1. Keep fighting the good fight Atlanta.

2. The New York Jets won on Sunday. My neighbor Carlo has been dancing the happy dance ever since.

3. Are you ready for the Equality March? And please don’t say the gay press has not said anything about it!

4. Anyone watch the Emmys ? Award shows tire me out, no matter the host. Is that a sign of a crank?

5. Dear ACORN: never give your enemies ammunition in a pr war.

6. For some reason every time I hear Mayor Michael Bloomberg talk about marriage rights I hear someone who will do nothing to make them possible.

7. Not paying attention to the news for a few days always puts me behind.

8. Dear President Obama: no more news shows for about 8 months please. Of course you have an open invite here at 365.

9. Jubilesta is the reason I listen to jazz.

10. This whole alleged terror plot freaks me the heck out.

The gathering was to be Serbia’s first gay pride march since 2001. The previous event received almost no police protection and was broken up by rightist groups.

The planned march was seen a major test for the current Serbian government, which has launched pro-Western reforms and pledged to protect human rights.

But organizers said Saturday authorities have informed them that the march in downtown Belgrade was too risky. Spokesman Dusan Kosanovic says police offered a different venue but organizers decided to cancel the march instead.

Several extremist groups had said they would attack the gathering.

I have nothing to add or say this morning. Today in Washington, DC, New York City, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania there will be memorials to the people who died that September morning eight years ago.

What are your memories and will you do anything to honor the day?

Barely a month into the job and there’s chatter among the political blogs that President Barack Obama differs little from the former president now living in Dallas. The Daily Show host Jon Stewart got the ball rolling on Obama’s first day by noting both men used the same rhetoric in their speeches.

That conversation will only get louder after what happened yesterday.  The lawsuit Mohamed et al v. Jeppsen Dataplan, Inc. involves 5 men who claim they were flown by the San Jose Boeing subsidiary to CIA secret camps and tortured. The case was thrown out last year because the Bush Administration claimed national security concerns. Yesterday when the suit was brought on appeal, by the ACLU, to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the Obama Administration  made the same exact argument.

“A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.”

This dearth of hope and change has the ACLU miffed.

“Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

I really can’t take the ACLU seriously about this. From the famous 2002 speech when Obama came out against the Iraq War to multiple positions he has taken, it’s always been clear Obama is not your standard ACLU liberal. Only “brain-iacs” like Sean Hannity have thought otherwise.

Yesterday columnist Dan Savage wondered who sent the ricin letters to eleven gay bars in Seattle and he thinks he knows the culprit. Oh there is no address and faded high-school picture; Savage is good, but he’s no Hercule Poirot. He’s convinced the terrorist threats came from a gay man.

As Savage notes, the letters lacked the type of Bible thumping condemnation usually associated with Christians who wish to engage in violence.

“The letters strike me as having been written by a very bitter man—by someone who came out, expected that gay life would a glorious cycle of song, and was shocked to discover that gay life—just like straight life—comes with no guarantees,” Savage wrote.

One of Savage’s readers pointed to a line the letter writer used that is plagiarized from a poem called “A Display of Mackerel.” Poet Mark Doty included that in his collection Atlantis, written after his lover died of an HIV related illness.

A bitter literate gay man who  wants to get back at other gays because life isn’t what he expected? Jeesh! I miss 2008 already.

An unknown group called Deccan Mujahideen is claiming responsibility but security officials have not confirmed the veracity of that statement.

Although the court found no evidence of direct funding for violent individuals, it was clear that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development had been sending money to Hamas after it was deemed a terrorist organization by the United States (in 1995).

It’s not a surprising conviction, but for the past few days a close friend of mine has been sending emails about the recent border closures in Israel. According to The Guardian, even essential food and medical supplies are not being permitted to cross the border into Palestine.

That means that the 80% of Palestinians entirely dependent on food aid have had close to nothing to eat for over two weeks.

I understand that laws against funding terrorist organizations are necessary, and the United States is entirely justified in prosecuting those who continue to send aid to violent organizations. But when the violent organization is also the government of a country it presents new problems.

Palestinian Americans will have trouble supporting their families back home if they can’t send money directly to the government (like many Jewish Americans do for Israel) and international aid organizations aren’t even allowed inside to spend the money they already have on the people who need help.

The conviction of Muslim leaders in Dallas may seem like a victory, but, it is indicative of a great quandary in American foreign policy. How do you support a people when their government is blacklisted and their borders are closed and controlled by an enemy nation?

The population of Palestine should not be punished for Hamas. As many Americans who didn’t vote for Bush know, it’s hugely unfair to blame a citizenry for a few years of bad government.