The Occupy movement is camped in Marshall Park, which should be a walk of about three or four blocks from our perch in the bowels of the media area in the Charlotte Convention Center. In reality, you are forced by a series of fences, police barriers, and law enforcement checkpoints to walk eight blocks out of the way in a grand semicircle in order to reach the park. Once there, you find an encampment of several dozen tents, interspersed with small groups of people talking, making food, washing clothes, and talking to reporters. This, sad to say, is the heart of the protest movement at the DNC.

According to the New York Times' James Risen, Bush White House officials asked the CIA to gather dirt on and discredit left-wing academic Juan Cole because they didn't like the things he wrote on his blog.

As you may or may not have heard, Glenn Beck and others came out in full force to protest our government's handling of health care, arguing against "the over-expansion of the federal government." Naturally, the crazies came out, too.

With all of this tabloid love for Michael Jackson today, which brave soul shall stand up and proudly fly the "Sicko!" banner of dissent? Hark! Andrea Peyser still exists.

Internet-based anti-Scientology group Anonymous, after absorbing several months of (ongoing) hounding from "Church" officials, is back on the attack! Their goals may be vague, but you have to admire their moxie. And vandalism.

Oh dear: it seems that Muntader al-Zaidi, the heroic Baghdad Shoe Thrower, is being treated just about as well as we expected in custody. But there is a bright side:

It's only been one day, and already Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who terrorized George W. Bush with high speed shoe projectiles, is already a full scale national hero. Viva los zapatos (in Arabic)!