When Joe Biden's brother and son wanted to buy a hedge fund company two years ago, they turned for financing to a law firm that had lobbied the Delaware senator's office on an important piece of business in Congress -- and in fact had recently benefited from his vote. The firm promised James and Hunter Biden that it would invest $2 million, and quickly delivered half of it.

That deal eventually fell through and the money was returned. But it highlighted the close ties that Joe Biden and his family have developed with SimmonsCooper, an Illinois law firm that specializes in asbestos litigation -- a multimillion-dollar line of business that was under threat in Congress.
In addition to providing financing for the hedge fund deal, SimmonsCooper picked the law firm of another of Biden's sons, Beau, to work with it on dozens of asbestos cases in Delaware. "It was only natural that we worked with my friend Beau Biden and his firm," said Jeffrey Cooper, former managing partner of SimmonsCooper.

Charles Krauthammer on the Barackopolis going up in the Denver stadium (HT: RobinsonandLong.com):

The Berlin folly -- in English.

The Superbowl Halftime Show -- without the game.

What's the finish? Maybe Obama’s got Zhang Yimou to do the hidden-rope trick, and have him lifted, Beijing-style, to the heavens when he’s done. Will he reappear three days later at the Bird’s Nest?

Or maybe he'll just do a Napoleon and coronate himself. By the time Napoleon made himself emperor, he had won the Battles of Lodi, of Arcole, of Rivoli, of the Pyramids and of Marengo. And had promugulated the Napoleonic Code. He had yet to write a single autobiography.

And from Great Britain's Telegraph this story on Obama's non-bounce:

Barack Obama was due to arrive in Denver on Wednesday to claim the Democratic nomination amid fears that his party is split and he is being eclipsed by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Opinion polls show that Mr Obama has received little or no "bounce" from the start of his convention or his picking Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate. The Gallup daily tracking poll had Mr Obama up by one percentage point on Monday but Mr McCain ahead by two on Tuesday.

Obama apologists dismiss all this as “guilt by association” based on a single joint appearance. But it was far from the only one.

In fact, by 1997 Obama and Ayers were collaborators on a far more significant level. They sat together for several years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing Chicago charitable organization. There, they doled out tens of thousands of dollars to such beneficiaries as the Trinity Church (where Obama was a longtime member and where another Obama mentor, Jeremiah Wright, preached a radical, anti-American brand of Black Liberation Theology) and the Arab American Action Network (co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a Yasser Arafat apologist who has supported attacks against Israel and now directs Columbia University’s notorious Middle East Institute, founded by Edward Said).

Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.

Until this week, moreover, the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers works, was blocking access to the project’s files (examination of which was being sought by frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz), until finally relenting under public pressure. Less than three months from Election Day, analysis of the records from Barack Obama’s only significant executive experience is just beginning.

The mainstream media has been derelict on the Obama/Ayers relationship. Perhaps now, finally, it will get the scrutiny it deserves.

Barack Obama's big speech on tomorrow night will be delivered from an elaborate columned platform resembling a miniature Greek temple, it has been revealed.

The stage is similar to structures used for rock concerts and has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos'  American football team plays.

"Hey so my spouse is at the GOP Convention already and said he/she saw a McCain sign with room for eight letters for the VP name. Might mean nothing but thought I would give you the inside scoop."

"McCain / X X X X X X X X"

"We're halfway through this convention. Not all the way through, nor even near it. And I'm inside the convention, not watching it on television and consequently not sure how most Americans are actually experiencing it. But if I were doing the grading now, I'd fail the thing."

"The first two days of the convention were wasted, or seemed so from my vantage point. Tonight, Joe Biden will rip into McCain. And tomorrow, Obama will do whatever he does. Then on Friday, at noon, John McCain will announce his vice presidential nominee, strangling any convention bounce in the crib. Then the Republican Convention will begin, and you can be assured that they will remember Barack Obama's name. They will remember how to make fun of him, how to mock his celebrity and inexperience. "

"I'm afraid I concur. With the sole exception of Michelle Obama's superb speech, this convention has been McCain's dream."