In the chain of bad economic news that never seems to end, today we have another link: 407,000 people applied for unemployment benefits last week, which was the most applicants in one week in over two years.

The Chronicle's Lee Nichols and Richard Whittaker give their impressions from the Travis County Democratic Convention. It actually sounds like it was a pretty good time.

As if the Republican Party didn't have enough problems: now the Ron Paul supporters are using their organization to gain control of regional delegations. That must be like a slow-motion car wreck for the GOP old guard.

The GOP VeepStakes is in high gear, but Marc Ambinder points something out that hadn't really occurred to me until just now: whoever gets the nomination will have to pick a Democratic VP candidate very, very fast. Is that bad? They can put some lists together now, but what about the very probable overlap ruining any sort of secrecy?

Looks like changes to FHA and some serious policy alterations to stem the tide of foreclosures are in the works.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has some earth-shattering news: the US could possibly be headed for a recession. Thanks, Ben! I thought everything was cool!

Rest easy, citizens. John McCain is really taking this whole thing very seriously, and he's got a list of 20 names for possible running mates. We can only assume he's checking it twice.

Howard Dean told Florida Democrats that, although the plan has to bee worked out and agreed upon by the two campaigns, the DNC will be doing everything it can to get the Florida delegation seated in Denver.

For those of you that follow international politics, you might have been expecting to Robert Mugabe to win yet another term as Zimbabwe's president, and to win handily by a fixed margin of 15 points or so due to election hijinx. However, Mugabe lost by a scant few tenths of a percent to Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of opposition party Movement for Democratic Change.

A 2003 Department of Justice memo, declassified today as part of an ACLU lawsuit, gives us a a disturbing window inside the administration's process of legally justifying torture. The memo, which was rescinded in December 2003, argued that the executive branch overruled federal and international laws governing torture.

The 81 page memo is available at the ACLU website.