Somber morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to what will probably be my last Freedom Friday. Henceforth, I'll be doing the morning roundups on the Arts Desk. In genuinely somber news, Major Nidal M. Hasan, prime suspect in yesterday's shootings at Ft. Hood, was home-grown. WaPo's reporting reveals a rather mundane yet devout religious man who didn't want to see his theological brethren slain in a pointless war, but whose ultimate expression of that anxiety was not only pointless, but grotesque and heartbreaking. In other words: Sick shit begets sick shit.

Prepare yourselves for all kinds of anti-Islam vitriol in the coming days and weeks; stuff that will likely dwarf anti-teabagger sentiments and provide some sort of twisted justification for prolonging our military's stay in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: ‘Hasan Was an Avid Redskins Fan’" »

Gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender activists and civil liberties groups are rejoicing over the Department of Justice’s decision not to appeal a nearly $500,000 award to an ex-Special Forces colonel from Alexandria who lost a job at the Library of Congress a few years ago after reveling that he was undergoing a sex change.

David Schroer had already accepted an offer to become the Congressional Research Service’s terrorism specialist when he revealed plans to begin the new post as Diane Schroer. Library officials swiftly rescinded their offer. Schroer teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union and filed a sex discrimination lawsuit in 2005. A federal judge in Washington awarded Schroer $491,190 earlier this year. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice let the deadline pass for appealing the decision.

Racial profiling that became widespread during the Bush days is still with us, according a new report co-authored by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Despite U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s willingness to talk about race in America and his pledge to end racial profiling, his Department of Justice hasn’t done much to dismantle Bush-era guidelines on national security; Those guidelines not only promote racial profiling by the Federal Bureau of Investigation but create justification for state and local law enforcement agents to do it too, the ACLU charges.

"Racial profiling remains a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the U.S., impacting the lives of millions of people in the African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, Arab and Muslim communities," Chandra Bhatnagar, staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program and the main author of the report said in a press release. "The U.S. government must take urgent, direct action to rid the nation of the scourge of racial and ethnic profiling and bring this country into conformity with both the Constitution and international human rights obligations."

The ACLU made the charges in a report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. To read the press release or the entire report, click here.