Convention notebook

Bush practices lines, poses for pictures

President Bush arrived for a sound check at Madison Square Garden Thursday afternoon and joked with photographers that "tax relief is on the way."

With Laura Bush at his side, the president strolled onto the circular stage, took his place behind the podium and ran through several lines from the acceptance speech he was to deliver later that night to delegates at the Republican National Convention.

"My fellow members of the press corps, especially the cameramen," he joked, "tax relief is on the way. Don't spend it all in one place. Save it."

Afterward, he checked out the stage and posed for pictures. He was accompanied by an entourage that included National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and political adviser Karen Hughes.

— Michael Collins,

Scripps Howard News Service

Gov. Walker takes midnight N.Y. stroll

Utah Gov. Olene Walker may have pulled the craziest stunt of the GOP convention when she slipped out of the hotel at 1:30 a.m. to go walking the streets of New York City.

Her security detail? Asleep in bed.

"I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to wake them up," she said sheepishly.

Fortunately for the governor, three Utah delegates happened to be coming into the hotel as she was setting out for a stroll. According to the delegates, they insisted that they be allowed to escort her.

"We rode the subway to Times Square and walked back to the hotel (about five miles), one of us walking ahead of her, one behind and one beside," said state Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo.

Police officers, quietly informed that the Utah governor was taking a stroll through some rather unsavory neighborhoods, just shook their heads in disbelief and asked if she realized she was walking through New York City, Bramble said.

Walker has a different account of the events, saying she only accompanied the delegates to Times Square because they were headed there anyway. The delegates smiled at that one.

— Jerry Spangler,

Deseret Morning News

WTC site remains a symbol for visitors

In this convention town where "9/11" is a totem or watchword with a million meanings, the site of the collapsed World Trade Center towers has become a place, in the words inscribed on the perimeter fencing, "where the world community can reflect upon and remember the events that took place here, and draw strength and inspiration."

Tourists stand silent before the open pit that has become a construction area. Others snap pictures. All the initial graffiti and handwritten messages are gone and regulations prohibit posting new ones.