AddieStan

Though she's hardly the first to contest the use of this oxymoronic term, the president's speech last night demands a return to the critique. Particularly maddening to your cybertrix is the term's acceptance by many in the news media and in the political arena, as if it were the proper name for a conflict. The term "War on Terror" is a clever construction by Republican rhetoriticians. While nurturing the post-911 fear that lives in so many of us, the phrase paradoxically conveys the idea that we are fighting to stamp out that fear. Think about it, though. Terror is an emotion--not a fighting force, nor even a battle technique. Terrorism, on the other hand, is a strategy/technique used by the enemy to manipulate outcomes that are essentially political in nature. War is, by its very nature, terrifying. Hence, a "War on Terror" is a clever bit of newspeak. By appropriating the administration's sinister rhetoric, the news media do the president's...

Given the choice, last night, between jamming with some jazz men or listening to the president offer his latest rationale for why we're in Iraq, your blogstress chose the jam. Which doesn't mean she has nothing to say about the president's speech, if only to remark on the utter shamelessness of the man. While president spun out his latest half-truths about why Americans are dying in the fertile crescent, he was no less craven in his exploitation of 9-11 than was Karl Rove in his slander against Democrats last week. Yo, prez, the reason we're fighting terrorists in Iraq is because you virtually invited them there. But you know that. One can only hope that the American people will show themselves to be something better than than the dolts their president apparently thinks them to be.

The Supreme Court these days has your blogstress humming a Kinks tune: Girls will be boys and boys will be girls It's a mixed-up, tumbled-up, shook-up world Given the rash of bizarre decisions to emanate from the temple just down the street from your Webwench's Oppo Factory, you've got to wonder, just what are they smokin'? Livin' with Mary Jane Beginning with smokin', The New Yorker 's Hendrik Hertzberg is a must-read on the high court's pot verdict in the case Gonzales (as in A.G. Alberto) v. Raich (as in pain patient with a doctor's prescription for the offending substance): To make sense of Gonzales v. Raich, a Supreme Court Decoder Ring, available with three box tops from Original Intent Cereal, would be a valuable accessory. The decision, which struck down the legal use of marijuana for medical purposes--even in states where the voters had approved such use--was no triumph of the right. Rather it was a victory granted, more or less, by what H...

And speaking of the Republican National Convention, Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft is blogging about a fascinating trial regarding a protester accused of kicking a security guard at the Republican National Convention. (Your blogstress's readers will recall this as the convention that called for round-ups of protesters who were held at a nasty building on the Chelsea Pier and not charged with anything.) Jeralyn rightly calls her readers' attention to the incident inside the convention hall, witnessed by many , of a young female protester getting roughed-up inside the convention hall for standing while wearing a garment that featured anti-Bush slogans.

Nine-eleven is the best thing that ever happened to Karl Rove, and he apparently knows it. With the war in Iraq wearing thin on the national morale, Rove, in a speech before the Conservative Party of New York State, chose to launch a weapon of mass distraction by virtually accusing Democrats of treasonous behavior in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Patrick Healy of the New York Times reports: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State. Then he really got mean: Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the moti...

Hans Johnson's latest column in In These Times is a must-read, especially for anybody who doubts that the most freedom-hating, ideological bunch of thugs to ever staff the executive branch are running amok over the Constitution. Check out Hans's piece, Scott Bloch’s Sad Saga .

As a public service, your net-tête here displays the text of the First Amendment. Commit it to memory please, because it soon may be redacted: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Who knew that the First Amendment posed such a threat to the republic so as to require its stamping out in the guise of a burning flag? Yes, the flag-burning amendment is back, having passed the House yesterday afternoon. Though the passage of such expressions of contempt for the Constitution has been standard-issue in the House for some time, in the past, the Senate could be counted on to do the right thing. Alas, not this year. (Long live Terri Schiavo .) When it comes to the trampling of rights via the Patriot Act, the rationale is always the need to deter terrorists before they inflict another wound on the order of 9-11. So what is the rationale for stomping the First Amendment at its root, in our nation's founding document? The sacred nature of the flag, we're told. Your blogstress does not recall a single Founder writing of the sanctity of the U.S. flag. In fact, your cybertrix seems to recall that the Framers were extraordinarily careful to avoid words like ...

Hard on the heels of the Senate's apology for its inaction on the once-widespread practice of lynching African-Americans, a Mississippi jury has at last convicted the ringleader of crimes against humanity guilty of killing three civil rights workers in 1964. That the verdict was manslaughter and not murder has evoked a mixture of reactions among even family members of the three martyred men. Ben Chaney, brother of James Chaney--the one African-American among the three--said that the verdict indicated things were changing in Mississippi, and that he had hope. He also poignantly conveyed the feeling of this 82-year-old mother that the verdict indicated acknowledgment that her son's life "had value..." On the other hand, Rita Bender, the widow of Michael Schwerner, was having none of it, as quoted in today's New York Times : "The fact that some members of this jury could have sat through that testimony, indeed could have lived here all these years and could ...

Yes, your blogstress knows she has some consistency issues with regular posting. But with a nasty summer bug infecting her upper respiratory tract, and still having to go to that pesky day job, your cybertrix has been a bit short on energy for her numerous extracurricular activities, of which blogging is merely one. Though it's a bit late for comment, your Webwench has to express her astonishment that, by way of apologizing for having failed to act during the practice's 70-year heyday against the lynching of African-Americans, the Senate could only muster a voice vote in favor of an apology for its criminal negligence. That means that either there were senators who voted for the apology who were afraid to let their constituents know that they did so, or that senators who voted against the measure who were too yellow-bellied to do so before the eyes of the nation. Either way, it's just awful. Here in Our Nation's Capital, we have a wonderful thing called C-SPAN radio ...

photo: Geoff Harper Your blogstress performs at an undisclosed location.

Speaking of poets, this just in: the incomparable j. scales (poet, singer, musician, songwriter) has been added to the entertainment line-up for this Saturday's D.C. Dyke March , an annual Gay Pride event that has spread to cities throughout the country since its inception in Our Nation's Capital a dozen years ago. If you're lucky (or you stuff enough singles in the leg pockets of her cargo pants), j. just might perform her cult hits, "Maybe She Thought" and "Does Yr Mama Know", from her debut CD, "ohm".

E. Ethelbert Miller has an excellent new poem on his blog, E-Notes . Do check it out. And while you're there, your blogstress recommends wandering around the rest of Ethelbert's site , where you will learn about everything from poetry to baseball to jazz to gentrification in Our Nation's Capital.

Perhaps a day late and a dollar short, some Democrats are questioning the compromise of some of their so-called "moderate" peers that was crafted to avert the Republicans' use of the option they've termed "nuclear" on the matter of the filibuster, long a Senate tradition. In the Washington Post, Charles Babington reports on a protest by the Congressional Black Caucus of the confirmation of the atrocious Janet Rogers Brown to the D.C. circuit court. "Our problem with the compromise is the price that was paid," Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said yesterday. She and other Congressional Black Caucus members plan to march into the Senate today to protest the impending confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown. Note that Norton, despite her office in the House of Representatives, bears the title "Delegate" and not "Representative," because the Congress has deemed the citizens of the District of Columbia--mostly black people and other ...

Welcome to the debut of your blogstress’s long-promised and eagerly anticipated occasional feature, Lexiconography , wherein your cybertrix examines the rhetoric of the day for its etymology, wit and/or effectiveness, with sporadic suggestions for alternative wording when warranted. Today’s winning entry warrants no alternative phrasing; it is a true gem of literary insult in its deployment of the unexplainably discarded term "wing-nut" as shorthand for "right-wing nut." (Note the moving hyphen. Check your style guide.) In Michael Tomasky’s excellent piece on right-wing revisionism and selective reporting, he notes, in reference to the trial of Hillary Clinton fundraiser David Rosen, " the galloping accelerando of wing-nut anticipation. " Sweet, n’est-ce pas ? Now, get out there and use it! For the punch line on the Rosen case (the guy was acquitted), click here to read Tomasky at The American Prospect Online .

At the risk of sounding like a major fan of "Larry King Live," your blogstress feels compelled to note last night's remarkable show. Dan Rather had been the scheduled guest--reason enough for a journalist to watch, given the circumstances by which the Texan was forced from the CBS News anchor chair. But in the wake of the stunning revelation by Mark Felt's family that their patriarch was the famous Watergate source, Deep Throat, King added an extra hour with Woodward and Bernstein . Most fascinating was both men's insistence that nobody, not even they, truly knows the full scope and details of the Watergate conspiracy. As noted here yesterday, the timing of the Felt revelation is exquisite, given the administration's vilification of Newsweek for the use of an anonymous source in the Koran-flushing item run in Periscope several weeks ago. Appearing after the first hour of Larry King with Woodward and Bernstein, Rather made note of how the Nixon administra...

Just how delicious is it that Deep Throat has chosen to reveal his perhaps befuddled self at the very moment when the Bush Administration is trying to slam Newsweek for its use of an unnamed source in its infamous Koran-flushing item? Scrumptious, mes amis . Absolutely scrumptious. Now, if the progressive movement had a decent spinmeister in its ranks, s/he'd be out there right now, demonstrating all sorts of parallels between the Nixon and Bush Administrations (penchant for secrecy and invasion of your privacy; political use of the FBI; enemies list-- Helen Thomas likely on both lists). Of course, that would be if the progressive movement had a decent spinmeister in its ranks. In the meantime, your blogstress will have to fill in. Speaking of your cybertrix (and you know we must), she herself has a dark secret to reveal: back in the days when she was a mere Selectrix (think indestructable IBM product), she performed the critical function of periodically receiving a locked bri...