From TPM:
A new Gallup poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans, 69%, in favor of allowing gays to serve openly in the military — it’s so big in fact, that even self-identified conservatives are for it.
The polling internals show 58% of conservatives in favor, plus 86% of liberals and 77% of moderates, for the overall top-line of 69%.
Fix it. Now. There is no excuse.
Arlington County (as in the government) often says – in promotional posters, event sponsorships, etc. – that it is a bike-friendly place. 
But it’s not always clear to everyone what Arlington County actually does to be a bike-friendly environment.  To help shed some light on that, I’m passing along an Arlington County memo I received earlier today. It’s from March, and discusses a number of events that have come to pass, but I think it remains relevant and will be of interest to many of you:
Date:Â Â March 25, 2009
To:Â Â Â Â Â Â Dennis Leach, Transportation Director, DES
From:Â Â Chris Hamilton, Commuter Services Chief, DES Transportation
RE:Â Â Â Â Â Â 2009 Outreach and Education Efforts to Promote BicyclingThis is to bring you up to date on the staff efforts regarding
calendar year 2009 efforts to promote biking in Arlington. We’re
committed to supporting Arlington’s status as a Silver Level
Bicycle-Friendly City and promoting bicycling as a transportation
option for persons of all abilities through education and outreach.
In response to budget and staff constraints we’re looking at
reshaping some activities, including the Community Bike Ride. Here’s
an overview:Elevating Bike Culture In Arlington. On December 16, we hosted an
inter-departmental work-shop at which nearly 40 staff from DES
Transportation, CPHD Parks and Cultural Affairs, Police, ACPS, CPHD
and others met to discuss elevating Arlington’s bike culture. The
workshop, led by Charlie Denney and a team from Alta Planning
provided best practices from around the world and allowed for
brainstorming on how Arlington could do the same. Next steps include:
setting up a permanent County Inter-departmental Working Group for
Bicycle Issues; prioritizing strategies that can be implemented from
the Bicycle Element of the Master Transportation Plan; expanding the
discussion beyond staff to include the BAC, non-profits, businesses
and the general public; expanding educational and outreach efforts;
implementing bikesharing; and looking into holding Sunday Cyclovia
and other events for 2010.[more after the break]
The Armchair Generalist and his Very Serious Commenters tell us everything we need to know.
Glenn Greenwald asks:
What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people?
This country, if Obama gets his way. Follow that link.
San Francisco City hall – the home of some good old-fashioned American values.
(h/t to James Young, for the inspiration)
I want to know what idiotic “senior administration official” made this statement in the context of justifying the new Obama military tribunals:
One of the senior administration officials said that although federal courts bar many kinds of hearsay evidence, “the hearsay rule is not one of those things that is rooted in American values.â€
This is such an incredibly stupid statement I don’t know where to start.  If one were asked to name off a few of the core foundations of the jurisprudence underlying the American justice system, the principles of hearsay rule would be among them, along with the right to face your accuser and trial by jury. It doesn’t get any more American than that. Unless, I suppose, you’re talking about lynching.
Had the good fortune to spend some time this week talking and thinking about the future of traditional media. There is, as you’ve probably heard, a fair amount of support for various modes of government action. Within that context, I think Dan Gillmor’s got a post worth reading:
But as people decry or laugh off a bailout of newspapers, as the New York Times’ David Carr did yesterday in his column, they should remember that government has never entirely lacked financial influence — and it doesn’t lack it now — over the journalism business.
Governments play major roles in the success or failure of all kinds of business. How corporations do business, and which ones pay which taxes, are decided by lawmakers. But journalism organizations have enjoyed their share of special treatment — and we should be glad, based on our nation’s early history, that they did.
Gillmor goes on with a brief history lesson on the very real ways that government lent a helping financial hand to the press over the years. He does come out against direct subsidies, and suggests where money might best be spent. Check it out.
This is the presentation Larry Lessig gave at the Brennan Center’s Campaign Finance Reform forum last week.  It is well worth your time.
Back in January, I noted that the Bush Administration was imposing a hefty import duty on Roquefort cheese, in retaliation for the EU daring to have some food safety standards. But just last week, common sense and civility broke out:
Food lovers breathed a sigh of relief today when news broke that the U.S. was dropping threatened tariffs on luxury food imports from Europe.
“Cheese war ends, everybody wins,” Foreign Policy declared in its Passport blog, encouraging its readers to enjoy a celebratory cheeseburger.
These taxes–which would have pushed the markup on French Roquefort cheese from 100 percent to a whopping 300 percent–never actually went into effect. But the food world had been making provisions just in case.
Obama saved your cheese. Rejoice.
At the center of that spit of land above is Gwadar, Pakistan. I spend a lot of time with my head pressed against the glass while flying, and see lots of places I’d like to go. But few sights have grabbed me as as much as that view, and Robert Kaplan’s new article in the Atlantic does nothing but increase my desire to go to Gwadar:
Whether Gwadar becomes a new silk-route nexus or not is tied to Pakistan’s own struggle against becoming a failed state. Pakistan, with its “Islamic†nuclear bomb, Taliban- and al-Qaeda-infested northwestern borderlands, dysfunctional cities, and territorially based ethnic groups for whom Islam could never provide adequate glue, is commonly referred to as the most dangerous country in the world, a nuclear Yugoslavia-in-the-making. And so Gwadar is a litmus test, not just for roads and energy routes but for the stability of the entire Arabian Sea region.
One day.
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