Sunday Roundup

This week brought both the exhilaration of watching our country make progress on the road to a more perfect union, and the disappointment of watching it stumble back. On Tuesday, the misguided "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy officially ended, finally allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. A day later, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, a black man accused of killing a white police officer more than 20 years ago, despite what GOP Rep. Bob Barr called the conviction's reliance on "the skimpiest of evidence," and, in the words of former FBI director William Sessions, "pervasive, persistent doubts" about Davis' guilt. The day after that, at the latest GOP debate, a gay soldier's question about DADT drew boos from the crowd and silence from the candidates, who returned to arguing over which of them is most opposed to government intrusion into the lives of citizens -- lethal injections aside, of course.