AddieStan

Your blogstress was much amused to find yet another reference to her American Prospect piece on John Roberts , this time by the eminent scholar George Weigel on a Web site called Tidings. Weigel writes: Shortly after Judge Roberts' nomination, President Bush was accused of "playing the Catholic card" in an opinion piece widely circulated in the blogosphere. "Playing the Catholic card" is, to be frank, either a vulgar appeal to ancient prejudices or code-language for "someone who can't be trusted to take Planned Parenthood's position on abortion." Well, Mr. Weigel, if you're going to bandy about accusations of vulgarity, it is only fair to credit the blogstress with her craft. Another curiosity of Weigel's piece, written in the form of "An open letter to Patrick Leahy" (the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee), is his apparent lifting of central argument from a press statement issued by the far less eloquent Wil...

While your blogstress was dallying in her summer doldrums, all manner of remarkable developments have occurred without her sage comment. Truth be told, your Webwench seems to be suffering some form of outrage fatigue. Happenings which, under any other administration but Bush II, would have elicited great hue and cry, are met with a wimper by your cybertrix, who has been known to mutter, "Well, that's just what they do." How else to explain the failure of your net-tête to note, last week, the reported firing of a career employee of the Justice Department for daring to challenge the demands of higher-ups to downplay a study that revealed aggressive police tactics used against black and latino drivers? Here, the New York Times ' Eric Licthblau reports : The demotion of the official, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, whom President Bush named in 2001 to lead the Bureau of Justice Statistics, caps more than three years of simmering tensions over charges of political interference a...