AddieStan

Screen capture from Crooks and Liars Here he goes...he wants us to know that he's met people like us...people whose parents or grandparents came over from the old country. Of course, he couldn't pass up the opportunity to exploit the story of a man, a Latino, a non-citizen and U.S. Marine, who was wounded in the Iraq conflict (which the president convinced the country to accept based on a pack of lies.) Your blogstress, though of immigrant stock, knew only the U.S.-born generations of her family. But of his grandfather, who fled to America to escape conscription in the tzar's army, le père de la blogstresse , discussing the current debate over immigrants, said, "When my grandfather wanted to come over, all he had to do was get on the boat." Of course, that's when the nation was desperate for factory workers, and before unions won a minimum wage and an eight-hour day for workers. Today, an employer would have to give a documented worker overtime after eight ...

What with the soldiers, the drones, the satellite cameras, the motion detectors, the biometric devices, your blogstress wonders, are they trying to keep the Mexicans out, or preparing the infrastructure for keeping the rest of us in?

It will be technology, the president implies, that will really solve the illegal immigration program. We'll use drones, aerial photography and motion sensors. Yesterday, on "Meet the Press," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for a worker program authenticated by biometric means, such as retinal scans. Sounds like a boon for the nation's defense contractors, no? (Hey, isn't that the sector where the Bahrainis finally got a contract?)

The president is insisting that the National Guard will not be used in a law enforcement capacity at the Southern Border. So, then, what will they be doing? Building the fence? Filling out paperwork? What?

For decades now, says the president, America has failed to take full control of its border. And guess what? adds your blogstress. We never will.

While the wags wag away about the future of Time magazine, they have fixated on word from the honchos that the successor to Time editor Jim Kelly, who is said to be on his way out, will "come from the outside." And so the inevitable names of Tina Brown and Adam Moss are being bandied about. Your blogstress, however, speculates that while the magazine's new editor may well come from outside the magazine, this person may very well be lurking amid the upper ranks of Time Inc. And it will be a surprise -- no one will have seen this one coming. Of course, your cybertrix is way out on a limb here, but she suspects that Time is on her side. Need a hint: Tell Barbra Streisand to tune up her pipes and start warbling her theme song.

Cheney asks Libby, on a copy of Wilson's op-ed piece, if Wilson was sent "on a junket by his wife," CIA operative Valerie Plame. The notated newspaper clipping was entered into evidence on Friday by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It was Vice President Richard V. Cheney, we learned yesterday , who pushed the National Intelligence Agency (NSA) into its data-mining venture on the phone calls of virtually every American, according to The New York Times . According to the Times 's Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau, only too happy to do the vice president's bidding was Gen. Michael Hayden, the president's nominee for CIA director -- despite the reticence of the NSA's attorneys. From Shane and Lichtblau: For his part, Mr. Cheney helped justify the program with an expansive theory of presidential power, which he explained to traveling reporters a few days after The Times first reported on the program last December. Mr. Cheney traced his views to his service...

Well, whattaya know? Moammar Qaddafi is our friend. That's right, mes amis , Secretary of State Condaleezza Rice has announced that the United States of America is normalizing its relations with oil-rich Libya, the North African land of the nomadic Bedouin tribes, once known to Americans primarily as a haven for terrorists. Most notably, Libya was implicated in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 , which killed everybody on board. MSNBC quotes Secretary Rice as follows: “We are taking these actions in recognition of Libya's continued commitment to its renunciation of terrorism and the excellent cooperation Libya has provided to the United States and other members of the international community in response to common global threats faced by the civilized world since September 11, 2001,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement. Wonder who's getting the contract to build the new embassy the U.S. plans to erect in Tripoli. (Halliburton? Bechtel?)

Visit the breakaway republic this evening during the president's speech for your blogstress's real-time commentary. Advance word is that he will call for militarizing the U.S. border .