AddieStan

If you've never heard of Susannah McCorkle , then David Hajdu's masterful review , in The New Republic , of a new McCorkle biography by Linda Dahl , might not sing to you. But then again, it just might: I pictured McCorkle aging into a figure like Blossom Dearie, an odd bird revered after a long career as an endangered species. Indeed, you might just love it for the sentences. Alas, McCorkle was not to see old age, having thrown herself out of the window of her 16th-floor Manhattan apartment several years ago, after she lost her regular singing gig at the Algonquin. McCorkle was a singer who worked with jazz musicians, but you wouldn't exactly call her a jazz singer. And she wasn't exactly a typical caberet singer, either, possessed, as she occasionally was, with the bombast born of a rock 'n' roll past. But, wow, could she put over a song, as she teased her own emotional color out of every note she chose to sing -- sometimes a little flat. I saw her perform...

Yesterday Sen. Max Baucus , ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, issued a minority report on the use of right-wing, tax-exempt non-profit organizations to provide, in an apparently illegal fashion, services in exchange for donations -- a practice forbidden to exempt organizations by the tax code. Most delicious, aside from the report's exquisite timing, is the exploration of an axis of evil composed of Grover Norquist , Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff . For background on this all-but-forgotten facet of the Abramoff scandal -- the one that shows the religious right and so-called secular, economic conservatives in cahoots with a sent-by-Central-Casting villain -- refer back to your blogstress's March post on the whole, ungodly mess. More of your Webwench's wisdom on this seedy affair (not that she would have any expertise in seedy affairs) may be found at TAPPED , the blog of The American Prospect Online.