Oy. 26 minutes, 72 throat clearings (phlegm count courtesy of Keith Olbermann) and a whole lotta yawns. But what can you expect when the theme of last night's RNC was "Service: The Courage and Service of John McCain"? Really? That's the best they could come up with?

Freddie of Hollywood hit all the expected points, calling unvetted and scandal-ridden Vice President Sarah Palin a "breath of fresh air." Honestly, scandals and lack of transparency? Sounds like just more of the Bush administration, but maybe that's just me. There were two things that caught my attention, though. One was a really inappropriate slam against Biden:

Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan Governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the Union - and won - over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.

Does that sound to you like Thompson is suggesting that Biden is a DC Partier? Biden, the man, who by all account, takes the train to and from DC to Delaware to be with his family each night? You stay classy, Fred. Besides, we all know what an "outsider" Palin is turning out to be.

But with the convention theme centering around John McCain's service, it was inevitable that McCain's time as a POW would be discussed, in painstaking detail. But Fred let something slip, perhaps unintentionally, that I think Dems should run with: (h/t Mark Nickolas)

Now, being a POW certainly doesn't qualify anyone to be President.

But it does reveal character.

Um...wasn't that pretty much EXACTLY what the GOP went after Wes Clark for saying?

Transcripts available at The Corner at the National Review