AddieStan

Sometimes your blogstress thinks that Larry King gets a bum rap. He's always accused of asking softball questions, but that's not really the case. He just asks hard questions in an extraordinarily annoying, mincing manner. Anybody who watched him last night interviewing Vice President and Mrs. Cheney will know what I mean. During the interview, Cheney asserted that, as of Thursday, the Republicans had enough votes to pass the Bolton nomination in the Senate with an up-or-down floor vote. Fifty-seven, to be exact, which ain't exactly the 60 he'll need to end debate. He also took shots at the Dems for blocking a pre-Memorial Day vote: There's been a lot of talk these last few days since they put together a sort of gang of 14 that negotiated an arrangement on the judges that somehow now we've entered a new era of bipartisan cooperation that lasted about 48-hours, and the Democrats filibuster Bolton. But I think we'll get him through. He's a good man. H...

More analysis of the filibuster. Michael Tomasky, on the Web site of The American Prospect (which he edits), explains why he thinks the compromise deal is acceptable . Your blogstress still reserves judgment. NOTE: Interestingly, a range of opinion on the filibuster deal is displayed on The Prospect site . Kuttner is not impressed.

Let's give a little wave to the Dems for showing enough discipline in the ranks to delay an up-or-down vote on the nomination of the dreadful John Bolton to the post of U.N. Ambassador. Your blogstress asks for only un petit signe , since the Dems are holding out for some info on Bully-Boy that the Administration refuses to cough up [material on Bolton's requests for info on State Dept. employees gleaned through wiretaps by the National Security Agency (NSA)]. After the Administration gives the Dems the goods, says Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, they'll allow the vote to take place. How come? The guy's a nightmare. Why not keep him out by any legal means necessary? Liberal Oasis offers a thoughful break-down on why this maneuver is nothing over which to dance the Snoopy dance. On his Washington Note blog, Steve Clemons fills in an interesting bit of the backstory . It seems that, as ranking member of the Senat...

Herewith the first in an occasional series whereby your blogstress makes note of stylistic trends in punctuation, linguistic notation and latter-day usage. It will run as a companion series to the yet-to-be-introduced AddieStan occasional feature, Lexiconography, wherein terminology coined in the think shops of Our Nation's Capital will be scrutinized, often with suggestions for alternative appellations. Today's observation centers on the clever use of a font feature usually reserved as an editing tool: the strike-thru. Weary of plodding through the thicket of Orwellian terms employed by the right-wing, liberal writers--at least those in the outsider communities--have found a way to deflate such ridiculous terms so as to reveal their true meaning. First appears the actual meaning of the term in a strike-thru font, and then its rhetorical form as deployed by the right. (It is alternatively used as an implied subliminal subtext.) Dig this, from Confined Space : One of our favo...

Speaking of the Great Compromise, the writing of satirist Tom Burka on this subject is priceless: Senate Republicans to Reject Nuclear Option in Favor of Biowarfare Senate Republicans who feared that they would not get the 50 votes they needed to destroy the filibuster spoke of abandoning the so-called "nuclear option" in favor of biological or chemical warfare. "We should just gas all of them," said Sen. Rick Santorum of the Democrats, almost immediately after he had called them Nazis. Sen. Santorum later told critics that he had meant "sedating all of the Democrats with a non-toxic inhalant." Tom's work is found on his blog, Opinions You Should Have .

Is this a good thing or a bad thing, this act of comity on the future of the filibuster? On the one hand, the filibuster lives to see another day, and the traditions of the Senate are temporarily preserved. On the other hand, three truly frightening judges now ascend to the federal bench. Of these, Priscilla Owen of Texas has received the most attention for her exemplary judicial activism that is, at once (to steal an idea from Molly Ivins), both theocratic and plutocratic. Far more troubling to your Webwench is the specter of Janice Rogers Brown of California occupying the D.C. circuit court, to which most cases regarding the operation of the federal government are brought. Here's Rogers Brown on the virtues of government: "Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of ...

What with her pesky day job, multiple social commitments and erstwhile singing career, your blogstress has had barely a bustier-clad moment to look up, never mind put words to her blog. Among her other endeavors is this recent piece for The American Prospect Web site on why one issue must trump all others right now: saving the United States Constitution. Even for queer folk, your cybertrix places this burning issue ahead of gay marriage, a cause in which she deeply believes (for those who are the marrying kind, natch). Your thoughts, dear reader?

Your blogstress has said many a rosary awaiting the reply to the probing question posed by Swiss Watch. Here, at last, we display a carefully parsed reply--well, the only reply received. Our good friend, Marimba Man, writes: I'm afraid that if I leave the Catholic Church I'll burn in hell. Aren't you? Well, actually, your cybertrix harbors a greater fear of being sentenced to loll about in Heaven, wearing something white and shapeless, plucking a lyre to a beatless tune. Vive l'existentialism!