Other things have happened. On Sunday night someone broke windows and threw in paint on the State Obama Headquarters, which is in St. Paul, but just down the block from Minneapolis. I haven’t heard if they caught anyone yet.

We are getting all sorts of instructions as to what roads are to be closed next week — very frustrating getting them piece by piece without one central plan and announcement. I may find a way to go to the lake until the Republicans leave town.

If that was the first point that the Secret Service was aware of them, then their security for Obama and Hillary doesn’t sound very good.

I remember November 1963. Security had better have gotten more effective since then.

How did they come to magically search the vehicle from a mere traffic ticket stop?

He was stopped at three AM for “driving erratically.” A suburban cop is quite likely to stop a stranger in a pickup truck at 3:00 AM Sunday morning in suspicion of a DWI.

As for why the searched his vehicle – the story is that his license was suspended. Then they found that he was driving a rented car someone else had rented. If the picture of him is accurate, then he looks criminal to begin with. I prefer that my local cops use that kind of judgment – and they do. But mostly just to make sure they know what is going on.

On top of that, if they knew his license was suspended they also knew of his felony history. Even if that record was out of state, I’d bet good money that the Secret Service has access to the criminal records of every American state and territory while the Democratic Convention is being held in Denver. They will also be monitoring every police action in Denver and the surrounding areas very closely. That’s an Intelligence function in support of Secret Service protection. That’s probably also why the Aurora police are taking full credit for the initial bust.

But to start with, driving around at 3:00 am on a Sunday morning is simply begging for a cop to stop you for suspicion of DWI. The suspended license an the vehicle rented by someone else led to all the rest.

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Did all that really happen?

What I used to teach management I’d point out that what happens in a decision meeting is almost irrelevant. Six months after any meeting (or event) the only thing that matters is what the recording secretary wrote down saying it happened. But in this case I’ll bet that most of what was reported really happened. It’s just that we aren’t hearing some other things that also occurred.

Yeah, I’m betting there’s some spider at work here.

Pretty fricking weird that with all the new powers to fight terrorism, this guy was able to get a bag of cyanide in fricking Denver…

Stories like this during a normal work week earn a yawn or “She’s wearing her tinfoil hat again.” During these conventions, they receive their due attention.

The most densely populated area of Colorado is along the Front Range, a strip running north and south, from north of Boulder to south of Colorado Springs, where the Rockies abruptly jut sharply upward from the Great Plains. Aurora is a typical suburb along the Front Range, lapping the freeway just north of Denver, part brand new, partly eclipsed by other suburbs nearby. Erratic driving on the interstate between Denver and Boulder, busy at any time of day or year, would be hard to spot and rarely stopped.

Criminals bent on immediate harm tend to stay out of the limelight, tend to obey traffic and social rules so as not to distract from their aim. Even the “crazies” planful enough to turn rage into action. Catching one during a routine traffic stop would be rarer than catching a weapons or drug smuggler or car thief plying the highways between LA, Phoenix and Dallas. Stops there are frequent, I gather, but typically because they’re based on hard info. obtained from out-of-state law enforcement agencies. The usual public explanation for them, however, is “erratic driving”.

The Minneapolis stop and seizure of camera equipment is more troubling. This was common in NYC after 9/11, where every tourist photographing the Empire State Building or South Street Seaport was considered a would be terrorist. The feds made frequent arrests, picking up mostly Middle Eastern tourists and businessmen intent on killing nothing but a few hours’ time until their next appointment.

In effect, however, they turned taking pictures of public facades on public streets sufficient probable cause for arrest and detention. Those unlucky enough to have overstayed their visas enjoyed the bottomless pit of a Monica Goodling-staffed immigration court system, once the Fibbies finally determined they had nothing more to say.

The Minneapolis stops and seizure of camera equipment repeats that message, it tells us that free assembly and speech are no longer free, that the government can compile digital dossier about our daily lives, but that we aren’t allowed to know what it’s doing, much less how it does it. We aren’t even allowed to enjoy our taxpayer-financed public spaces without permission, which might be as forthcoming as it was in Beijing during the Olympics.

The GOP convention is a public act, regardless of the all-private venues the party will attempt to hide behind. In the phrase “law and order”, law comes before order for a reason: it defines the kind of order we want, the kind worth giving up something else for. The two words are inseparable. Order before law, or without it, is just authoritarian rule.