The Denver Democratic headquarters was vandalized last night, the long bank of windows that fronts the building smashed. Authorities reportedly apprehended the vandal but no details on his identity or motives so far have been released. [...]

7News Denver Channel quotes Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak, who said she received a call from police at 2:54 a.m. notifying her of the attack.

“There is a poster up on the wall that is kind of anti-health care reform and I didn’t see it yesterday, so it begs the question whether that was part of it,” Waak said. “I know that tempers are really hot right now and they are being fueled. I would hope that people would take this at least as a sign that we need to have a little calmer debate about health care reform, which everyone needs right now.”

My attitude toward this is let’s get something. Let’s get the ball rolling. Let’s not have an argument between two poles. Let’s pick a middle course. Of course, the right wing and the insurance companies are already attacking the middle course. If there’s no public option we shouldn’t do anything. The last thing you want to do is pour a trillion dollars into something we already know doesn’t work right.

Also of note, Dean, a physician and a longtime advocate of a single-payer system, appears to have abandoned that approach due to political realities — much to the dismay of the left-leaning Colorado audience.

You can read Wendy’s write-up here.

A Denver federal judge who grew up in southern Colorado confirms she could be under consideration for nomination to the Supreme Court, the Pueblo Chieftain reports. U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello, named to the bench last fall, tops a list of potential dark horse nominees to replace retiring Justice David Souter, The Colorado Independent noted Sunday. [...]

Arguello, a 1977 graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder and 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School, was managing senior associate counsel at the CU-Boulder before being named a federal judge by President George W. Bush. Arguello was a former deputy Colorado attorney general to Democrat Ken Salazar, who supported her nomination to the bench last year when he was still a senator. Former Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, also backed Arguello.

The Associated Press notes that Arguello is the federal judge presiding over a First Amendment lawsuit filed by a Denver man who says the Secret Service abridged his free speech rights when he approached then-Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek in 2006. Officers arrested Steven Howards after he “lightly” touched Cheney at a conservative conference and told him the administration’s policy in Iraq was “disgusting.”

Luning notes that Arguello is the first Hispanic judge on the U.S. District Court for Colorado. Marc Ambinder reported yesterday that President Obama will likely announce his pick next week.

Up until Thursday night it had been a crowded week for the Democratic National Convention. There were too many delegates and reporters jammed into the Pepsi Center. The conversations of the faithful were crowded with anxieties about slipping poll numbers, soft messaging, elusive unity, and the omnipresent Clintons. Memories of disastrous Augusts (John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000 and Michael Dukakis in 1988) pinched the party’s imagination.

Last night those hemmed-in feelings dispersed into the breezes of mammoth Invesco Field where an adoring throng of 70,000-plus 84,000 cheered Barack Obama as he accepted his party nomination with a speech– none too lofty and none too soft–that reinfused his historic campaign with sense of history and horizon that had seemed lacking in recent weeks.

Early on Obama declared “enough,” and that word resonated throughout his 48-minute speech. So did the phrase “Now is the time.” Those simple sentiments bookended, a comprehensive indictment of Republican presumptive nominee as honorable but clueless (“Its not that John McCain doesn’t care. It’s that he doesn’t get it.”) and challenges to his own party (“Democrats, Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America’s promise will require more than just money”).

Tough talk on Afghanistan (“we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.”) was combined with tender feelings toward his grandmother (“She poured everything she had into me.”).

After delivering a laundry list of specific policy proposals, Obama returned to the post-partisan message that enabled him to prevail over the more traditional partisanship of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

“These — these are the policies I will pursue,” he declared. “And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.”

“But what I will not do,” he went on, “is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and each other’s patriotism.”

“I’ve got news for you, John McCain,” he finished. “We all put our country first.”

Obama thus both sharpened the choice facing voters 68 days from now without closing off his ability appeal to Republicans and independents. He again demonstrated the political agility that brought him to this historic occasion and almost certainly restored his supporters’ confidence that was a little shaky just 24 hours ago.

That’s right. Thanks to a well-connected friend, I’m at Section 123 of Invesco, which, if there was turf laid down instead of a massive stage, would be the 50 yard line. Ironically — and not to complain! — but the seats are less-than-ideal, since I’m behind that massive stage. But watching Obama on the JumboTrons won’t exactly be an inconvenience. I’m not in a press area, so I’ll get to witness The Speech the way 76,125 of Barack Obama’s closest friends will: in an atmosphere of sheer patriotic pandemonium. (Unfortunately that also means I’ll be running on laptop-battery power, so posting will be a bit infrequent as I conserve energy.)

Getting in here was frustrating: a two-hour-long line stretching back to the Pepsi Center parking lot. I’m guessing a sturdy artifact of the pre-nomination march into Invesco could be my Twitter feed, wherein my friends and me pissed and moaned about waiting forever in the sweltering heat to advance a few paces at a time, accosted by all manner of t-shirt and tchotchke vendors hustling Obama memorabilia. We’re about four hours or so away from The Speech, and Invesco is baking hot. A slight breeze feels as refreshing as an open icebox.

None of this, of course, can take away from the majesty of this moment, if I can be personal for a moment. Politically, Obama is already getting a bounce, measured even before Biden’s speech last night. But whatever the immediate political impact of the speech is, the spectacle is breathtaking. McCain may be hitting Obama for being a “celebrity” — a racially-charged derision intended to make him seem insubstantial, as if an African-American candidate could earn his party’s nomination without working so much harder than any white politician — but that’s both right and wrong at the same time. Obama truly has become a symbol of restoration in America. To deride that is to deride the millions of people who believe. I am among tens of thousands of them right now.

“The best way you can thank me for my service and sacrifice,” says a Marine on stage who lost his arm in Haditha in 2005, “…is to vote Barack Obama.” He’s one of these tens of thousands. Here’s another speaking to the crowd. “I registered as a Republican and voted for John McCain in 2000,” says Nathaniel Fick, a retired Marine captain, whose story you can find in HBO’s “Generation Kill.” “We cannot afford more of the same. That’s why we need Barack Obama and Joe Biden.” And here’s a third. “We’ve been a band for about 10 years and this is probably the coolest thing we’ve ever done,” says the singer of a bluegrass act called the Mountain String band. “We only get this once in our life, and God bless Barack Obama.”

And here comes something Mike Lillis has reported on that, to my surprise, has disappeared as an attack on McCain. “Unlike John McCain, Barack Obama fought for a new GI Bill, and won… So I know what he’ll do as president,” says Duckworth. No privatizing the VA, which McCain wants. “Because when we enlisted, no one asked us where we live and how much money we have,” she says, “and no one should ask that after we’ve bled…for our country.” And even a reference to Joe Biden’s son, Beau, who’s about to deploy to Iraq.

Kerry describes McCain as “insulting” and “desperate’ for questioning Obama’s patriotism, and “pathetic” for continuing to support President Bush’s war policy; he digs at McCain’s age, saying voters should elect a president based on judgment and character, not “years on this earth”; and he hammers McCain and Bush on foreign affairs, charging that their policies have left “Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and dictators everywhere…on the march.”