A Kansas judge has granted a request by Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Edward Manning to change her name to Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, a small vital change for which Manning had been "waiting for years....because it’s a far better, richer, and more honest reflection of who I am and always have been." Though she has yet to receive requested transgender health care and remains in an all-male facility, Manning is "optimistic that things can - and certainly will - change for the better."

"Hopefully today's name change, while so meaningful to me personally, can also raise awareness of the fact that we trans* people exist everywhere in America today, and that we must jump through hurdles every day just for being who we are."

Epic fail by the NYPD, who ingenuously invited Twitter users to post presumably friendly photos of themselves interacting with police officers tagged #myNYPD, and instead got bombarded by over 10,000 tweets an hour showing New York's Finest punching, beating, strangling, bloodying and otherwise brutalizing them. What we've got here is failure to communicate.

“The NYPD is creating new ways to communicate effectively with the community. Twitter provides an open forum for an uncensored exchange and this is an open dialogue good for our city.”

Proving the ragged hateful fringes of the country live on, Pennsylvania residents beset by a rash of burglaries woke up to flyers announcing a new neighborhood watch program launched by helpful members of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who say they are NOT a hate group but a "patriotic white Christian organization...exalting the Caucasian Race and teaching the doctrine of White Supremacy," but this doesn't mean "we are enemies of the colored and mongrel races." In Virginia, meanwhile, residents found "Diversity=White Genocide" messages Sunday in their kids' Easter eggs. Sigh. They were reported as "outraged," so there's that.