You will notice that a common theme here today, when not considering issues of civil liberties, has been a sort of naive wonder at how, er, “unreal” this convention seems.

I think the root of this has something to do with the fact that I am trapped inside a mental model that sees society’s governing of itself as a sort of scaled up version of an honest, thoughful conversation between two people sitting on a park bench.

Two people sitting on a park bench, I reason, can pretty effectively manage their park bench relationship, especially if they’re open-minded, more so if they are like-minded.

You scale up from that to a town council, and so on until you get to national-scale governing.

Where I break down, and the root of my naiveté, is my assumption that as you travel up this scale you don’t, of necessity, depart from the real, observable, understandable world of the park bench and enter a world of far more fluid, complex, neutrino-like forces.

It is the management of these forces — which by their nature are difficult to manage — that events like this convention are designed for. This is not a series of one-to-one conversations. It’s not even a series of one-to-many conversations. It involves using the battering ram of television to attempt to bash into the minds of enough people, in a seductive enough way, to move the pendulum in your direction.

Several readers have suggested that I get out on the floor and “talk to real delegates” by way of mitigating this primal flow with some real conversation. But real conversation is irrelevant here — what one person thinks is no longer important, for it is only as part of the collective that their nature can be shaped.

My friend Oliver says, somewhat in jest, that I should “just look for the chi” when trying to understand the measurement of “energizedness” here. And in a way he’s right: “chi” — “the vital force believed in Taoism and other Chinese thought to be inherent in all things.” it says here — is maybe what I’m talking about.

This is a butter sculpture. We are the butter. The convention is the sculptor’s chisel.

Looked at through that lens — which is indeed what the mainstream media are doing in abundance and with considerable enthusiasm — the Democrats are doing a decent job. The butter is taking shape. Dip in.

It says here that I’m a “liberal dem.” Who knew? Like the shirt says “label people, not jars.” Or was it the other way around?

Here’s some video I just shot of the “energized” Democrats here at the Fleet Center (see this post for the reason for the quotation marks).

I just came up from the first floor of the Fleet Center where I did my second interview of the day with a reporter Deutsche Welle (the first one went like this), Germany’s international broadcaster (think Radio Canada International, but from Germany; you can hear some of their programmes on the CBC Radio overnight service).

This interview, for the service’s website, was on “the blogger phenomenon,” and we chatted for a good 25 minutes about what weblogs are, how you find them, why I’m here, and so on.

Although there are others out there in the blogosphere who are complaining about how the mainstream media is all over the “blogger story” — this appears to be said either with equal parts of “we’re not the story, you idiots” and “you idiots just don’t get it, do you?” — I’m more than happy to pimp for blogging whenever possible. While people with blogs (or their immediate family, of necessity) “get” blogs, many people out there have never seen one, and have no idea whatsoever what “blogging the convention means.” If I can help the Germans understand, at the very least, why I keep a weblog, that seems like a good thing. A responsibility, even.

Christina from Deutsche Welle is looking for other bloggers here at the convention to interview tomorrow. Email me at dnc@reinvented.net if you’re interested; she’s set up down on the first floor, inside the security perimeter, so you don’t have to venture into the outside world to talk with her.

In my hit with Matthew Rainnie this morning, he asked me whether (to paraphrase) “the Democratic party was energized” as it has been characterized in the national media.

All respect to Matt, but that’s an absurd question.

An absurd question because it assumes that any one person (or, indeed, any group of people) can get their finger on the pulse of something as amorphous as a political party.

And an absurd question, even more, because it’s the kind of question that’s being inanely expounded upon 1,000 times a day here:

• “But it served to cement the loyalties of a Democratic Party that now appears energized and determined to unite in a common effort to replace President George W. Bush with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.” (United Press International)
• “The Democratic Party is more unified and energized going into this convention than it has ever been.” (CBS News)
• “For the first time in decades, the party is unified and energized behind its nominees…” (Roll Call)
• “Democrats are looking to their keynote speaker, Obama, to energize the base, as former President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, did Monday night.” (CBS 4 Denver)
• “Democrats, energized by their last first lady…” (San Francisco Chronicle)

Indeed a Google News search for “democratic party energized” at this hour shows 742 results.

As far as I can determine, the meter used to measure this “energy” is the “mood of the delegates” here at the Fleet Center. Al Gore says something, people clap and cheer, party is energized. Bill Clinton delivers a “rousing speech,” crowd “goes wild,” party energized.

No doubt.

But it’s just people clapping and hooting in an arena. Does it really mean anything? There are 63 million registered Democrats in this country (reference). Do the people cheering for Ted Kennedy in this room as I write this tell us anything about those people and how they will vote? Does it tell us if they are energized?

I fear this is all just a Mobius loop. A lie, you might say. A lie that feeds itself and becomes truth.

This doesn’t mean anything, really, because we all play along. I’m sitting here in the arena, there’s loud music blasting out of the PA and, hell, I’m feeling energized. Maybe I should vote for John Kerry.

My friend Oliver asked me if I could write something about the traffic here during the DNC. I just did an analog run and here are the highlights of the report, which covers traffic from 10:00 p.m. Saturday night until 7:00 p.m. (Tuesday), a period of roughly 69 hours:

• Page views: 20,212 (includes RSS readers)
• Top Referers: (doesn’t include search)
• http://www.conventionbloggers.com/ (1168)
• http://www.wonkette.com/ (850)
• http://www.nexopia.com/ (531)
• http://www.bloglines.com/ (262)
• http://www.lostremote.com/ (64)
• http://politicalwire.com/ (58)
• http://www.cyberjournalist.net/ (49)
• Most Popular Stories: (non-Toby McGuire related)
• Filling Up On Photos (1162 reads)
• What are the bloggers browsing? (543 reads)
• Monday Morning Time Crunch (333 reads)
• Disguised as a Blogger (193 reads)
• Data Transferred: 834 megabytes
• Hosts Server: 9,331
• Heaviest Traffic: 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (Atlantic)
• Lightest Traffic: 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. (Atlantic)

Also of interest is that this photo of Barack Obama has been viewed about 10 times more than any other in the photo gallery. Obama is speaking at the convention at 9:27 p.m. tonight, by the way (not that it’s strictly scheduled here or anything…).

I’ve posting so much more than usual here that Catherine, only able to surf the web after Oliver has gone to bed, is losing content when it scrolls off the main page. A reminder, then, that this DNC archives page has all of my DNC-related posts.

If you’re in the Fleet Center and need to upload photos to your server, it seems a heck of a lot faster here in the Press Filing Room on the third floor: I’m getting uploading speeds of 90-150 kB/s down here.

There’s also no filter on outgoing SSH down here, so you can SSH to your server, use SCP/SFTP to upload, or set up tunnels and port forwards to secure your traffic.

I went along to the Joe Moakley Courthouse at 2:00 p.m. to attend a hearing in American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, et al. v. MBTA. It was my first time in a working courtroom, and my first non-Law and Order experience of the U.S. court system.

Apparently (from the several mentions made in the hearing itself), federal courthouses, although open to the public, have been deemed a special area where citizens must consent to search of themselves and their belongings to gain entry. At the Moakley Courthouse, I had to check my laptop, camera and cell phone. This left me with the clothes on my back, and a pen and paper. Kind of comforting, actually.

The hearing was in Courtroom 9, on the third floor. The Courthouse itself is a even more stunning inside than it is outside. Of course you’ll never know that, because I couldn’t take a photo. But here’s the outside:

While I was waiting for the hearing to begin, I had a chat with a local radio reporter. He was convinced the judge wouldn’t grant the injunction against searches on subways and buses because, he said, “no federal judge would ever do something anti-security in this day and age.”

When the courtroom opened, shortly before 2:00 p.m., it quickly filled up with various reporters, supporters (of both sides) and members of both legal teams. At the top of the hour the clerk said “All Rise,” and Judge O’Toole entered.

Right off the top there was a request from the plaintiff (representing those seeking the injunction) to “approach the bench” (who knew this actually happened?). Much to my surprise, we in the audience could pick up bits and pieces of what was being said, although I couldn’t make any sense of it.

It became evident later on that the result of the “approach the bench” session was to narrow the scope of the hearing to just the searches on the Orange Line at Haymarket and Community College stations, and on the buses that pass along the I-93 expressway when it’s closed to other traffic.

After three or four minutes of this, everyone returned to their seats, and the judge heard from Michael Avery, for the plaintiff.

After prefacing his arguments by saying “on the surface” the practice of searching “seems reasonable,” he went on to explain why, in the view of the plaintiff “after more thoughtful analysis,” it isn’t.

The heart of this issue, from his perspective, is the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

He characterized the MBTA searches as “suspicionless searches” and suggested they were unreasonable because:

• The buses and subways in question don’t go near enough to the Fleet Center to be a danger to the Fleet Center especially with no evidence (filed with the court) to suggest that handheld luggage can contain enough explosives to damage the Fleet Center.
• There is no evidence that the searching will actually achieve its stated goal, even if explosives or other materials were found.
• The nature of the threat is non-specific.

He characterized the threat as “not substantial or real” and said that the searches were not “measures properly calibrated” to the threat.

He went on to describe the harm the searches inflict on what he called “Fourth Amendment Values.” Those being searched, he said, can refuse to be searched, but this results in being ejected from the transit system, possibly many miles from their destination. He said that the “physical exposure of possessions” is intrusive and intimidating, especially with “the way Boston Police are dressed these days.”

He concluded by asking that the injunction be enjoined.

Mr. Avery’s remarks were followed by a brief dialogue with Judge O’Toole, who posed a hypothetical question about whether, if it were helicopters (subject to the special provisions regarding search given air travel) involved instead of subways, would the objections stand. Avery’s response to this was to suggest that there is a large difference between air travel, which for most people is not a component of their everyday life, and public transit, which carries 1.1 million Bostonians a day through their daily lives. In other words, people who don’t want to be searched don’t have the practical option of “opting out.”

With this, Mr. Avery concluded, and Rudolph F. Pierce spoke for the MBTA, the defendent.

Mr. Pierce opened with the statement that “the MBTA doesn’t want to go out of its way to interfere with civil liberties” but said that the risk involved requires what he called a “measured response.”

Pierce said that the law recognizes “administrative search” and he questioned whether the characterization of the threat at hand, by the plaintiff, as “non-specific” was relevant: “how specific does the threat need to be?”

Pierce went on at some length about how the special circumstances of the Democratic and Repulican conventions demand special arrangements like the transit search, and said that were the MBTA to not have acted it would have been accused of “putting its head in the sand.”

He said that the MBTA had “taken measures to inform the public” and used a poster, brochure and newsletter as evidence of this:

At that point the Judge interjected, and there was a back-and-forth about whether the specific measures taken on the Orange Line represented a different practice than that taken on the rest of the transit system. Pierce said it was “part of the same policy” — that the policy allowed for search of any bag anywhere on the system but that the Orange Line represented a special area of interest. The Judge asked whether it would be appropriate, perhaps, to bring in representatives of the Secret Service, Dept. of Homeland Security or the FBI if in fact the special Orange Line measures were “ordered” by one of those agencies.

Pierce summed up by saying that “the court has to recognize that we are in different times” and that “police in a civil society need to do everything they can.”

Before concluding, Mr. Avery was allowed an additional comment, and that was that the 4th Amendment was passed when “the new republic was hanging in the balance.” He characterized the 4th Amendment as being conceived of precisely for times like these — a measure, in other words, to ensure against unreasonable measures during “different times.”

At the close of the hearing, the Judge said he would “take the matter under advisement” and adjourned.

I just came into the Fleet Center after taping an interview with Eileen Sharon Dempsey, a science reporter who contributes to Spectrum, an English-language program on the German Deutsche Welle radio network. She was interested in the technology behind the blogger setup at the convention — WiFi, etc. We had a good chat.

Coming in to check my email, I see another request from Deutsche Welle, this time for a story about bloggers on their website.

Perhaps the weirdest thing that’s happened with the “other media” today is a call from David Folkenflik at the Baltimore Sun: all he needed me to do was hand my cell phone to someone else (anyone) at the convention so as to verify that I was here. Apparently in the post-Jayson Blair era, he’s required to verify that the “blogger at the DNC” he might write about is, indeed, a “blogger at the DNC.” Comforting, in a way. But still weird.