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 Library officials swiftly rescinded their offer.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.

Wow. The Library of Congress has now got a twitter account. They have embraced the 100-or-so-character sound bite. They note on their blog:

"Howdy, folks! (Sorry, my Wyoming roots are showing.)  The Library of Congress finally has its own official Twitter feed.  You can follow us here: http://twitter.com/librarycongress

'Library of Congress' was too long as a user name, so in the spirit of Twitter itself, we’ve been truncated.

As I’ve been alluding for some time, we are on the cusp of many more forays into the Web 2.0, and I hope to bring more announcements soon (most likely weeks, not months).  We are going to be pushing some incredible content out to the world in new ways and in new spaces — just a smattering of the millions and millions of digital resources we have online, of course, but presented with the fantastic interactivity of these new Web tools."

Kind of funny that they couldn't use their full name for their account.

Well, not literally, but moviegoers and fans of prog can catch the godfather of strange-rock's most notorious film, Uncle Meat, next week at the Library of Congress.

Surprised to learn that an institution as fundamentally square as the LoC would screen something as inherently controversial as a Zappa flick? (Four of them, actually.) Norman Middleton says, Don't be.

A senior producer at the Library of Congress and the host of the Frank Zappa Mini-Film Festival, Middleton begins his defense of the film schedule--which includes obscenity-laden classics like Uncle Meat, The Amazing Mr. Bickford, Does Humor Belong in Music?, and Motels--by clarifying that Zappa is not obscene--"he's diverse."

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