CAN YOU BE FREE IF YOU'RE IN A CAGE?

Jacob Paul & Macella Monney

Some of our citizens, young and old, had their protests muffled and contained, and I thought that was wrong.

Outside the covention center, there were "cages" designated for "protesting."

The name alone should give anyone pause.

What do you say to someone who wants to "protest"?

Would you please enter the "cage," sir, or madam, if you want to "protest"?

That plainly diminishes any one's dignity and coerces and chills what may be said.

A "cage" denotes and connotes restraint, captivity, control and containment and usually of an animal that we think is "dangerous" and/or "undeserving" of too much freedom.

It seems somewhat ironic to "contain" or "compromise a protest against the Iraq war outside the Pepsi Center when we were objecting to that same war inside the convention.

But the point is not whether the various 1st amendment exertions of speech in these parallel venues are congruent or not, whether they be comments on the war, or fluoridation, or the home heating plan of Senator McCain.

What's most important is that we allow our citizens to speak their mind and speech in the most robust manner for bromides may not be offensive at all.

I am encouraged, however, that the young instinctively know that this is wrong.

Students Jacob Paul and Macella Monney had a hand-written sign they carried down the Denver street after tonight's convention, the letters in Kelly green, stating, "The power of our voices may overcome your cages."

Jacob and Macella may not know the words in the relevant constitutional document, even though it is the First Amendment.

But they have demonstrated that instinctive objection to anyone curtailing their comments about anything.

And perhaps that's what we mean when we say "certain inalieanable rights."

J. Flannery

BILL CLOSES THE DEAL FOR OBAMA

Former President Bill Clinton reminded us tonight how he became President, and how he got re-elected, when he made the case for nominating Senator Barack Obama to become President of the United States.

When he came on stage the crowd rose to its feet, shouted Bill's name, and generally reacted without any concern except to welcome an old friend.

And that was despite the recent primary that had divided the party between Senator Hillary Clinton's supporters and Barack Obama's supporters.

We all clapped and rocked and, in some moments, Clinton appeared quite moved at the enthusiastic outpouring.

When he could finally stop us all cheering and demonstrating, and be heard above the crowd, as his time to speak ran by, President Clinton couldn't say enough good about Obama, including even what he said about the hotly contested primary with Hillary, namely, that "[t]he long, hard primary tested and strengthened" Obama.

Contrasting himself with Obama, he told the convention how "we prevailed in a [presidential] campaign in which the Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief."

Referring favorably to Obama, he asked the convention if it: "Sound[ed] familiar?" In other words, isn't that what Senator McCain is doing now to Obama?

Bill was instructing not just the general public but the delegates as well about his rationale for supporting Obama and attacking McCain.

Bill told the convention that "[i]t didn’t work in 1992 [for Republicans to attack his inexperience] because we were on the right side of history."

He said similarly "it won’t work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."

"Barack Obama will lead us," he said, "away from [the] division and fear of the last eight years back to unity and hope."As he said so, Bill Clinton was leading the party away from division and perhaps fear as well - by persuading the delegates to do more than just vote for Obama on election day.

Bill knows what it takes to win a tough election, and he wanted a committment that all delegates would work together before election day, no matter who they had preferred in the primary, and lead their friends and neighbors to vote for Obama, and for Biden.

Clinton's intellectual heft, his facility to get things done, and his transparent passion for the business of government are why we listen to him.

Clinton did more than speak this evening.

He brought the party together.

The tipping point was manifest afterwards, as many delegates considered how to elect Obama, and that included Hillary supporters.

J. Flannery

FIRST KNIGHT - THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION IN DENVER

We are at the Democratic Convention in Denver, Colorado at the Pepsi Center and the opening gavel has sounded on the 45th gathering of 20,000 of the party faithful.

Virginia is seated in the first wave of folding chairs, located far forward of the other states on the floor of the convention only 50 feet from the podium with only one state more prominent, Illinois - Senator Barack Obama's home state.

Virginia is prominent because it is "in play" this November with 40 Obama campaign offices throughout the state, fighting to turn the Commonwealth blue, to garner 13 electoral votes, and to do so for the first time since 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson carried the Old Dominion over Senator Barry Goldwater.

The front wall of this expansive arena, the backdrop for the presenters, is a composite array of brilliant lights and projection elements, in the shape of an uplifting wave, seemingly crashing and splashing upward to spend its watery force in the hall's topmost rafters.

This grand hall is awash in delegates, going and coming, up and down the aisles, on stairs, between chairs, out by the concessions, and the principal objective of the delegates is to meet and talk with other delegates about this collective obsession they share for all matters political.

Of course, we delegates also want to talk to anyone with a camera, pad or microphone to explain and preserve the fine points of this historic undertaking.

"I can't believe I'm here," said one newly minted Virginia delegate, "not with these people around me that I've only seen on tv."

Stage and screen actor, Tony Goldwyn (who played the bad guy who schemed to betray and kill Patrick Swayze's character in "Ghost"), stood less menacingly in the aisle by the Virginia delegation and his picture was taken with an enthusiastic fan, Northern Virginia delegate, Charisse Espy Glassman. Charisse simply walked up to Tony, and said, "I heard you were a killer;" he answered, "I am" and then posed with a smile.

Senator George McGovern squeezed past but then paused to say hello and pose. CBS's Katy Couric was only feet away, prepping for the evening broadcast.

When singer John Legend stood astride that wave-like stage, he struck a convention theme when he sang: "We're the generation that can't afford to wait ..."

Singer Legend threaded the crowd's spirit, with his lively brassy beat, so irresistible, that the throng came to its feet for an extended foot-tapping, flag-waving, hip-swinging dance, and there was no division in the house when he finished singing.

I attended my first democratic convention at the Madison Square Garden in New York in 1980 when Senator Ted Kennedy gave a speech that concluded with a Tennyson passage that defined his life's view, that he was "a part of all that [he] ha[d] met, [and] though much is taken, much abides." He proposed this standard for us all.

Given the Senator's recent illness, Tennyson's tenet makes a nation anxious for what this illness may take and how it may compromise his abiding worth.

Tennyson spoke of "one equal temper of heroic hearts" that are "strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

The convention scheduled a film tribute to Senator Kenedy, prepared by Ken Burns, that was to be introduced by his niece, Caroline Kennedy, to celebrate his "heroic heart".

We presumed the Senator would be absent - because his doctors told him to stay home. But the rumors began to spread that he was coming anyhow.

No one thought he would speak if he came, even when he walked to the rostrum, imagining he would do no more than acknowledge, perhaps with a nod, the convention's kind gesture.

He said, "thank you" twice, and still no one expected more.

The Senator then took the rostrum in hand like he was grabbing an old friend by the shoulders, planted himself firmly, facing straight forward, his large white-maned head looking out at us all, and he spoke, in that deep bass, to an audience choked with emotion, that: "Nothing could keep me away." Wild cheers and waved signs greeted his double meaning.

He was still only warming up. With celtic thunder, he promised the next Administration will "break the old gridlock" that denied health care to many Americans, and make it "a fundamental right, not an expensive privilege."

Senator Kennedy promised that, in the new Administration, our "men and women in uniform shall never again be committed to a mistake."

Senator Kennedy challenged us to ground our government, in peace and war, on the "high principle and bold endeavor" that defined the american character. What would have happened, he asked, with a laugh, if his older brother, President Kennedy had not said, "we're going to the moon", but said instead, "it's too far to get there." President Kennedy's decision was the only right decision. "It's what we Americans do," he said, "We reach the moon."

Twenty eight years earlier I waved a blue-backed sign with the white lettered word "Kennedy" in Madison Square Garden with thousands of others who witnessed his earlier convention speech. Now here we were doing it again.

Years earlier, Senator Kennedy ended his remarks, saying: "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

This evening, he amended his coda, casting it for another generation, for another democratic candidate, to carry the torch he bore for so many years, saying, "the hope shall rise again, and the dream lives on."

It was a night for America to remember and to celebrate.


J. Flannery

CONVENTION UPDATE: ON THE ROAD TO THE CONVENTION

Senator McCain was sitting at one of his ten homes - not that I'm keeping count - when he heard that Senator Biden was our Vice Presidential nominee.

He must have just loved Senator Arlen Specter's praise for our nominee, reported today, talking about how Arlen and Joe shared Amtrac rides together to and from home and the U.S. Senate.

But how can Senator McCain really complain when our former Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, Senator Joe Lieberman, who once stood by Senator Al Gore, is a featured speaker at the Republican Convention?

But, enough about the big picture.

It's now time to think about going to Denver.

I've stopped checking my Obama e-mail for who will be on the ticket, and am packing papers and a swim suit (I might get to use) when I to travel to Denver for the Democratic National Convention as a Hillary delegate.

I'm leaving behind my friends and colleagues at the Campbell Miller law firm and, except for an emergency, I don't plan to be working on my cases; but perhaps I should know better than that. (You can get a look at our firm and community on YouTube.)

I know that this convention will be different, because of friends who have always been gray elephant Republicans who have told me repeatedly during the endless primary season and since that they are supporting Senator Obama, and not the Republican nominee.

My law partner, Eric Zimmerman, who doesn't much like labels is a Republican, and he told me during the democratic primaries that he was voting for Senator Obama, and that was before Senator Biden was chosen.

I asked if he was just pulling my leg. He assured me he was not, and he is still for Obama - confirmed within the last 48 hours.

Eric knows about public service. And he knows what's important. Eric was the Mayor of a local town called Purcellville. He rescued and championed Little League Baseball in Loudoun County, Virginia. And he's a great lawyer and friend.

Like many other Republicans I meet and talk with, Eric thinks that we have done so badly for eight years, that he's ready for a change, and that Presidential candidate Obama is the change that we need.

I saw this same phenomenon when James Webb, the former Navy Secretary, decided to come back to the Democratic party and run for the US. Senate in Virginia.

Webb had objected to the Iraq War, declaring in September 2002 that such a war made no sense, and no one could dispute the fact that Webb, as a marine and former Reagan cabine appointee, knew what he was talking about; and Webb won, beating the incumbent Iraq-mongering Republican Senator George Allen.

My wife Holly and I supported Senator Hillary Clinton in the democratic primaries and we're going to Denver, and I am pledged to vote for Hillary this upcoming Wednesday on the first ballot.

I always thought Hillary was a class act, first got to know her during the dark days of her husband's impeachment, but also afterwards when she was the Junior Senator from New York.

That's why I worked for her when she ran for President - because she was and remains a great leader.

We cannot overlook, however, that Senator Obama has found a way to acknowledge her leadership, her tireless campaign and her significant contribution, meaning the millions of primary votes and her forceful arguments about the war, and the economy.

Obama acknowledged the significance of her run when he agreed that Hillary's elected delegates should and shall vote on Wednesday at the convention.

My friends and associates who shared my support of Hillary say she had that right anyway - to have her name put in nomination.

In one sense, they may be right.

But politics is not purely a platonic dialogue about ideals - even when it may seem to be.

A roman senator, Seneca, said the fates lead us to our destiny, or drag us there.

This is an opportunity that allows us to follow Hillary's lead.

It is a sad truth that no one who works hard for any candidate is worth much if the resultant passion doesn't prompt disappointment when the candidate loses.

This has been an acute challenge this election season.

We have before us, however, the fact that the differences that Obama and Clinton debated, while important, were narrow as compared to the ideological gulf between Obama and the Bush debacle that will continue in the name of McCain -- if we persist in dressing our primary wounds.

Our first business is Sunday when we convene as a delegation that evening with Virginia Governor Tim Kaine at the Red Rocks outside of Denver for political talk and a barbecue.

On Monday, we have the opening gavel of the democratic convention.

On to Denver!

And please watch this space for updates!


J. Flannery

WANT TO KNOW OBAMA'S VP - JUST ASK - AND BE FIRST

One Fox News correspondent has been belly-aching that Dem activists can know Senator Barack Obama's VP - if they just ask.

And they'll get an e-mail or a text message to their cell phones.

So what's the beef? I suppose because the media feels "oh so unnecessary".

But aren't they getting a news story in the bargain -- that the connected generation keeps current - and without any middleman except, well, the telecommunications companies.

If you want to know who Obama's VP is when he's made the selection, just sign up - http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/firsttoknow?source=20080820_DSCC_S.

You'll get a notice, either by e-mail or text message! And you'll be a nano second ahead of the networks, listserves, e-mails.

Now that's a change.

J. Flannery