Over at The Nation, Joel Rogers make the progressive case for Edwards:

To begin with what they hold in common, Edwards and Kerry have similar views, all pretty good, on healthcare, women’s rights, Medicare and Society Security privatization, and the environment–including the idea, recently revived by the Apollo Alliance, of an aggressive national project to achieve energy independence within a decade. Of course, they also share the baggage or ignominy of having voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq…

Where Edwards diverges from Kerry is in addressing a series of issues of distinctive concern to progressives–inequalities of race and class, abusive corporate power, neoliberal globalization, ghetto poverty and prison, and the importance of worker and community organization outside the state. And what makes him distinctive is not just that he regularly touches these third-rail issues but is effectively running on them.

And Antonio R. Villaraigosa makes a less convincing case for Kerry:

Senator Kerry understands the consequences of these failed domestic and foreign policies. He understands the pain being felt daily in the pocketbooks of millions of hard-working Americans, and the sacrifices of our men and women serving in the military overseas and of their families here at home.

Senator Kerry’s views on the role of government and his plan for America stand in stark contrast to President Bush’s. Kerry believes government should play an important role in insuring equal opportunity and upward mobility for the middle class, new immigrants and the poor. He believes that every one of us, not just the elite few, should be able to realize the American dream He will fight for working Americans and the less fortunate. He will restore fiscal responsibility and fairness to our nation’s economic policies and promote civil rights, social justice, equality and fairness, with meaningful policies rather than meaningless lip service. He will protect our environment and reverse the damaging course of the past three years. He understands that success is judged not by slogans but by substance. He will be a President our nation can trust.

The Hartford Courant on Yale’s new head of security:

Aylward resigned from the Middletown police force in April 1997 and went to work for the federal government training police in foreign countries…Considered by some as a consummate professional who refused to hold grudges against his opponents, Aylward spent his 15-year career in Middletown struggling to win over the rank and file. He received four no-confidence votes during his tenure and was the subject of numerous grievances. Some officers considered the former New York City officer to be an outsider.

And in 1995, tensions mounted between the police department and Wesleyan University after four black students were arrested while walking back to their dormitory. The students charged that police had discriminated against them. A police supervisor found no probable cause for the arrest, released the students and apologized. The incident received national attention when students staged protests against the department and a special citizens’ committee was formed to deal with race relations. Aylward ordered all his officers to undergo racial sensitivity training.

More oppression in Cuba:

Senior Defense Department officials said Thursday that they were planning to keep a large portion of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there for many years, perhaps indefinitely.

From the Globe:

Some of the nation’s most influential gay media outlets have begun assailing a onetime ally, Senator John F. Kerry, for his silence in the current Massachusetts debate over banning same-sex marriage in the state Constitution. Two years ago Kerry urged state legislators to reject a proposed amendment banning gay marriages and civil unions.

The Washington Blade, a newspaper here, also recently questioned Kerry’s record on gay issues, which has been touted by both his campaign and major gay-right groups, such as the Human Rights Campaign.

If only the Democrats were as liberal as Rush Limbaugh thinks they are…

Another reason not to mourn Wesley Clark: Looks like some of that lobbying work he did was for a firm being considered to help administer the “Total Information Awareness” project (yeah, that one):

In an e-mail dated May 21, 2002 to TIA developers John Poindexter and Robert Popp, a DARPA employee writes that “Acxiom is the nation’s largest commercial data warehouse company ($1B/year) with customers like Citibank, Walmart, and other companies whose names you know. They have a history of treating privacy issues fairly and they don’t advertise at all. As a result they haven’t been hurt as much as Choice Point, Seisint, etc by privacy concerns and press inquiries.

From the New Haven Register:

About 5,000 workers in the meat, deli and fish departments of Stop & Shop supermarkets statewide could go on strike as early as next week.

Negotiations will resume at 10 a.m. Friday at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale.

Those wishing to show their support for Stop and Shop workers can do so at a press conference outside of the Omni at 10 AM today.

From the Times:

One Republican, a friend of Mr. Cleland who is running for statewide office in Nevada, said he attended a meeting where officials from the Bush re-election campaign urged Republican candidates not to talk about Vietnam. “Basically, they’re saying don’t bring up veterans’ issues and don’t bring up Vietnam; our surrogates will take care of it,” said the candidate, Ed Gobel.

From the Post:

On Monday, Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, said such “outsourcing” by U.S. companies is “just a new way of doing international trade.”

A Republican normally loyal to the White House, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, said he disagreed that shipping American jobs abroad was good for the U.S. economy.

The YDN reports on the forums the UOC organized last night in all twelve residential colleges on graduate student unionization and how GESO’s struggle impacts Yale’s relationship to New Haven and to its students.

Civil (service) civil disobedience:

City officials in San Francisco, a community that has long prided itself on tolerance, began performing marriages today between couples of the same sex in a coordinated political and legal challenge to state law.

By early this afternoon, at least eight such marriages had been performed, and a dozen more marriage licenses had been issued to same-sex couples. The mayor’s office said that, starting today, the city will issue marriage licenses to any gay couples who apply.

Wonkette advises the media on how relish the Kerry sex story while appearing not to:

dust off those old “Don’t blame us, it’s all Drudge’s fault” editorials (and maybe the high-minded ones about the perils of the 24-hour news cycle, too):

Luckily, “Drudge Report” stays the same.

Meanwhile, as she reports, Clark is set to endorse Kerry, which makes sense given that the latter is running the trustworthy grandfatherly progressive veteran campaign the former tried to…

And Rush, in a creative move, is blaming the Clintons for everything.