Check out Matt Stoller's brief essay up right now in the right column of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee homepage. It's good.

Two quotes for your Friday afternoon reading:

Today (I like the bit about the corrupt US-backed regime):

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - President Bush accused Cuba's Fidel Castro on Friday of welcoming sex tourism and contributing to a global problem of human trafficking, as he courted Cuban voters in Florida, a pivotal state in the election.

"The regime of Fidel Castro has turned Cuba into a major destination for sex tourism," Bush said, adding that the Cuban president "welcomes sex tourism" as a source of hard currency for his government.

Addressing a conference on human trafficking, Bush quoted Castro as saying that prostitutes in Havana were the cleanest and best educated in the world.

Bush said that comment was evidence that Havana was encouraging sex tourism. Castro praised Cuban prostitutes for having a college education in a documentary interview by the U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone.

Cuba's government, born of a revolution against a corrupt U.S.-backed dictatorship that allowed Mafia-run gaming and prostitution to thrive in Havana in the 1950's, strongly denies tolerating sex tourism. Police have cracked down on the trade.

November 25, 2003:

HOUSTON, Texas (Reuters) -- Neil Bush, younger brother of President Bush, detailed lucrative business deals and admitted to engaging in sex romps with women in Asia in a deposition taken in March as part of his divorce from now ex-wife Sharon Bush.

....

The Bush divorce, completed in April after 23 years of marriage, was prompted in part by Bush's relationship with another woman. He admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said.

"It was very unusual," Bush said.

Senator Rick Santorum on the anti-gay marriage amendment:

"I would argue that the future of our country hangs in the balance because the future of marriage hangs in the balance," he said shortly before the vote. "Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?"

As a New Yorker, I'm pretty sure that gay marriage is NOT the biggest danger we face.

[photo courtesy of Jesse Chan-Norris]

Joy Garnett tells us of a GOP memo given to people at Penn South (the big complex a little north of us on Eighth Avenue), telling them to stay inside during the convention, and to carry ID at all times. Lovely.

Apparently it has become illegal to wear an anti-Bush t-shirt in a public place if he is nearby.

Story via Atrios:

"Our immediate task in battle fronts like Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites) and elsewhere is to capture or kill the terrorists ... so we do not have to face them here at home," Bush told a cheering crowd outside the West Virginia Capitol. An enthusiastic audience estimated by state capitol police at 6,500 people waving American flags chanted, "Four more years."

Regarding Saddam, the deposed Iraqi president, Bush said: "Because we acted, the dictator, the brutal tyrant, is sitting in a prison cell."

Two Bush opponents, taken out of the crowd in restraints by police, said they were told they couldn't be there because they were wearing shirts that said they opposed the president.

Restraints? They handcuffed them?