wound, he also seems to “lose” things -- all of which his campaign have now conceded in fact. He “lost” his resignation letter from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and now he “lost” these citations.

And yet Doug Brinkley has assured me that “Kerry saves everything.” And this raises a troubling question.

Can the American electorate in these perilous times afford such a forgetful president who loses critical paperwork. At least Sandy Berger steals his and puts it back. Maybe it would prefer someone like Bush who at least knows what he is doing from day to day and has at least not “forgotten” to keep Al Qaeda from attacking the United States for three years, “lying” retard that he is in the eyes of the Red Diaper Baby Parade in New York on Sunday.

But the sad part of this is the sheer contempt Kerry shows for the intelligence for his fellow citizens. The 25 million of us who are veterans know what to do when we lose a citation. Even those of us with a marginal IQ can figure it out. We write the Personnel Records Office and they send us a copy. We are only human and we lose things… but the bureaucracies like Records Offices of the Armed Forces are inhuman and they have the originals.

I found that out in the 4th grade when I “lost” an unpleasant report card on the way home. The school promptly provided a copy. For military the Personnel Records Office xerox them and send them to us. Big deal. I am searching for someone who decided this required a reissue from the Secretary of the Navy’s Office. Please ask your readers to check in if that ever occurred to any of them as a natural alternative. And where DID that “flowery” language come from?

I am just a naturally curious person. And John Kerry is a totally absorbing delight for a guy like me to bore in on. I am not enthralled with Bush and I am equally unenthralled with Kerry. But the more I look into Kerry, the more the stage managing, the manipulation, and the sheer unmitigated arrogance of the man interest me.

Now I am not now and never have been a member of the VRWC and I have yet to receive the big check promised by Halliburton, The RNC, and Richard Mellon Scaife. I am still open to a better offer from George Soros.

But like Grant before Richmond… “I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

There is lots more to come.

When it comes to reporting, Thomas Lipscomb is the real deal. Take a look at his latest stories and trust that we'll keep you posted.