Times sportswriter Christine Daniels says that the transgender community won't let Democrats leave them out of anti-discrimination bill without a fight:

Big miscalculation. The strategy did not yield the usual we-got-ours run for safety. Lesbian, gay and bisexual activists stood alongside their trans sisters and brothers, and together we raised the roof. It was a beautiful noise, let me tell you.

It was so much noise -- about 140 gay and trans rights groups told Pelosi in no uncertain terms that protection for the transgendered needed to stay in the bill -- that she and Frank consented to delay a House vote until later this month. In these intervening weeks, Congress and America need to hear from the transgender people who live and walk and work among them -- you're reading one now....

Gioia Diliberto explores fashion's piracy paradox -- knockoffs fuel innovation but rob designers. And the University of Virginia's Larry J. Sabato thinks it's time the U.S. had a new Constitution.

The editorial board wonders why Rep. Jane Harman flip-flopped on the Armenian genocide resolution. It tells Gov. Schwarzenegger which of the many bills on his desk deserve approval, and argues in favor of the state's Dream Act, which would help undocumented college students.

Readers react to a first hand account of the Blackwater m.o. Ojai's Kathi Smith says "How much more good could have been done if [Janessa]Gans had written her Blackwater story about careening through the streets of Baghdad, terrorizing the populace, as soon it happened, rather than years later?"