Minneapolis, like any urban center, has its share of blight. These days, the North Side is considered the sketchy part of town. But a few decades ago, Minneapolis’ skid row was located near downtown, only a few blocks from my home. A locally produced documentary that aired on public television ten or twenty years ago includes amazingly candid footage of Washington Avenue’s denizens circa 1960. Back then, Washington Avenue was a much different place–bars and flophouses lined the street and drunken railroad workers horsed around on the sidewalk and in the alleys. The film’s narrator, a former bar owner who calls himself Johnny Rex, expresses a great deal of affection for these skid row inhabitants and doesn’t dwell much on the part he played in feeding their habits.

The forces of gentrification and time have erased most signs that these places ever existed. Washington Avenue is now lined with condos and coffehouses. And it will probably be completely transformed again in another fifty years’ time.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the tip.

When it comes to achieving full employment of people with disabilities who want to work, the United States still has a long way to go. But things are much grimmer in places like Argentina, where one in three people with disabilities have not even completed elementary and concepts like “reasonable accommodation” are unheard of.

The author of the report states that job opportunities for people with disabilities in Argentina will only improve once they don’t have to “generate  profits” for others. I’m not sure that’s right. Rather, activists and advocates need to help employers understand that people with disabilities can be as productive as able-bodied employees and can usually be accommodated at minimal expense. It requires some employers to be willing to serve as trendsetters and hire people with disabilities, thus demonstrating to everyone else that this is a win-win proposition for the employer and employee.

“Do you think I need a lawyer?”

People ask me that question regularly and I usually give the standard answer they teach us in law school: “It depends.” Not every legal issue requires an attorney’s advice. When I clerked for a judge in Hennepin County, I saw plenty of people appear before the court pro se. Sometimes, people can represent themselves just fine. But in many cases, people would have been better served by having a lawyer at their side. But lawyers can be expensive and, as the Times points out, the recession is forcing more people to represent themselves whether they want to or not.

The judge for whom I clerked did his best to guide pro se parties through the hearing process and to ensure that they don’t get ambushed by opposing counsel. But judges aren’t advocates; I can remember the pained expression on my judges’s face as we watched a confused and sometimes terrified pro se individual struggle to present his or her side of the case. My own rule of thumb: if the other side is represented by counsel, do whatever you can to obtain representation.

This week’s run of Doonesbury features a charming but clear-eyed take on disability and dating. Alex, the comic strip’s resident overachieving and slightly awkward Gen-Y’er, pays a visit to Toggle, a boy she met on Facebook. Toggle also happens to have a traumatic brain injury that he acquired while serving in Iraq. So far, the two of them seem to be hitting it off nicely.

Trudeau has addressed disability issues previously (longtime readers might recall B.D. becoming an amputee while also serving in Iraq) and has done so with wit and a light touch. And in Toggle I see a kindred spirit: a guy who speaks slowly and digs geeky women. Perhaps I should start spending more time on Facebook.

Michelle Bachmann, our representative from the strange and distant lands of the northern Twin Cities suburbs, is doing her darndest to hold her own in the GOP’s current auditions for its new reality series: Paranoid Island. She sees the recent passage of the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act, which expands Americorps, as a precursor to re-education camps for the nation’s gullible youth. Here’s Bachmann in her own words:

I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically-correct forums.

A decade ago, I was an Americorps volunteer for a year. In return for matching law students with pro bono opportunities, I received a monthly stipend that most people would consider a few days’ wages. I don’t remember any forced bus ride to a camp deep in the wilderness where they dressed us up in camo and blasted Clinton speeches over the loudspeakers.

Look, I’m willing to admit that many on the left said some irresponsibly daft things during the Bush years. He was no Hitler and he was not the figurehead of a shadow theocracy. But the pervasiveness of hysterical conspiracy theories like Bachmann’s among much of the conservative base is something to behold. It’s as if Obama’s election gave them permission to revel in their wildest apocalyptic fantasies; the kind fueled by too many late-night viewings of old X-Files episodes. I keep waiting for someone to launch into a rant about the black helicopters kept hidden in secret U.N. bases in Canada.

There are plenty of things to worry about in this world. But when elected officials start espousing delusional drivel, it cheapens both them and us.