Convention 'Greening' Goes Awry
The Democrats have embarked on a highly visible effort to make their convention the "greenest" ever, focusing on everything from expanded recycling to more creative programs like encouraging Denver restaurants to offer "lean 'n' green" meals made with healthful, organic, and locally sourced ingredients. But not all of their environmentally friendly initiatives have gone as planned. Take the hotel card keys, for example. Instead of the traditional plastic cards, the Sheraton in downtown handed guests Visa-sponsored swipe cards "made from sustainably-harvested wood." The plan lasted all of a few hours. By Saturday night, enough guests had reported problems getting into their rooms with the wooden cards that the front desk clerks had abandoned them and switched back to the plastic cards. A clerk said they were now handing out one of each and suggested that the wooden one could kept as a souvenir.
[This story has been updated.]
FULL VOTING RIGHTS FOR FLA., MICH.
Delegates from Michigan and Florida will have full voting rights at the national convention this week, despite violating party rules by holding early primaries. The convention credentials committee voted yesterday to restore full voting rights, at the behest of Senator Obama. The two states had initially been stripped of all their delegates for holding primaries before February 5. The party's rules committee restored the delegates in May, but gave them only half votes.
DETAILS OF KENNEDY TRIBUTE EMERGE
Senator Kennedy may be too ill to attend the Democratic National Convention, but the patriarch of the party's first family will play a prominent part in the convention's opening night. A tribute planned for today night will include a film by documentary producer Ken Burns, along with remarks from Caroline Kennedy, President Kennedy's daughter, who helped conduct Senator Obama's vice presidential search. A taped message from Mr. Kennedy also will be played, but there was at least a chance that he will make the trip here if his doctors permit it. Mr. Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer in May, and he has spent much of the summer recovering from surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. One Kennedy source counted several dozen family members coming to the convention, including Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat of Rhode Island, the senator's son, and Maria Shriver, the wife of Governor Schwarzenegger.
OBAMA IN WIS. ON CONVENTION EVE
On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, Senator Obama yesterday framed the November election as a choice between watching the country "get run into the ground" under another Republican president or "solving the big problems" that America faces. Mr. Obama also gave a preview of the speech that his wife, Michelle, will give tonight at the Denver gathering. "You'll have a sense of who she is, and what our values are, and how we're raising our kids," Mr. Obama told a few hundred supporters gathered under towering weeping willows in a lakefront park here in western Wisconsin, a quadrennial White House battleground. "And I think what you'll conclude is: He's sort of like us. He comes from a middle-class background. He went to school on scholarships. He had to pay off student loans. He and his wife had to worry about child care. They had to figure out how to start a college fund for their kids."
