Wow!  I am the Democratic precinct chair for a small northside precinct that votes about 75% Republican in every election.  I went to the polling place at 6:00 PM tonight and found that 2 police officers were outside the fire station directing traffic, and folks were parked all along the country road for about 200 yards.  Now, in the past, there was plenty of parking for everybody in the fire station parking lot.  So I knew I would be in for a long night.

When I got into the actual polling place, I practically fainted.  The line to vote was snaking all around the huge garage with folks waiting to vote.  But there was some very bad shit being done by the Republican election judge.  (I so bad want to write his name right now...)

Turn the page for the rest of dks' Great Precinct Convention Story.

Left Blogistan is wide open, and I like it that way.  I also like the "communities" that form within it; from the giant metro-sites like Kos, to the cozy villages populated by a few eccentrics.  And, although it is not incorrect to call them communities, cultural critics may be on to something when they criticize, their, well, "virtualness". 

Yes, we well may be intensely engaged intellectually and even emotionally with our Blogistan communities.  We learn in them, we laugh in them, and we are even  moved to action in the reality-based communities we also inhabit because of them.  But we cannot lose that very human, very satisfying, and very necessary experience of "Presence".

"Is Crucifixion Legal Under Bush And Cheney?

Jane Mayer, who along with Jill Abramson wrote Strange Justice, a definitive account of how Anita Hill was smeared and ridiculed during the Clarence Thomas hearing, has written a searing account of the death of a prisoner in Iraq.

    Jamadi's bruises, [a forensic pathologist who examined the case records] said, were no doubt painful, but they were not life-threatening. Baden went on, "He also had injuries to his ribs. You don't die from broken ribs. But if he had been hung up in this way [with his hands tied behind him in a painful position known as a "Palestinian Hanging"] and had broken ribs, that's different." In his judgment, "asphyxia is what he died from--as in a crucifixion."

As in a crucifixion. At the hands of Americans. And it may not be against the law anymore"

via Digby.