AddieStan

cross-posted from The Huffington Post The killing of George Tiller , a doctor who performed late-term abortions, will likely be attributed to some lone and deranged individual, acting on his or her own. (As I write, the suspect remains at large.) Indeed, Operation Rescue, the hold-no-prisoners anti-abortion group, issued an immediate statement from Operation Rescue President Troy Newman , decrying Tiller's shooting as "a cowardly act." In fact, the hands are many in the death of George Tiller, some more directly than others. Take Ann Coulter , for example. I watched her describe , to a church full of right-wing activists, abortion-clinic doctors and health care personnel who were murdered as either having been shot, "...or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle." And she's still out there today, spewing the same bile with violent force. Several weeks ago, President Barack Obama 's commencement address at ...

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is stunning on many levels: She's the third woman to serve on the high court, the first of Latino descent and the first to grow up in public housing. On her own merits, Sotomayor is a deserving nominee. Yet in his choice of Sotomayor, Obama has also made a brilliant tactical move -- one that not only shores up his standing with the Latino community and the women's rights community, but also serves to further divide the beleaguered Republican Party. In discussions of this nomination, much will be said about the debt Obama owes to the Latino community for his 2008 electoral victory. As Politico 's Ben Smith recently wrote : [McCain] got 31 percent of the Latino vote to the 44 percent that George W. Bush took in 2004, according to exit polls. And it was enough to put much of the West and Southwest out of reach for the Republican Party, to give Florida to the Democ...

Subsequent segments of press conference found here . So grateful to finally reach the 100th day, so that the media may come up with a new meaningless thematic obsession. (Time to stop counting days and get to the business of living a sober life.) Because she was out reading her poetry at an open mic, your blogstress did not watch the president's press conference in real time, a circumstance she would have once deemed unthinkable. Your écrivaine is uncertain of just what this means, except that perhaps now that the country appears to be in capable hands, she no longer finds her vigilance to be quite so necessary. Nonetheless, your Webwench could not entirely look away, and so midnight found her watching the video on her computer, marveling at the fact that it was possible to lie on a couch, netbook perched on knees, and watch tiny moving pictures (with excellent sound) that way. (Your cybertrix is sometimes easily amused.) President Obama 's customary elegance was in eviden...

Why, President Obama's economic program, according to himself (per his recently concluded speech at Georgetown University ). They are: * new rules for Wall Street that will reward drive and innovation * new investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive * new investments in renewable energy and technology that will create new jobs and industries * new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses * new savings in our federal budget that will bring down the debt for future generations What else has five pillars ? Islam. They are: * Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad; * Establishment of the daily prayers; * Concern for and almsgiving to the needy; * Self-purification through fasting; and * The pilgrimage to Makkah for those who are able. Get ready, mes amis , for the right-wing conspiracy theorists to revive the "Obama as crypto-Muslim" t...

Follow your blogstress on Twitter for bon mots on President Obama's first address to a joint session of Congress: http://twitter.com/addiestan

However unfortunate it is for President Obama to be caught flatfooted by the sudden withdrawal of Commerce secretary nominee Judd Gregg , it is a boon to women. As stated here previously, Gregg has an anti-woman, anti-civil rights record , and had no business leading an agency ostensibly dedicated to fairness in commerce. Further, Gregg's withdrawal relieves Obama of any need he felt before to sacrifice our priorities in the name bi-partisanship, as Gregg has claimed ideological differences -- including over the stimulus package -- as his reason for pulling out. And best, it opens the position to be filled by a woman. I nominate Laura Tyson , a trade whiz who chaired President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. So far, Obama's Commerce secretary nominees are like the drummer in Spinal Tap -- they just explode. Maybe the nomination of a woman -- one far more qualified for the post than either of the president's two male nominees -- will alter that dynamic.

He may not have offered the most profound prayer we ever heard, but Rick Warren, the right-wing preacher from California, offered a prayer at yesterday's presidential inauguration that was designed to bring people together. For this, he will surely take some heat from among the more political preachers of the right. Your blogstress is thankful for favors, small and less so...

It's been a busy week for your blogstress. Her adopted city hums with the excitement of the impending inauguration of Barack Obama, and given the prime location of her Oppo Factory on Capitol Hill, she has become suddenly popular. That aside, there have been no small measure of serious matters to which she must attend. First up: the promised repeal of the ban on queer folk in the military, which Barack Obama's spokesperson, Robert Gibbs, affirmed again last week, only to say a few days later that what he really meant to say is that they would get to it eventually. At The Guardian's Comment Is Free site, your cybertrix makes the case for proceeding sooner rather than later: CLICK HERE TO READ 'I'M BARACK OBAMA AND I'M HERE TO RECRUIT YOU' The Rick Warren controversy, it seems, continues to roil. Tomorrow your écrivaine will discuss, with Mary Glenney on WMNF in Tampa, her own process for coping with the presence of bigotry on the inaugural platform, eve...

The great E.J. Graff of the Schuster Center for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis, offers the following suggestions for Secretary of Commerce: …Carol Goldberg, former CEO of Stop&Shop, major grocery chain in New England …Rosabeth Moss Kanter, high-flying Harvard Business School prof …Evelyn Murphy, former Lt. Gov of Massachusetts, Ph.D., economist, author, founder and president of WAGE (Women are Getting Even)

In our Viagra culture, it does not surprise your blogstress that women could easily be left out of the economic-stimulus-qua-jobs-building program that President-elect Obama has promised us. With their emphasis on infrastructure and green retrofits for job creation, the ideas being batted about appear to heavily favor jobs whose prerequisite skill sets belong largely to men. In the meantime, our health-care and educational infrastructures are also coming undone; these are sectors where women predominate, and little attention has been given to job creation in these human spheres. Linda Hirshman, with whom your blogstress sparred most vigorously during the primary season, first brought this state of affairs to our attention on the op-ed page of the New York Times not very long ago. Now, a group of women, including feminist economists, have launched an online petition to the president-elect, politely asking that half of the population be dealt into the new New Deal. Here's the t...

Your blogstress is still wrestling with the decision of Barack Obama (whom her feminist self supported all the way back in the primaries) to anoint the right-wing, anti-gay, anti-woman Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the presidential inaugural ceremonies. Mon Dieu, mes amis ! How to make sense of it? One hopes that Mr. Obama has a trick or two up his sleeve in bestowing this honor on one who has compared pro-choice people to Holocaust deniers, equated gay marriage with polygamy and marriage between an adult and a child (and later denied having done so), and preaches that wives should submit to their husbands. To many liberals, Warren's words are hard not to take personally, especially if you're a woman and/or a member of the LGBT community. This is no mere game of "dozens"; reports come in daily of LGBT people assaulted or killed for no other reason than being queer; meanwhile the terrorism of anti-choice forces has reduced abortion, in many are...

The pushback by the LGBT movement against the anointment of Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama has been such that Warren felt compelled to go before his own congregants to clarify his views on gay marriage, taking great pains to say that he never equated gay relationships with incest or polygamy. (He just said he disagreed with allowing gays to marry, just as he disagreed with allowing adults to marry children, brothers to marry sisters, and men to have more than one wife. Not that he was equating them or anything.) Here's Pastor Rick: CLICK THESE WORDS TO VIEW VIDEO Meanwhile, on "Hardball" last night, Mike Rogers of blogActive and PageOneQ masterfully reframed the conflict over Obama's invocational choice as one that sees the LGBT movement at its most powerful, ever. Check out Digby's recounting at Hullabaloo : ...Rogers took a very unusual tack and said that [the well-known Reverend Eugene]...

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post There a lot of things one can say about Sarah Palin, but this one cannot be disputed: by one measure, at least, she is true to her word. Sarah Palin is not going anywhere. That, you'll recall, is what the Alaska governor and former vice presidential candidate told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas on the day before Halloween, "I think that if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken, that -- that would bring this whole -- I'm -- I'm not doing this for naught." When her remarks were widely interpreted as indication of a likely 2012 presidential, she artfully dialed back. The day after the Vargas interview, she told me , "I'll be campaigning for John McCain's re-election in 2012." That commitment now wiped off the slate by reality's eraser, Palin has set off on a charm offensive that will serve her well should she choose to toss her hat back...

Here's a transcript of my Election-Night liveblog for The Huffington Post . I've cleaned it up a bit. Your blogstress so hates to learn that her slip is showing. Adele Stan: Election Results Liveblog (11/04/2008) 3:26 p.m. Adele Stan: The religious right, it seems, is already looking past today's election, looking to rally the base once more around the culture wars. Tonight the Family Research Council will host its first-ever election-night Webcast, following not just the presidential and congressional-level races, but paying special attention to those all-important ballot measures -- like California's Proposition 8, the passage of which will end the right to same-sex marriage that California's people won via a court decision several months ago. The issues touted in the teaser video sent around via e-mail by FRC's Tony Perkins include "abortion, gambling, man-woman marriage and stem-cell research." Below find the code for doing your own oppos...

cross-posted from The Huffington Post Can you be a supporter of Sarah Palin and still be a feminist? Well, I guess you could call yourself a feminist -- that is, if you think that, as a woman, you still have rights equal to those of a man when: * You do not have the right of self-determination over your own body * Even if impregnated through rape or incest you are forced to bear a child * You're told you're entitled to equal pay, but forbidden to sue for it under most circumstances * Information on how to prevent your own pregnancy is withheld from you in sex education classes * If you're a spiritually powerful or otherwise unusual woman, your harassment can justified as protection from "witchcraft" In that case, I guess it could be said that Elaine Lafferty, a former Ms. magazine editor proudly stumping for Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, is a feminist. Otherwise, it just doesn't add up. In an apparent diversion from answering the questi...

This is not just a mean ad put out by the McCain campaign, though that it is. This is not simply a dishonest ad, though it's truly that, too. This is an evil ad. It makes a mockery of people's beliefs and presents Barack Obama as a false messiah. (That's anti-Christ to you, Bub. "So what?" asks Bub. "Oh, and that's Beëlzebub to you, missy.") Two artfully clipped comments from Barack Obama appear here. The one in which Obama's says he's become a symbol omits the humble part of Obama's statement -- the part where he says it's not about him. When asked why he received such an enthusiastic reception in Germany, Obama replied that the crowds weren't applauding for him, they were applauding what his candidacy symbolized: "America returning to its best traditions." McFaustus cuts the quote to make it look like Obama is aggrandizing himself. Later, the ad presents Obama's joking characterization of how Hillary Cl...

It may be tempting to think that your blogstress has simply abandoned her cause for the bohemian lifestyle of which she dreams, but temptation disappoints. Non, mes amis , your blogstress continues to spend her days consuming bon-bons in her dressing-gown while watching C-SPAN. These days, however, the results of her research are more often reported on the blog she now has at The Huffington Post: www.huffingtonpost.com/adele-stan Do tune in. Most recently your cybertrix broke the news of the apparent endorsement of Barack Obama's Afghanistan plan by the Afghan ambassador to the U.S.

Check out your blogstress's debut on The Huffington Post as a featured blogger commenting on why it would be such a bad idea for Barack Obama to name Hillary Clinton as his running mate -- especially bad for women. CLICK HERE TO READ "HILLARY AS VEEP A BAD MOVE FOR WOMEN"

And so Barack Obama continues his Taoist path to the presidency, delivering a speech tonight that failed to note the obvious: for the first time, an African-American has clinched a major-party nomination. After Hillary Clinton refused to graciously concede -- delivering a speech that sought to hang her 18 million voters as a sword over the head of Barack -- Obama could, perhaps, be forgiven for beginning his valedictory with a sourpuss. Nonetheless, his response of praise for the former first lady only advanced his own cause. I do think that all the hysteria among pundits and journalists about the fact that she did not concede tonight is just that: hysteria. They're all frantic over the fact that she used that opportunity to ask her supporters to write to her via her Web site to tell her whether or not to quit. Oh, come on, people. What do campaign Web sites primarily exist for? The collection of dough. Her campaign is in debt. She needs more, and luring in her most dedicat...

Watching John McCain speak tonight from Louisiana, throwing down a gauntlet to Barack Obama , it became apparent that McCain's election theme will be that Obama refuses to go to Iraq to meet with Gen. Petraeus to see the good work our troops have done there, even as he promises to negotiate with bad guys like Iran's President Ahmadinejad . Obama needs to go to Afghanistan and challenge McCain to do the same. There, he should meet with the under-resourced troops who pool their won dollars to help get stuff done for Afghans -- sort of like inner city schoolteachers here.