Ever since I moved to Nevada, one of the most seismically active states in the U.S., I've had the habit of checking the USGS recent earthquake map nearly daily. For the past two months or so, I had noticed an uptick in earthquake activity near Reno, but since I hadn't felt anything I thought it was nothing unusual. There indeed was a 6.0 earthquake in northeast Nevada that happened right before the recent activity here, but it occurred more than 300 miles away from here, so a connection is possible but unlikely.

This past Thursday, we finally started to feel this recent swarm of earthquakes, the only earthquake experiences in my life where I've been near the epicenter. (I was once woken up by a 5-something earthquake in Boston, but it was epicentered in the middle of the state of Massachusetts.) I was working at my desk at home, and noticed it swaying back and forth. Flea was on the phone in the kitchen, and I told her what I was experiencing, but she waved me off as she didn't feel it herself.

A few minutes later, a 4.2 hit just five miles from our house. This one was impossible to ignore, as the house shook consistently and unpredictably for three to five seconds. I enjoyed it, as it was too mild to be scary -- it was a minor earthquake, as looking at the USGS California map daily I see 4-something earthquakes all the time.

But last night the tectonic activity upped the ante in a much more notable way. We were in the movie theater, perhaps 15-20 minutes away from the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Suddenly, the entire theater started shaking violently, and I grabbed the rail in front of me and held on. It lasted a solid 10 seconds at least, and this time I definitely started to get scared. (How reliable are the ceilings in a movie theater?) It was also a communal experience, as during the event everyone in the theater was gasping and looking at each other. When it was over, my heart was racing, and I probably enjoyed the rest of the movie more for it. (In general, I enjoy Dracula musicals and puppets.)

This one was a 4.7 -- again, not something that is considered a major earthquake, but big enough to do some minor damage. But my heart was racing because I knew that 6 and 7 Richter scale earthquakes are not unheard of in Nevada, and with the build-up of activity on Thursday, such a major earthquake was feeling possible. In fact, this morning I read the following in an article about last night's event:

Ken Smith, a seismologist at the university lab, said the recent activity around Reno is unusual in that the quakes started out small and continue to build in strength..."If the pattern continues we may be looking at a larger event" in the Reno area, Smith said Friday. “We wouldn’t be surprised to see it (swarm) end at any time and it also wouldn’t be surprising to see a large earthquake. The bottom line is we don’t know what will happen.”

So the fact that what we're experiencing is "unusual" is indeed a little frightening. We'll see how the weekend goes, but I'm hoping that a supervolcano isn't in the making. That's an exaggeration, but certainly a major earthquake in the near future wouldn't be a scientific surprise.

Part 1: The Convention

I got up early yesterday to make sure I got to the Reno Events Center in time for the registration period of the Democratic Washoe County convention. Once I picked up my "Alternate" badge, I sat in the bleachers for more than six hours while listening to speeches by Harry Reid and other local Nevada politicians. In the meantime, the credentials committee spent the day trying to figure out how to seat the alternates, which led to some intra-party bickering. Here's how it was supposed to work:

At the end of the caucus, delegates were elected based on the results from the people in each presidential preference group. In Washoe County, this broke down to about 50% for Obama, 40% for Clinton, and 10% for Edwards. When the delegates entered the convention, they cast their votes for their presidential preference (which they could change later in the day), presumably the same one they chose at the caucus, although that wasn't mandated. As you might expect, not everyone elected to be a delegate shows up at the convention, and hence alternates are seated instead, preferably from the same precinct and presidential preference group as the missing delegates.

Because thousands of people showed up at the convention, it took awhile to count the first round of preferences, but it was clear that delegates were missing from all three major groups (Obama, Clinton, and Edwards). However, because it would have taken so long to go through precinct by precinct to select alternates, the representatives of each campaign agreed to make a motion for changing the rules as follows: if Edwards did not have enough alternates to replace their no-shows, they would be replaced by Obama and Clinton alternates, split 50/50. As soon as this proposal was announced to the floor, there was a general outcry form the Obama side of the room.

An Obama delegate went to the microphone and stated that they wanted to amend the rule change, but the chairman announced that before an amendment could be made, the floor would have to vote on the original suspension of the rules. After 10 minutes or so of mass confusion, the vote took place and the suspension passed. Immediately afterward, the Obama delegate proposed the following change (I was sitting in the bleachers thinking the same thing): that the Edwards no-shows should be split proportionately between Obama and Clinton, that is 5 to 4, rather than 50/50.

There was a debate on the floor about this issue. Someone on the Clinton side, not understanding the change, I think, proclaimed that this was disenfranchising the missing Edwards delegates. The chairman made clear that if you didn't show up, you couldn't be disenfranchised. Then another Clinton delegate made a better argument: that we were delaying the already long convention by fighting over 9 state delegates, and was it really worth it? The Obama people shouted yes. Eventually, there was a vote, and the amendment passed. Recounting this, it sounds like a mundane argument over convention rules, and that's what it was, but resolving a complex debate about fair representation in a room filled with over a thousand delegates was both chaotic and amusing.

So now that the process was amended to supposedly speed things up, they started seating alternates. They began with the Edwards alternates, and then seated the Obama and Clinton alternates. I hung back, as I had no strong desire to be a delegate unless my vote was needed. Thirty minutes later, it was clear that the Clinton people didn't have enough alternates either, and so the remaining Obama alternates (including me) got to cast their preferences. In the end, with Edwards delegates realigning and the Clinton no-shows, Obama went from having 50% of Washoe's state delegates to 58%.

At that point, the convention moved on to the phase where state delegates are elected for the state convention. Only those who were elected state delegates are eligible to go to Denver for the national Democratic convention, and hundreds of people clearly wanted to go. Washoe County is guaranteed one male and two female national delegates, and potentially two more from the congressional district, and so I realized it was highly unlikely I would be elected from the over 500 state delegates Washoe is entitled to. So rather than stick around for the state delegate elections, I left early to attend the Brianna Denison protests.

Part II: The protests

A few weeks ago, members of the Westboro Baptist church (AKA the "God Hates Fags" group) showed up in Reno to protest the funeral of a fallen soldier. Tens of counter-protesters showed up, mostly from biker gangs, and apparently there was a minor scuffle. When the church announced they would picket the funeral service of Brianna Denison, the young college student who was recently murdered by a serial rapist here in Reno, the story of which has received national coverage, the ACLU of Nevada decided to observe the protest to make sure the local police were protecting the constitutional rights of both sides. I decided to tag along.

When we got there, a blizzard had already been raging for over an hour. We walked out in front of the Reno Convention Center, where the service was being held, and soon saw three or four women from Westboro Baptist church standing on the sidewalk on S. Virginia St., one of the busiest roads in Reno. They held signs saying, "God Sent the Killer," "Pray for More Dead Kids," and "America is Doomed." We only saw a few counter-protestors, so we decided to walk down a bit more to see if we could find anything else.

By the time we walked back, there were hundreds of counter-protestors, mostly biker gangs and UNR students, surrounding the three or four church members. I started taking some photos, and got threatened by a biker for doing so. It was at that point that I realized that some of the bikers had swastikas on their jackets -- it's not often you find White Supremacists teaming up with college students during a protest, but that's what was happening. Then the angels showed up:

I'm not sure what their message was, but their costumes were creative.

At this point, it seemed like the police were doing an admirable job protecting the church members, but we crossed the street to get a better look. I had a hard time taking photos in the nighttime blizzard, but here is what it looked like:

Almost everyone in that picture is a counter-protester, but you can see two signs held by the church members below the big American flag.

After ten minutes or so of this, with the crowd occasionally cheering whenever a big bus or stretch limo drove by and blocked the church members' signs, a police SUV drove up and the church members willingly went inside. The cops later told us that they asked to be safely escorted back to their cars. The counter-protest immediately ended, and the memorial service began soon afterwards, attended by nearly 3,000 people.

The police did an excellent job keeping the peace, protecting the extremely unpopular protesters and even arresting an angel at one point who evidently became too aggressive. I thought they could've done a better job zoning the protest/counter-protest areas, but I guess that's difficult when you have 3-4 protesters vs. hundreds of counter-protesters. Still, I remember a protest in Boston once where over fifteen cops were lined up like a soccer wall in front of 4-5 neo-Nazis, and I thought that worked pretty well. Regardless, the emotionally heightened moment fizzled, and Brianna Denison got a respectful memorial service.

Here are some pictures taken at Vaughn Middle School today, where I participated in the Nevada caucus. (All photos taken by flea.)

I got there a little early, helping the Obama campaign give out stickers as caucus-goers walked in. (This is where I had my unfortunate encounter with a Clinton supporter.) There were four precincts voting at the school, so there were quite a few people filing in.

At noon, you had to be signed in and inside your precinct's room. They explained the caucus rules, computed the viability threshold at 13, and then had us gather in the parts of the room that represented our first choice candidate. The Edwards group barely made viability, but they were in. It was immediately clear that Obama had more people than Clinton, but there was still the "realignment" round. Only two candidates with any voters did not make viability: Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson. Most of those people realigned with Obama, but a couple went to the Clinton camp.

They counted up the realignments, put the final count on a white board, and started assigning the delegates. Obama got 7, Clinton 4, and Edwards 3. Right after this, each group was responsible for electing the delegates who will attend the county convention and cast their votes. It was a bit of a chaotic process, but I was glad that we sent a diverse group.

Our room started to empty out, so we started wandering around the school to see how the other precincts were doing. The picture in the upper right above was from one of the other rooms, held in the school gym. It was the only room in the school that Clinton took. (Obama was up three overall.)

After the results in our local precincts were settled, we went back home where the networks were already calling it for Clinton. Overall, I enjoyed the process, but was depressed by some of the reasons people had for choosing their candidates. And although I liked the community aspect of caucusing, I still feel that primaries are a fairer system.

One last interesting thing of note: it looks like the results here in Nevada are breaking down the same lines as the Question 7 campaign in 2006 (which I worked on). Notably, Question 7 did very poorly among older voters and Hispanic voters, exactly where Clinton did her best. Additionally, it looks like Obama beat Clinton by 10 points in Washoe County (Reno), and lost badly in Clark County (Vegas). Similarly, Question 7 did poorly in Clark and had its best performance in Washoe. I'm not sure what this says, but it's an interesting observation.

All right, time to go get some food after a long day of politickin'.

Correction: It's been a year since the 2006 elections, so I got some facts wrong. First, Question 7 did the best in Storey County, not Washoe, although it did very well in Washoe. Second, Question 7 did very well among Hispanics and not so well among African-Americans, so I completely reversed that trend. I guess that makes the above a less interesting observation.

Having just moved to Reno, Nevada two days ago, I woke up today to find an email from my brother linking to this news story about a "Flag of Mexico Flown Illegally Over Reno Business," which linked to this part of the Federal flag code. The story has caught on nationally, and has since been reported by the Drudgereport and CNN. (Although CNN is more interested in the fact that a veteran was caught on video tearing down the flag with a large knife.)

My initial reaction to the headlines was that there was no way that Federal code legally compels private residences and businesses to display their flags in a particular way, especially since the First Amendment gives Americans the freedom to burn the flag if they so wish. It turns out that I was right: courts have ruled that the laws here are merely advisory:

Federal flag code is not intended to proscribe behavior but is fashioned as expression of prevalent custom and usage regarding display of American flag. Lapolla v. Dullaghan, 1970, 311 N.Y.S.2d 435, 63 Misc.2d 157.

Still, the damage has already been done, and there's no telling how many people now believe that their First Amendment rights don't include flying flags in the manner of their choosing. Indeed, when I dropped off my rental truck this morning, the clerk and I got in an argument over this story, with him insisting that it's illegal (he saw it on Anderson Cooper last night), and that I should leave the country if I believed otherwise.

I know through my sources that the local news agencies are now being contacted about their error in reporting the story -- I will keep you updated about any retractions.

Update: KRNV has posted the ACLU of Nevada's press release regarding their storey.

Later Update: It's beginning to get out there that disregarding the Federal flag code is not illegal. The Reno police say as much in this Reno-Gazette Journal article. So far as I know, neither KRNV nor the Drudgereport has retracted the original story.