Beat The Press

More inanity from NY law enforcement, joined by the FBI, which is telling NY1, and anyone else who'll listen that the protestors are reeelly into Molotov cocktails and extreme violence this season.

Fair enough so far, but they've now got their hands on the Tom Ridge playbook - something bad is going to happen, we just don't have specifics. Two very important differences - the first of which is that even the most ardent anarchist you can imagine is not bent on mass murder - indeed to have "terrorism" experts in on monitoring the protestors would seem to be slightly outside their remit.

The second issue we've got is that word is the Feds and sundry other law officers have been actively monitoring protest groups for a while, and if one of them has gone nuts then it shoulld have word on it. These are Americans that will be suspicious of a G-Man infiltrator if he keeps cutting his hair but generally quite inclusive. We put up with vague warnings (albeit with less and less patience) because we assume that getting intelligence on foreign suspects is kind of tricky.

What we should expect from the GOP convention is truly hard to guess. But cranking up the fear has few productive outcomes, particularly for the city government. Gringcorp for one is thinking about finally getting a home phone line that week. But that's because he fears dreadlocks on a white man.