AddieStan

If one lives on Capitol Hill (which happens to be the location of your blogstress's Oppo Factory), the approach of Memorial Day is marked by the relentless flatulence of the Harley Davidson motorcycle, squadrons of which besmirch the serenity of Our Nation's Capitol each year at the end of May. The two-wheeled noisemakers are invariably mounted by overweight people with bad hairdos who think it their patriotic duty to subject the citizens of Washington, D.C., to a panoply of offenses to the senses, which somehow add up, in their carbon-monoxide-addled minds, to a solemn homage to the nation's war dead. Speaking of the war, your blogstress has gone and really stepped in it by stating, on TAPPED , her opposition to a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq (even though it's the conflict she hates the most). Your comments are welcome, mes amis , but please hold the epithets.

Melissa Silverstein of the Women's Media Center has posted her first entertainment blog entry for Huffington Post , where you will be able to find her musings on culture high and low. For her opener, Melissa tells us of a new documentary about Mukhtaran Mai , the Pakistani woman who defied local authorities to prosecute the men who gang-raped her on the order of a tribal council. The case now sits before Pakistan's Supreme Court, which is having a little trouble functioning these days, what with dictator and U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf having sacked the chief justice, a move that has sparked underreported violence throughout Pakistan over the course of the last month.

Your blogstress, alas, has been much too busy making a living lately to attend to her life's work of making the world safe for libertines. For instance, she has not been able to find a minute to craft a witty take-down of Newt Gingrich 's hysterical commencement address to the 2007 class of Liberty University, part of the legacy left behind by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell . For Newt's part, the serial adulterer decried a culture of "radical secularism" that has gripped the nation. (Read more here , in an amusing piece by Michael Shear . You cybertrix prays that Newt enters the Republican presidential race. What fun that would be! On a more serious note, you'll surely want to reconsider the legacy of Rev. Falwell in light of this thoughtful op-ed piece by your écrivaine 's dear friend, Hans Johnson and his good friend, William Eskridge . The Falwell funeral will commence at 1:00 p.m. at Rev. Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. You can watch it ...

...there's the Christian Newswire . Today, at The American Prospect Online, your blogstress shows you how the White House is using your tax dollars to add to the bottom line of a religious-right p.r. operation run by a former spokesperson for murders of doctors who perform abortions. (And you were just upset about the $1 billion spent so far to advance "abstinence-only" sex education.)

In case you did not know, dear reader, your blogstress is never more than a degree or so removed from every major story taking place in Our Nation's Capitol. Take, for instance, the imminent departure from the World Bank of Paul Wolfowitz , our man fighting corruption in the Third , er, undeveloped , er, underdeveloped , er, developing world, where he had hoped, one day, to install an Iraq-style democracy in every Godforsaken country for the betterment of Western contractors and their client states. (That would be us, as in U.S.) Oh, yes, but what of your blogstress and the Bank? Well, unfortunately, when your cybertrix worked there, she was in no position to give her girlfriend an enormous raise (though she was, from time to time, in a position that encouraged her girlfriend to assume an elevated pose). And as for your Webwench's boyfriend...well, never mind. Back when your écrivaine toiled at the Big Bank, she, like most of the American administrative help, was designate...

Posted here, without comment -- well, not much, anyway -- is the transcript of a most remarkable segment of MSNBC's "Scarborough Country," featuring the quick-minded John Ridley vs. Jersey's own Steve Adubato , who has a nice head of hair. SCARBOROUGH: It‘s unbelievable. And, you know, let me give you one more example of double standard, sort of these P.C. days. At a graduation ceremony at Howard University on Saturday, Oprah Winfrey said her grandmother told her she hoped, quote, “She would get some good white folks to work for her.” And then Oprah said to that class, “I regret she didn‘t live past 1963 and see that I did get some really good white folks working for me.” Steve Adubato, my gosh, just fill in—-pick the race, and just fill in a white person saying that about any other race, and that white person would be off the air, would they not? ADUBATO: In a heartbeat, Joe. Oprah gets away with all kinds of things because, first of all, she‘s not disgusti...

At The Guardian , now edited by former American Prospect editor Michael Tomasky , there's a terrific piece by Michelle Goldberg in which she reveals the segregationist roots of the Moral Majority salesman, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell . In today's Washington Post , Hanna Rosin offers up a generational look at the post-Falwell religious right. Among those she cites as the movement's next big things is the very scary Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Today, the Rev. Jerry Falwell bid farewell to the earthly plain and wafted into the arms of his Maker. Hopefully the Maker, presumably now in face-to-face contact with her errant son, can correct the son (as only a mother can) on his ridiculous assertion that she made the entire Universe in a week. Where, you may ask, has gone your blogstress's customarily gentle disposition toward the recently deceased? Well, mes amis , your Webwench has her human foibles with which to contend, and she has yet to transcend herself to forgive the reverend for blaming the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the likes of her and her compatriots. Let us revisit the appearance of Rev. Falwell on the television program hosted by his rival, the Rev. Pat Robertson , on September 13, 2001: JERRY FALWELL : The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this. PAT ROBERTSON : Well, yes. JERRY FALWELL : And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the h...