Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results.

“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, suddenly speaking quietly. “This kind of rhetoric was very frightening” and created a climate in which violence took place, she said.

Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted of the 1978 murders of Mayor George Moscone and openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk. Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a link between the assassinations and the violent debate over gay rights that had preceded them for years.

During a rambling confession, White was quoted as saying, “I saw the city as going kind of downhill.” His lawyers argued that he was mentally ill at the time. White committed suicide in 1985.

Pelosi is part of a generation of California Democrats on whom the assassinations had a searing effect. A resident of San Fransisco, Pelosi had been a Democratic activist for years and knew Milk and Moscone. At the time of their murders, she was serving as chairwoman of her party in the northern part of the state.

On Thursday, Pelosi was answering a question about whether the current vitriol concerned her. The questioner did not refer to the murders of Milk or Moscone, or the turmoil in San Francisco three decades ago. Pelosi referenced those events on her own and grew uncharacteristically emotional.

“I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made,” Pelosi said. Some of the people hearing the message “are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume,” she said.

“Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe,” she added. “But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.”

Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for examples of contemporary statements that reminded the speaker of the rhetoric of 1970s San Francisco.

The public anger during health care town hall meetings in August spilled into the House last week when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Obama, the nation’s first black president, during his speech. On a largely party-line vote, the House reprimanded Wilson.

1. Saw two blond women stopped by the police on Saturday. The officers, four of them, were all smiles. The women were laughing. Wish my encounters with the police were such jocular events.

2. There’s a guy in my office who doesn’t wash his hands after he uses the urinal. Nasty.

3. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a lot of ’splaining to do.

4. I so want to buy the “I Love Lucy” DVD set.

5. Any AIDS Walk stories?

6. To march while gay seems to be against the law in Moscow.

7. I prefer my local watering hole on Sunday night as opposed to Saturday.

8. Is it wrong to lust after the local coffee boy?

9. RNC chairman Michael Steele is giving Richard Pryor a run for his money.

10. No bad dogs. Just terrible owners.

The DC council passed the bill this week, but laws passed by the district are subject to Congressional review.

DC already has a domestic partner registry which was enacted in 2007 to the ire of Republicans. The registry allows same- and opposite-sex couples to register their relationships. It includes such partner rights as hospital and nursing home visitations, medical decisions, and inheritance rights.

The new marriage bill was patterned after an executive ordered issued by New York governor David Paterson (D) last year.

Asked at her weekly press conference about the DC law, Pelosi said she expected the Democratically-controlled House to let the law stand.

“I don’t think the Congress should intervene there in terms of their recognitions of marriages in states that allow them any more than we should intervene in New York,” Pelosi told reporters.

But at the same time, she indicated there would be no rush to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions. Pelosi suggested there may not be enough votes yet for repeal. 

In the meantime, she touted House passage last week of  the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. The legislation, which still needs Senate approval, would provide local police and sheriff’s departments with federal resources to combat hate violence. 

Pelosi also said the House may take up the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

““Members will make a priority of issues like gays in the military. And where we have prospects of success, we always want to expand to a place of more opportunity and more freedom for all – for all Americans,” she said. 

“But right now, our agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. And as we move on that front, concurrently, we have to make some decisions about what is possible.”

Truth and Consequences
Pelosi expressed reservations about the broad immunity that Senator Leahy’s proposed Truth and Maybe a Little Too Much Reconciliation Committee might grant, suggesting that maybe when it comes to torture and warrantless wiretaps of American citizens, a little good old-fashioned criminal prosecution might be in order.

Rachel restrained herself from spiking her clipboard and shouting “Yes!”

Back on set, Ms. Maddow expressed concerns about Ms. Pelosi’s expression of concerns, wondering if standing on principle might mean standing still.

Questioning Intelligence
Rachel put the screws on Pelosi about the claim that high-level Democrats are doing a little foot-dragging on the “whole” part of the whole truth because they knew all about our enhanced interrogation techniques and quietly went along.

Pelosi said flat-out that Congressional Democrats didn’t know about torture. But Rachel brought up the excellent point that someone receiving a briefing on newly legal “interrogation” techniques might be expected to take the mental leap of suspecting that those might be coming into play.

Pelosi seemed to be dancing just a little bit of a sidestep when she reaffirmed that Democrats were completely unable to make that connection, which makes me wonder what other wartime techniques we are totally not using that the House Intelligence Committee gets briefed on anyway. Pink bellies? A unicorn cavalry? What?

Keeping Secrets
In her defense, it does seem like Pelosi’s hands may have been tied on that point. Or rather, webbed. Rachel invoked Spider-Man and Dr. Manhattan to illustrate the ridiculous position that Intelligence Committee members are in: Since anything the Committee members learn about is classified, they can’t object publicly.

Or privately.  For real.

Their only recourses are exchanging fraught looks with each other and writing their objections down in specially issued Intelligence Committee diaries, which then explode.

The Iraq Debate
Surprise! This whole Iraq thing might not be so easy to end. And even when it’s “over” 50,000 American troops may still in Iraq as a “residual force”.

Oh, and “residual troops” might look a lot like combat troops in hastily applied fake beards and Groucho glasses.

Tom Andrews, Director of the Win Without War Coalition stopped by just long enough to bum you out until 2015, which is when we might be out for real.

Ms. Information
Washington Mystery Theatre time! Rachel asked NBC Congressional Correspondent Mike Viquiera about the recent rash of small fires in government buildings and discovered that yet another had happened just the night before!

Rachel tried to make it sound like this was just some silly thing that had happened to catch her interest, but I think she’s trying to tell us something more. Clearly the comic book reference from earlier was a hint, and I believe I have sleuthed it out:

One of our elected representatives is actually The Human Torch.

I think I’m OK with that. I’m guessing that anyone whose catchphrase is “Flame ON!” is not a big supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Also: Free supercool party boat!

Healthcare First!
Ms. Maddow and the Speaker bonded over healthcare reform, and then Rachel asked about what she saw as the Republican domination of the media during the clusterbonk over the stimulus bill. Pelosi pointed out with a warm smile that the GOP didn’t score any points with that last time, and so might not try it again.

When we cut back to the studio, Rachel referred to this polite and reasonable exchange in measured tones as a smackdown, explaining what had happened just in case we had somehow, in the middle of the information-filled pleasantries, missed the downsmacking.

Aw, you guys, cut Rachel some slack. She doesn’t know – she doesn’t have a TV. Don’t tell her.

GOP-anned
After his response to the Presidential Address, Bobby Jindal went to Disneyworld. Rachel acted like that was a surprising thing to do, but he might as well have. No one is going to be able to unsee those Kenneth the Page mash-ups.

RachelWatch Poll: Which cast member of 30 Rock will be the next to render a sitting Governor unable to go to the grocery store without hearing barely-restrained laughter?

The Next Big Debate
Hey, let’s end on an up note: Afghanistan!

Pelosi offered some dumb old complex answers about looking at the region as a whole and understanding the delicate intertwining of religious and social issues.

It’s like I don’t know my government anymore.

Until tomorrow, keep your fires contained and your smackdowns polite.

“Barack will finally bring the change we need,” seconded Obama’s wife, Michelle, casting her husband – bidding to become the first black president – as a leader with classic American values.

She pledged he would end the war in Iraq, revise a sputtering economy and extend health care to all.

Democrats opened their four-day convention in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains as polls underscored the closeness of the race with Republican John McCain. And there was no underestimating the challenges confronting Obama.

He faces lingering divisions from a fierce battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton for the nomination, tough ads by McCain and his Republican allies, and a reminder that racism, too, could play a role.

“There are people who are not going to vote for him because he’s black,” said James Hoffa, president of the Teamsters union. “And we’ve got to hope that we can educate people to put aside their racism and to put their own interests No. 1.” He spoke in an Associated Press interview.

Kennedy and Obama’s wife were the bookends of an evening that left the delegates cheering, one representing the party’s past, the other its present.

“The work begins anew, the hope rises again and the dream lives on,” Kennedy said in a strong voice, reprising the final line of a memorable 1980 speech that brought a different convention to its feet. The senator has been undergoing treatment for a malignant brain tumor.

Obama’s wife said it was time to “stop doubting and start dreaming.”

Moments later, Obama appeared via satellite from Missouri, drawing cheers from delegates.

Convention planners hoped the prime time address by Obama’s wife would begin the work of casting the Illinois senator as a leader with classic American values.

Among them, she said: “that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”

The convention’s opening gavel fell with Obama and Clinton still struggling to work out the choreography for the formal roll call of the states that will make him the party nominee.

Michelle Obama included a tribute to her husband’s former rival, crediting her with having placed “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” that constrains women’s ambitions.

“There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is Barack Obama’s convention,” the former first lady told reporters early in the day. And yet, she said, some of her delegates “feel an obligation to the people who sent them here” and would vote for her.

Kennedy’s speech was an implicit appeal to her delegates – and the 18 million voters who supported her in the primaries – to swing behind Obama.

He said the country can meet its challenges with Obama. “Yes we can, yes we will,” he said, echoing the presidential candidate’s own signature refrain.

In one of their first orders of business, delegates ratified a party platform tailored to Obama’s specifications. It backs “complete redeployment within 16 months from Iraq,” as well as health care for all, a new economic stimulus package and higher taxes on families earning over $250,000 a year.

“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right,” it said.

As the delegates took their seats in the Pepsi Center, Obama campaigned in Iowa, the first in a string of swing states he is visiting en route to Colorado.

Obama delivers his acceptance speech on Thursday at a football stadium, before a crowd likely to total 75,000 or more. Then he and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, his vice presidential running mate, depart for the fall campaign.

If the opening night’s convention program had a feel-good quality, not so the intensifying campaign outside the hall.

Obama struggled to quash a television commercial financed by an independent Republican group that linked him to a 1960s-era radical – before it could damage his candidacy as the infamous Swift Boat ads helped sink John Kerry four years ago.

He also shipped a new commercial that used humor to depict McCain as an extension of the Bush administration, the latest in a series of negative advertisements by both sides.

“Really can’t explain the price of gas, or what has happened to the middle class,” the announcer sings to the tune of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World.” With McCain and Bush appearing together on the screen, the announcer says, “Do we really want four more years of the same old tune?”

While the White House is the biggest prize of the election year, prominent Democrats expressed optimism in Associated Press interviews about major gains in the fall in races for the House and Senate.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said 70 or more House seats are competitive, the majority of them currently in Republican hands.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said fashioning a 60-seat, filibuster-proof Senate majority was a stretch. But he added that Democrats lead for five seats currently in Republican hands, and several others are competitive.

Howard Dean, the party chairman, rapped the opening gavel precisely on schedule at 3 p.m. Mountain Time – before only a smattering of delegates.

“We are ready to compete in all 50 states in November,” he said, even though Obama has already written off large portions of the South and Mountain West.

Schumer and Van Hollen said only a small fraction of Clinton’s delegates remained unreconciled to Obama’s triumph in the bruising primaries of the winter and spring.

Perhaps so, but they were vocal about it, and officials said one of the issues under discussion was whether to permit a noisy floor demonstration by Clinton’s supporters when the former first lady’s name is placed in nomination on Wednesday night.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the eldest child of the late Robert F. Kennedy and a former lieutenant governor of Maryland, said the animosity that some Clinton delegates feel toward Obama is worsening. “There’s a moment that you want to enjoy your bitterness,” she said, although she emphasized that she is supporting Obama.

Obama told reporters that his former rival and her husband, former President Clinton, “couldn’t have been more clear” in their support for his candidacy.

But the sniping was impossible to miss.

“I’m getting a lot of calls and e-mails, especially from women, who are quite upset that she was not vetted (for vice president) even though senator Obama said she was on the short list,” said Lanny Davis, a longtime Clinton loyalist.

All the talk about disunity was grating on some.

“To stay wallowing in all of this is not productive,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

“So we can talk about this forever, or we can talk about how we’re going to take our message to the American people, to women all across America, to see the distinctions” between Obama and McCain.

And is it me or does the crowd sound bored?