We made our way towards downtown St. Paul, and before long we saw the sign we'd been looking for looming up ahead like a beacon, visible from several blocks in each direction: the Excel Energy Center, where the majority of events are scheduled this week.

Still no signs of protest. No, it was all pretty dull.

A few hours later, we were driving around as Nezua checked his iPhone for updates from coldsnaplegal via Twitter.com, and a few other blogs. The arrest count, according to his sources, was rising by the minute. Felonies were numbering over 100. The journalist Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, had been man-handled and arrested.

In his regularly updated blog at Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald likened St. Paul this week to Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11.

Yet we still hadn't seen anything but Minnesotans being Minnesotans: taking walks, jogging, sitting in restaurants and bars having generous portions of pasta and beer. And the national media was barely covering the unfolding events (and still isn't), focusing all of its attention instead on Bristol Palin's pregnancy, Hurricane Gustav and the whereabouts of John McCain (New Orleans, of course, in a transparent effort to separate himself from Bush by responding with great urgency to the crisis pummeling the gulf right now).

So we set out to find the chaos.

Driving towards the Excel Center this time, we came upon a fenced-off area, behind which were dozens of National Guard soldiers in camouflage, donning riot gear. What the hell is this? we all exclaimed. Our car was suddenly redirected away from Excel and toward the Interstate, which led us a few miles out of town before we could turn around.

Talk about a police state: we were literally forced out of town.

We navigated our way back, and found ourselves a few blocks from a huge demonstration at Kellogg and Wabasha (the latter street made famous by Bob Dylan, whose early protest songs would influence generations, in his tune "Meet Me In the Morning").

In the shadows surrounding the area we saw squadrons of police on horseback in riot gear, military personnel beside walls of buildings and in parking lots, and a surprising lack of protest activity beyond the "big" one that we couldn't access. Not even a lone protester making a statement with a T-shirt or placard.

It seemed as if the local police and national military had successfully scared everyone back into their hovels, from which they will either emerge again this week or remain, for fear of joining the hundreds of others already in jail for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.

All I know is that our team has already talked about what to do in the very real event that one of us gets arrested. (And to be clear: this has been advised by several people; we're not simply being paranoid.)

We'll see.

The republicans running for US President have always fascinated me as photo subjects. I've began to photograph them back in 1991, just caught the tail end of the Ronald Reagan era. They were always too rigid, patriarchal, and overly proud. Their jingoism and flag waiving made for hard, great, and black and white iconic images.

Until this election cycle. In this cycle, they looked too slick, too weak, and very odd. McCain was the lone stand out so I decided to follow his campaign whenever he came to California. Early in the campaign I often found myself as the only still photographer covering him, he had no media draw like Obama. McCain was on the verge of falling out of the election and I wanted to shoot his last days as a candidate.

It was interesting to watch him campaign in California. His political messages just bounced off of us Californians. He drew no rock stars, mayors, or people of note at his campaign stops. It was almost sad to watch. Yet he prevailed as the front runner and returned to California, Beverly Hills no less, for a fund raiser. Now I was surrounded by photographers jockeying for position. I don't think he recognized me from the early days of his campaign, didn't get a thumbs up or a handshake. Shot this image of him as he was answering questions from the press. Caught this moment of him between his stoic stares. It was a moment of vincibility, but like before he always seems to overcome.

Photo-ops were in full supply at the Denver National Convention last week, like this man's dollar bill stuffed inside a corncob pipe. It didn't take long to realize that his picture alone would be more compelling than an interview -- he had a lot to say, but none of it made much sense. No matter: he had enough style to make me stop in my tracks as I sped towards the DNC to snap this photo. To my mind, that's a successful fashion statement.

The Minneapolis and St. Paul Police Departments have been raiding houses and meeting halls where suspected RNC protest groups are thought to convene since last Thursday, angering many people who've had no designs for any criminal behavior and generally turning the Twin Cities into a totalitarian police state. Even lawyers and journalists have been arrested and detained by authorities, though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the primary local paper of the Twin Cities, ran a piece on the raids Saturday, which was followed by a truncated version a few hours later on CNN.com. Even FOX News ran a short piece surprisingly free of slant.

Beginning on Thursday, police have been targeting sites known to house protest groups such as the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group of between 35 and 50 members that Ramsey County sheriff Bob Fletcher describes as "a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists... intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention."

"These acts include tactics to blockade and disable delegate buses, breaching venue security and injuring police officers," Fletcher told the Star Tribune. According to that paper, deputies seized a variety of items that they believed were tools of civil disobedience: a gas mask, bolt cutters, axes, slingshots, homemade "caltrops" for disabling buses, and buckets of urine.

As damning as those supplies might have been, the preemptive strikes against other groups like I-Witness Video, a New York-based group that monitors police conduct during protests, and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a non-violent organization whose name is self-explanatory, are shocking and inappropriate, to say the least.

I-Witness Video helped overturn hundreds of wrongful arrests at the RNC in New York City four years ago, according to its website. Yet both I-Witness and the PPEHRC were subjected to sudden searches, detainment, handcuffs, and being treated like common terrorists. Some members of I-Witness were even stopped by police while biking blocks away from their house, where they were questioned while other cops rifled through their bags.

The longest, most in-depth account of the raids that I've found thus far is a piece on Salon.com by Glenn Greenwald, who was formerly a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. Greenwald's account features regular updates as the events continue to unfold.

In this video, a member of I-Witness Video describes what happened to her and what she saw. Clearly, the RNC is off to a rocky start, and the coming week will offer no shortage of news -- however disturbing it may be.

[Image: members of I-Witness Video outside their St. Paul headquarters surrounded by onlookers from the media, photographed by David Joles of the Star Tribune]

The news was a big surprise -- most people were talking about Mitt Romney, Timothy Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal and even "independent democrat" Joe Lieberman. And just a month ago Palin herself said in an interview that the vice presidency didn't seem productive. Still, she's seen as a rising star in the Republican Party.

The choice of Palin is at least partly a bid to bring Hillary Clinton followers over to vote for a woman, but her anti-abortion stance probably won't appeal much to Democratic voters. And that's just the start of a laundry list of cons.

In particular, her youth and inexperience could backfire on the GOP: while Dems may not be able to bash her inexperience for fear of drawing attention to Obama's short political resume, but how easily can the Republicans call Obama "the most inexperienced candidate of our times" when Palin has just two years as governor and the mayorship of a small town in Alaska under her belt? If McCain is elected, he'll be 73, the oldest president ever, so the possibility of his VP stepping in is a much more serious consideration. Chuck the "not ready to lead the country" line right out the window.

[Image source: Wikimedia Commons]