Security has been so tight at the Fleet Center that even delegates have sometimes had difficulty getting inside.

Hope Campobello, a New Jersey delegate, was on her way back into the Democratic National Convention when she was detained by security personnel because she refused to surrender a liquid. It is prohibited to bring liquids into the convention. As a result, Ms. Campobello missed John Edwards' acceptance speech.

"Hope was on the way," her husband Gino Campobello said. "But she was too damn thirsty to give up her Diet Coke."

Ms. Campobello had managed to get the Diet Coke through the metal detectors, over the barbed wire, and past the Royal Canadian Mounties when a bunch of police dogs, carefully trained to detect soft drinks, sounded the alert.

Hope refused to give up her Diet Coke because Diet Cokes, which are somehow sold by Verizon inside the Fleet Center, cost thirteen dollars a can.

John Edwards, always a champion of the tired and thirsty, refused to give up. "Hope is on the way," he said.

"I don't know. I think Hope got lost or something," said her husband, an hour or so later. "Maybe she just gave up and went home."