Assault, resisting arrest, prank calls to 911, arson, and lobbing piss balloons at cops. Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson just melted right into this crowd of thoughtful adults peacefully exercising their right to interfere with someone else’s free speech.

Thanks for reminding everyone that the Left is filled with angry children who throw tantrums when the grown-ups don’t let them do whatever they want. Now if only they’d all take their balls and go home.

Hmm, that didn’t come out quite right…

Update: …and it continues. More arson, more violence, more anti-war activists attacking people who disagree with them, and, yes, all cops are once again pigs. Oink, oink.

Maybe they should have asked the firefighters to help out with the security. Their service on 9/11 seems to have rendered them relatively immune to the typical Leftist contempt for authority, and in a pinch they could really bring back the old days by turning the hoses on these clowns.

Update: As for how the mainstream media is covering this compared to the web, I’m reminded of this scene from MIB:

John Perry Barlow on how to freak out Republicans attending the Convention:

Along with fifty or sixty others, I'm going to dance at them. Dividing ourselves into several platoons of guerrilla dancers disguised as ordinary pedestrians, we are going to roam the sidewalks in Republican rich zones, periodically erupting into wild and inexplicable explosions of dancing. We will sustain these for a few minutes before melting back into the crowd and heading off to strike someplace else. I believe this will throw them off their game just slightly, since most of them don't or won't dance and are unsettled by those who do.

Emphasis added. Can you be a little more clueless, Johnny?

Update: Al Franken’s even dimmer, not that this should have surprised anyone. He wants people to respond to Bush’s convention speech with, well, primal scream therapy, and he honestly seems to think that people like him are a clear majority:

On September 2nd, 2004, at approximately 10 pm, George W. Bush will appear on television screens nationwide. For some of our fellow citizens, this will be a moment of joy. But for most of us, it will be the low point of an incredibly exasperating week.

The more I see this sort of nonsense, the more I expect a landslide victory for Bush. Not that the Left will accept the results as legitimate, of course.

Just think, if it weren’t for their tough gun control laws, Canadian criminals would have access to dangerous weapons. Oh, wait:

Inside the van, police found 15 guns and as much as 135 kilograms of explosives. The firearms included automatic weapons, semi-automatic machine guns and handguns.

Extra credit to the ignorant or malicious reporter who wrote the absurd phrase “semi-automatic machine guns”.

Note that they don’t say why they think the van belonged to an organized crime group rather than, say, terrorists. It’s not like it was parked next to embassies or anything like that.

Oh, wait.

I guess you’d call these folks Geeks Against Democracy:

"We want to bombard (the Republican sites) with so much traffic that nobody can get in"

"...it offers a nonpartisan analysis of the PR-driven deception that has come to define George W. Bush's presidency..."

Yup, that’s how you describe your new book when you want people to believe it’s (cough) fair and balanced.

Okay, this story claims, without providing any of the details, that “safe gun storage” laws cut the teen suicide rates since their adoption in 1989. That is, the news report claims this, while the research paper (published in JAMA) simply says they may have cut suicide rates.

But by how much? First, they mention 300 less suicides between 1989 and 2001 for the 14-17 age group, and then they segue into a discussion of the number of suicides in the 14-20 age group. Sloppy reading on the reporter’s part, or is this a reflection of the actual research? And where are the rates that are mentioned in the headline? All I see are raw numbers.

Looking for real data, I found that the with-gun suicide rate for teens age 14-19 (and for other groups) has been declining for a while, but it peaked in 1994, five years after the “safe storage” laws in question. Interestingly enough, suffocation seems to be taking up the slack, although it’s not enough to stop the overall decline. It is enough to possibly account for the “prevented” with-gun suicides…

The iTunes Music Store has put up free audiobooks of the DNC speeches. Knock yourself out.

No, really.

…so you don’t have to. Great fun.

And, yes, I’m sure the Republican platform is at least as deserving, but this week it should be the Democrat’s turn, especially with the not-quite-front-page news about that suspected al-Qaeda operative sneaking into the US from Mexico.

Hey, didn’t Gray Davis, our man for giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, just speak at the Democratic convention?