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Florida, the GOP tried to do precisely that.
• Speaker after speaker took to the stage to make the case that Barack Obama was guilty of overregulation, abuse of power, dishonesty, wanton spending and class warfare. The recommended sentence: no more years.
• In the legal world, the prosecution has a true advantage. It gets to make the opening statement and the closing remarks. But this isn't court; it's politics. And now it's the incumbent's turn.
• Between now and when the Democrats open their convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday, the American public gets to reboot and cleanse its palate. There's time for a Labor Day cookout, maybe even a trip to the movies. And the Democrats, says media strategist Fred Davis, have "room for minor adjustment" to the case they want to make.
• "I'd always rather be the last car dealer you visit and the last convention you watch," says Davis, creative director for the 2008 GOP gathering. "Because the first guy is out of mind already."
• ___

• BELLE CHASSE, La. (AP) -- As Isaac's drenching rains and cooling winds drifted north of the Gulf Coast, heat and humidity moved back in -- along with frus

tration, exhaustion and uncertainty.
• People stuck inside stuffy, powerless homes were comparatively lucky. Thousands of others were displaced by floodwaters and had no idea where they would end up next. Some boarded buses to faraway shelters.
• "I'm with my family, and my wife's with her family," said 35-year-old construction worker Jarvis Mackey as the couple and their two children boarded a bus to Shreveport, 5½ hours away from their Port Sulphur home, which lay underwater.
• "All we can do is pray -- pray we come back home to something," Mackey said.
• LaPlace resident Roshonda Girrad was staying in a state-run shelter in Alexandria, 200 miles from her home. She was waiting for the chest-deep waters in her neighborhood to recede.
• ___