We have entered day two of the Republican convention and so far things have been peaceful, at least outside the convention hall. Inside the basic message of the first day in the speeches was that we are all going to die horrible deaths unless Donald Trump is elected president, and that Hillary Clinton should be in jail because she is directly responsible for the deaths in Benghazi.

There was quite a bit of controversy about Trump’s wife Melania’s speech which seemed suspiciously similar to Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 convention. Watch.

Robert Mackey has more on the charge of plagiarism.

There was also some controversy when the party leadership that controls the podium used a brute force procedural tactic to deny consideration of a motion by the anti-Trump forces to allow delegates a free vote on whom they wanted as their presidential nominee. This kind of procedural steamrolling is now all too common as parties seek to quell robust debate, the essence of democracy, in favor of fake unity. At the 2012 Democratic convention a similar method was adopted in order to insert references to God and to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel into the party platform. Then the chair wrongly asserted that the voice vote was ‘yes’ even though the ‘no’ vote was clearly louder.

Outside there have been few problems and the air has been mostly festive with just one arrest for obstruction and three arrested for hanging up an anti-Trump banner. Police, as far as I could tell, were not dressed in storm-trooper style riot gear and in armored vehicles but were in shirt sleeves and riding around on bicycles.

There was a group of heavily armed men marching around with their weapons openly displayed in order to ‘protect’ people on the street, presumably in case ISIS launched an invasion of Cleveland. The ubiquitous police followed them around but there were no incidents.

Samantha Bee talked to people in Cleveland about what to expect at the convention, including the head of the Patrolman’s Association Steve Loomis who has been way over-the-top in his alarmist rhetoric.