Zell Miller is a joke. How will Kerry fight in Iraq?...he'll bring out the bimbos. Classy guy (not.) This is the speech of a former Marine. He's angry and impassioned, but it's all fire and brimstone. Inflammatory junk. He's a scary nutcase. Here comes the religious references. Let the praise by the wing-nuts begin. It will.

He should not be calling himself a Democrat. He's a turncoat and a preacher. Nothing more.

Michael Reagan is turning his adoption into a pro-life platform. He says because Ron and Nancy and his adoptive mother and his birth mother were pro-life and pro-adoption, he is here today. He's making it sound like he was surrounded by love his entire life. He sure told a different story in his 1988 family tell-all, "On the Outside Looking In." Here's one account of the happy family from the book (Washington Post, 3/31/88)

...a two-career family, a divorce, third-party child care, a hated stepparent and a second family, sibling rivalry, teen-age rebellion, estrangement. Add emotional traumas from adoption and childhood molestation suffered by a man later branded the family troublemaker who capitalized on the family name, and accused of being a kleptomaniac, and you have Ronald Reagan's own family as seen through the eyes of his elder son.

Michael Reagan on his adoptive mother, Jane Wyman: (Newsweek 3/21/88):

"When are you going to stop living off your father's name? I can't believe you have anything to say at this time of your life that's worth reading." Michael Reagan, quoting his adoptive mother, Jane Wyman, after she learned he was writing a book about his life with her, Ronald Reagan and stepmother Nancy.

Washington Post: 2/17/89, on Barbara Bush visiting Neil Bush's newborn child:

It's a sharp contrast to the family life of former President and Nancy Reagan, who didn't see son Michael Reagan's daughter (coincidentally also named Ashley) until the child was 20 months old ...

On Michael Reagan's book:(Wash. Post, 5/22/88):

Final Update: 6:30 pm: From Court TV: Case dismissed, with prejudice. Kobe was not present in court. His lawyers said he agreed with the decision, he thanks the judge, he says he does believe he could have gotten a fair trial. The prosecution said the case is being dropped for one reason only: the accuser said she will not cooperate with the prosecution. The DA's, prosecutors, civil lawyers and the accusers parents were present for the dismissal hearing. Kobe was not, nor was the accuser.

There is no civil settlement, according to her lawyers. The civil case will proceed. For now. There is nothing to prevent a civil settlement from happening later tonight, or tomorrow.

AP story here. I'll be talking about the dismissal on Fox News at 9:00 am ET, doing an online chat for the Washington Post on the case at 11:00 am, and a Court TV special at 2:00 p.m.

Now back to convention coverage.
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Update: Still no news from the courthouse. But the Vail Daily reports:

Kobe Bryant's alleged victim has reportedly said if there was one more mistake by the courts she was "out." On Friday, that breach happened when the jury questionnaire was leaked to KCNC Channel 4 television, Denver's CBS affiliate. On Wednesday, in the early afternoon, the alleged victim, through her attorneys, notified prosecutors she was out of the case. The move comes on the heels of a defense motion to dismiss the case. Bryant's defense attorneys said in their motion that prosecutors withheld a medical report they say would exonerate their client. 6:23 pm MT

Update: Court officials say an open court session in the Kobe Bryant case will begin at 5:45 p.m.
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Theoria from Daily Kos was not able to convey his marriage proposal to Janeane Garafolo of Air America Radio's Majority Report last night, but he did get some great protest photos.

Big, big Kobe case news. Reports are that the Prosecution will drop the sexual assault charge against Kobe Bryant tomorrow morning. Huge win for Kobe and his defense team. And the right decision.

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Original post:

The defense is charging the prosecution is still hiding evidence favorable to Kobe Bryant and has asked the Judge to dismiss the case:

In a motion made public Wednesday, defense attorneys said a forensics expert whom prosecutors had planned to call as a witness had information that "undermined the accuser's allegations and the prosecution's case, and corroborated Mr. Bryant's defense on a central issue -- the cause and significance of the accuser's alleged injuries."

The filing said those opinions were not disclosed to the defense until they contacted the expert Friday, despite repeated requests to prosecutors for the information. Prosecutors have said they have turned over all information they were required to. The judge gave prosecutors until Tuesday -- the day opening statements are scheduled to begin -- to respond to the defense motion.

"A person's life and liberty are at stake," the defense attorneys wrote. "The game of hide-the-ball, find-it-if-you-can discovery is intolerable."

Protest tonight by the National Organization for Women from 7 to 9 in Central Park--East Medow

PROTEST The Bush Administration'sWAR on WOMEN
WORKERS and PEOPLE of COLOR, LGBT, DISABLED, POOR and IMMIGRANT
PEOPLES
The ENVIRONMENT and OUR BILL OF RIGHTS

Enter the park at 90th Street, at Fifth Avenue or Central Park West

Also today, Run Against Bush:

4pm-12am Run Against Bush - Runners will leave each hour from The Tank at 432 W. 42nd St. between 9th and 10th Aves. It will be a highly visible relay in small teams near the convention site to make sure everyone knows how they feel about the RNC and the Bush administration. Joggers of any ability level are more than welcome. To join a relay team or for more info, email Tim Haft at RNCrelay@runagainstbush.org,or call Tim at (646) 654-0668 or Stefan at (917) 306-1892.

On a humorous note,

6pm Panty Performance Protest A "Mass Flash" to create a media spectacle that lays bare the shameful tactics of the Bush administration and boldly demands an end to political cover-up." More info at axisofeve.org. In Battery Park City, Southwest Manhattan....Meet in front of Golden Sphere Sculpture in Battery Park, near the entrance. Subways: 4,5 to Bowling Green; 1,9 to South Ferry; R,W to Whitehall. From Bowling Green, exit station and enter park. From South Ferry and Whitehall, walk along State street until you reach park entrance.

Sure beats listening to Dick Cheney.

Here's one more:

Update: The bad reviews are universal. Worse than bad. They made a sex joke about their grandmother? Even the conservative press is appalled. Send them off to graduate school (not Iraq, we should be asking people to come home from there, not to go there.)

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Amy Sullivan and Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly say the Bush daughters were a bust. So did the Fox News commentators tonight.

Even Conservatives Hated Them....The verdict from the Fox News crew on Jenna, Barbara, and Laura is not good.
Bill Kristol: "The last half hour did not help, as far as I can tell, Bush's campaign for reelection."
Mort Kondracke: "Those two girls were ditzes. I'm surprised they were allowed on the program."
Fred Barnes: "I think she [Laura] had no place up there or the daughters either....Their mother said they'll be pursuing their own careers. I would advise them to look in some field other than comedy."

So do the TalkLeft commenters in the open thread on tonight's speeches. One wrote:

Did anyone watch John Kerry's speech today? Both Fox News and MSNBC played it live...I think for the duration. It was long. He promised veterans he'd protect their rights when they came home. No fire though. He needs to ratch it up a notch or two.

Finally, this morning, the Dems have been getting some rebuttal air time. Their rapid response team is beginning to show up on Fox and MSNBC. Where has it been so far? I commented on this last night while watching Hardball. So did Daily Kos. Better late than never, but they have a lot of catching up to do.

This morning a handful of Act Up protesters got floor passes and inside the Garden to wave some signs on the floor. The RNC officials looked baffled. The protesters were quickly jumped on --actually it looked on tv like people were swatting at them like flies--and tv news reports some have been "detained" by authorities.

If you have more details, please put them in the comments.

As an aside, Jerome Armstrong from MY DD got a press pass for a few hours yesterday and listened to the speeches. He sounds disgusted with the Republicans. Go read.

Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post analyzes Guliani's peech and its attacks on Kerry and finds them misleading because they were taken out of context.

Michael Scherer in Mother Jones hits what's missing from the Republican Convention and Madison Square Garden--

There's something missing from this convention. Call it energy, spirit. Call it people....There's an aura of weirdness about this convention. It's different from last month's Democratic show in Boston.

How so?

On the first night in Boston, Bill Clinton had sucked every bit of air out of the FleetCenter. The journalists packed their risers; the nosebleed seats overflowed. You couldn't carry on a conversation. It was an early climax, not topped by either Kerry or Edwards, but it set the tone for the four days.

I agree with Scherer's description of the Fleet Center, so I have no reason to doubt his description of the Garden. I can say that outside the vicinity of the Garden, New York seems like a shadow of its normal self. Traffic isn't bad. I went from midtown to SoHo tonight in almost no time. SoHo had street parking available. There are no hordes of people, and that has included my trips to the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, midtown and Hell's Kitchen.

While there are plenty of tourists in Times Square, they don't seem connected to the convention. They seem mostly interested in eating their ice cream cones. All over town, looking inside restaurant windows, I've seen plenty of empty tables. Glancing up the avenues in the late afternoon and early evening, it seems most taxis have their "available" lights on.

There's still two days to go, so I don't want to proclaim New York a snooze yet, but I have to say, it's leaning that way.

New York police report that 1,000 protesters were arrested Tuesday:

Nearly 1,000 protesters were arrested across Manhattan on Tuesday as swarms of activists massed in the streets for marches to the site of the Republican convention - by far the biggest day of arrests since the demonstrations began last week.

There were no immediate reports of violence, but police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said officers showed "great restraint in the face of relentless provocation" by the protesters.

No violence? Then why were they arrested? Wasn't it just last week Mayor Bloomberg was offering shopping discounts to non-violent protesters as a welcoming gesture?

Heightened security against the protests has turned Manhattan into a crazy-quilt of barriers, heavily armed police and street-corner activists.....Outside the New York Public Library, in the streets near the famed Herald Square and at the site of the fallen World Trade Center, demonstrators pointed themselves toward Madison Square Garden and promised to get their message across that they want President Bush out of office.

On the library's stone steps, hundreds of protesters gathered for the march. Verbal confrontations erupted as police moved them away from the library's front door and wrapped the block in orange netting, and about 75 people were taken into custody before the crowd thinned out.