Time has the details, but the top line is:

When given a choice, 61 percent of Americans say they are more concerned about the government enacting new anti-terrorism policies that restrict civil liberties, compared to 31 percent who say they are more concerned about the government failing to enact strong new anti-terrorism policies.

Only 32 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. government can prevent all major attacks, down from an average of 40 percent in 2011 and 41 percent in 2006. And by contrast with polls taken in the wake of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, when only 23 percent of voters polled showed reluctance to give up civil liberties to protect terrorism, 49 percent said they were not willing to give up such rights, as opposed to 40 percent who were.

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Talking about how President Obama’s advisers dismissed the notion of a veto because the bill passed both the House and Senate with veto-proof majorities, I listed some progressives who voted for the bill, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Maxine Waters. I also included Rep. Barbara Lee, which was really surprising to me. Surprising, because I was wrong, and she didn’t cave.

My larger point stands: Although the White House blames the overwhelming congressional vote for its inaction, had the president made voting against the bill a priority for Democrats, the bill would likely still have passed, but not with a veto-proof majority. It only got 41 “no” votes, 29 of them Democrats. (Here's the final vote.) Now that the FAA’s been protected, we’ll likely see other carve-outs – but none will protect Head Start kids or Meals on Wheels recipients. Those of us who thought the August 2011 debt-ceiling "compromise" that led to the sequester deal was "a sugar-coated Satan sandwich" were right.

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I batted 1.000 for that cycle, but it was easy. In 2016, Republicans won’t be facing a Democratic incumbent, so somebody has a shot. I recently wrote that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will never be president, due to his out-of-control anger issues, but candidly, I think that’s my riskiest one yet.

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This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

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Of course right-wing bloggers hailed King as the winner in the debate – he wasn’t – and one sad sack even called Ellison “the jihadi Democrat.”

The fact is, we need more Keith Ellisons in Congress. Not just because he’s a great progressive voice, supporting the president but challenging him strongly on his questionable austerity politics, but also because he’s a patriotic American who’s also a Muslim. He's crucial right now.

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So I’ve found it a sad commentary on GOP rebuilding that there’s been so much talk this week about the likelihood and desirability of a Jeb Bush candidacy. And apparently one influential Republican, his mother, Barbara, agrees with me.

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“I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important,” Paul declared. “That your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

Even though I disagree with Paul on virtually every other issue and generally consider him to be kind of a joke, I’d have been happy to be proven wrong. Maybe he had a conscience. Maybe he would become a much needed civil liberties leader on the right.

Alas, I haven’t been proven wrong. Mr. Filibuster, the tribune of civil liberties, now says that drones should have been used against the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston – not only that, he told Fox’s Neal Cavuto they should even be used against someone robbing a liquor store.

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Now, on the eve of the opening of his presidential library and an apparent Bush-rehabilitation tour, starting with a Diane Sawyer interview Wednesday night, Bush faces a kinder, gentler American public. According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, Americans are now split on the former president, with 47 percent approving of his performance and 50 percent disapproving. He’s still underwater, as the pollsters say, but that’s not a bad jump in four years. He’s even climbed on the economy, with 43 percent now approving of the job he did, while 57 percent stayed tethered to the reality-based community, and still disapprove.

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Tsarni’s rant wasn’t exactly what law enforcement might have advised: A soothing person giving young Dzhokhar a reason to come out of his hiding place alive, and to cooperate with officials in revealing whether there may be more hidden bombs as well as what his and his late brother Tamerlan’s motives were.

But it was a window on an ancient American story: the anguish of immigrants when one of their own becomes notorious, and shames not only his family, but his entire ethnic group.

“He put a shame on the Tsarni family. He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity,” the uncle raged. “It has nothing to do with Chechnya.” To reporters questions, he answered: “We’re Muslims, we’re ethnic Chechens,” and he went on: “Of course we’re ashamed. They’re children of my brother. Who had little influence of them.”

This wasn’t the classic testimony of a family member, declaring love for the accused and shock at the accusation. Although he hadn't seen his nephews since 2009, Tsarni declared flatly:

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President Obama let Mark Barden introduce him before his angry Rose Garden reaction to the failure of the Manchin-Toomey compromise, and to me that signaled a new, long-term, bare-knuckled and visceral approach to the issue of guns. Barden reminded us that the motto of the gun-control group he co-founded, Newtown Promise, is, “Our hearts are broken, but our spirits are not.” That’s got to become the animating drive of a nationwide movement to fight the National Rifle Association and its allies, on every level. This defeat, however crushing and shameful, is just a beginning.

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So it was big news when he decided to hook up with Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey on compromise gun control legislation expanding background checks and closing the so-called gun-show loophole. When Manchin announced that he was working on such measures, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent said it represented “real movement in the right direction” and might even “give cover to all of the other red state Democrats who are skittish about embracing this common sense step.” Sargent was also encouraged that the NRA darling said he was discussing the measures with the NRA.

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But on a day when the forces of violence have clearly achieved a temporary victory – the forces of good always win in the end, as Patton Oswalt beautifully notes -- our failure to combat the most common source of violence in our culture, the proliferation and easy availability of guns, seems particularly tragic. The fact that today is also the sixth anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre adds just another layer of poignance to the news. While xenophobes obsess about a possible Muslim or al-Qaida role in the bombing, we ignore the most obvious ways to keep ourselves safer: by cracking down on automatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and the loopholes that let evil people kill so easily.

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My first trip, I was only 17. The family of one of my best friends was moving to Bethesda, Md., right after our graduation. So he and I and our mutual best friend, a funny teenage triangle, drove one of the family cars east. My mother had just died, and I knew with certainty that she never would have let me make that trip alone with two boys. She loved those boys, she knew they were good boys, but she could rarely get beyond appearances. My grieving, distracted and much more open-minded father, on the other hand, gave me his blessing. It was the first tangible result of my mother’s absence, and it was good and bad. I was free; I was also unmothered, untethered.

We bombed across Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana and into Wauseon, Ohio. The desk clerk at the roadside motel wasn’t sure what we were up to when we asked for two rooms, but made sure I was the one getting the second room, by myself (I was). I could hear the noise from the turnpike, and I didn’t sleep well. Suddenly I didn’t like the way freedom smelled: like the disinfectant they used in my mother’s hospital room on top of old cigarette smoke.

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Chicago isn’t technically along I-80, but I had to make the detour, since my trip west to San Francisco 28 years ago began there. I knew I could stay with my friend Jim Rinnert, who has an amazing house with his partner Brent. Long ago they gave me an invitation to stay with them that wouldn't expire.  Jim and Brent are dog people – they always have several adorable, eccentric rescues, and they were excited to meet Sadie. “You’ve always been a dog person – without a dog!” Jim tells me once he sees me and Sadie together. It's true -- I loved Jim's dog Bo when he used to take him to In These Times. The company of a dog compensated for the sometimes delay in paychecks. And Sadie utterly loved Jim and Brent.

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She thought this drainage ditch was another creek and made a run for it (I put her back on the leash):

One stop came in lovely Newton, Iowa, the childhood home of Charles Murray – I won’t hold that against Newton -- as well as Maytag headquarters. We had Sunset Park to ourselves in a cold rain:

So, at one point I broke down and listened to Rush. You know, even the paranoid Sean Hannity sounds a little jauntier. Rush actually seems depressed. He was inveighing against Michelle Obama comparing herself to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old Chicago girl killed in gang violence in January. Obama’s speech was incredibly moving; NPR played long clips of it and she sounded as though she was fighting tears; listening to her, so was I.

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It was hard to leave my friend Mary’s house Wednesday morning once we heard there was going to be snow all day across Nebraska. Both fireplaces were lit, there was coffee and muffins, Sadie was happy with her pack, the gorgeous Golden Retrievers Max and Malie, and I was headed to Nebraska? Why?

A word about Mary. I met her through Open Salon, she was one of the fantastic originals, and we connected through our writing right away. She came to our crazy Salon party at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, where Glenn Greenwald and Duncan Black cavorted with Joe Klein (no, they didn’t cavort, although they were all there) and Arianna Huffington came for a minute and left her lovely sister Agape while she departed in a limo for dinner with celebs (which was all good) and Gov. Ed Rendell dropped by and a bunch of Open Salon people came and they were pretty much my favorites. There was Dave Cullen, of course, my writer on the Columbine school shootings, still a year or two away from his award-winning book, and I’m sure there were other people, and then there was Mary.

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I complained in my last post that it’s been hard to meet people since I’m averse to leaving Sadie alone in a hotel room. But in Evanston I met a drunk welder in a cowboy hat as soon as I checked into my dog-friendly Best Western. “Hey, good lookin’,” he said, and I can state categorically that I was not good looking at that moment: dirty hair, no makeup, boots still salty from our trip to Bonneville Salt Flats.

(Oh, here’s Sadie, before she got salt poisoning.)

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On the dog park campaign: I found a great one in Auburn, Calif., along with a great meal at Lsuda’s (hindsight: had a good turkey sandwich; should have had a salad. Lots of steak to come.)

Development keeps hurtling at you as you cross from California to Nevada. Outside Reno there was a sign for a law firm: “Bankruptcy Walk-ins Welcome.” Around Sparks there was a DUI billboard. And then it got kind of empty.

About 10 minutes after I lost KNBR a sign said “No services 57 miles.” And even though I didn’t need no services, I felt untethered.

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