AddieStan

One reporter, whom your blogstress could not identify, asked the president's new press secretary something like this: Why won't you address the USA Today story on the NSA's use of the phone records of ordinary Americans? Snow's reply? "Because it's inappropriate."

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting BellSouth's assertion that it did not turn over records to the NSA, and that the company "has no evidence," in the AP's words, of a contract with the super-secret spy agency: The regional Bell, which offers telecommunication services in nine Southeastern states, said Monday it had conducted a ''thorough review'' and established that it had not given the National Security Agency customer call records. On Thursday, USA Today expanded on earlier reports by other news agencies of a massive database of the nation's phone call and e-mail traffic being amassed by the National Security Agency. The USA Today piece claimed that Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T had all turned over phone records to the NSA, but that Qwest Communications had refused.

Amid all the intrigue about the FBI monitoring the calls of reporters, the NSA monitoring the calls of the rest of us, and the vice president's handwritten talking points that apparently led to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, your blogstress has found it difficult to concentrate on bigger things, like what the heck is going on with the global economy? Oh, mes amis , do not groan. Your loving Webwench promises to make this painless, and perhaps even amusing. But she asks your forbearance as she begins with a rather dry report in yesterday's New York Times : Under U.S. Pressure, China Allows Yuan to Gain By KEITH BRADSHER Published: May 15, 2006 HONG KONG, May 15 — China allowed its currency to strengthen today past the psychologically significant level of 8 to the dollar for the first time since 1994, in a concession to political pressures from Washington and the dollar's own weakness. The actual rise in the currency, known as the yuan or renminbi, was tiny: not...

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 .

From Tim Caggiano , your blogstress's comrade in creative chaos, comes this missive, written in response to last Sunday's Spirit feature , which focused on Curtis White's genius piece in the April issue of Harper's , titled "The Spirit of Disobedience: An Invitation to Resistance." On the extreme right we have the fear-mongering people of the word -- the church, the legal dogmatists and fundamentalists avec/sans head wrap. Take B-16 [Pope Benedict XVI],who early in his reign took troubles to denounce situationalists or anyone else with a little intellectual imagination. On the liberal left we have rationalist, humanist, big-D Democrats with utopian sugarplums a-dance in their heads. Some good ideas -- but, oh, those pesky unforseen circumstances. What's a mother to do? Well why not dredge the Bible, starting from jump. Adam and Eve get the boot from Eden for being too big for their intellectual britches. Trying to play God, for God's sake. Would that ...

Earlier this week, the Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert brought a tear to your blogstress's eye as he finished a New Testament quotation begun by his guest, former Secretary of State Madeliene Albright. If you've managed to escape seeing Albright interviewed this week, you are surely not watching political TV, mon ami , and are probably doing something quaint like reading a newspaper or watching Spike. As you may have guessed, Albright is promoting her new book, The Mighty and the Almighty , a tome about religion and the state. In this role, Albright has proven herself to be as charming as she is quick on her feet, and her dance with Stephen Colbert on last Thursday's Colbert report was one of the most entertaining bits of television your cybertrix has seen in some time. Your Webwench invites you to watch the video on the Comedy Central site. Herewith, your net-tête 's very own transcription of her favorite bit from the interview (what your écrivaine won...

In a day as filled with spying and intrigue as this, your blogstress finds herself loosening her stays so as to avert a case of the vapors. The Washington Post is reporting that the FBI conducted, this morning, a search of the home of Dusty Foggo , the CIA big caught up in the defense contract bribery (with a side of hookers and tobacco) scandal. If Patrick FitzGerald wants to get some TV glory for his said-to-be-impending indictment of Karl Rove, he'd best wait until next week, n'est-ce pas ?

Most disturbing, thinks your blogstress, is today's news from the Washington Post that a majority of Americans appear to be down with the NSA's snooping of their phone traffic. In writing his piece on the poll, reporter Richard Morin is careful to note the results as an initial reaction from the public. However, still to be determined is whether the poll would have a different result if the public was aware that the snooping is being done without court warrants in apparent violation of the Fourth Amendment. In earlier polls on the program -- before yesterday's revelation of the full scope of the spying on regular Americans -- respondents said they approved of the NSA's domestic spying. But when asked if they were okay with it being done without the required warrants, the public said it was not .

Your blogstress's pretty head is spinning, what with the torrent of revelations of executive-branch intrigue and corruption filling the front pages of the nation's newspapers today. So vast is the conspiracy landscape that what would have been, on another day, an A-list story -- the tale of the CIA's former No. 3 involved in what appears to be a bribery scandal involving prostitutes and cigars (did they learn nothing from Bill Clinton about the dangerous combination of sex and cigars?) -- has been pushed down on the list by the story of the Bush administration's spying on virtually every American. However, a brilliant bit of writing on the Goss scandal legacy in today's New York Times should not be missed. Herewith the opening graf of the article, from reporter Mark Mazzetti, Career C.I.A. Figure Is at Eye of Scandal : In a scandal featuring a cast of characters with nicknames like Nine Fingers and Duke, a former C.I.A. undercover operative called Dusty has becom...

Gen. Hayden just uttered his first public words since news broke in USA Today of the NSA's spying on virtually every American whose phone records it could access -- phone records that now comprise what is described as the largest database in the world. Emerging from a meeting with Sen. Mitch McConnell, Hayden was asked by an offscreen reporter to speak to "the legality of the measures taken by the NSA" in its domestic spy program. Hayden abruptly shut the reporter down, saying that everything the NSA does is legal -- perhaps, following the Nixon adage, because the president says it is. Meanwhile, as your blogstress toils over her iBook, President Bush is addressing the graduating class of Biloxi's Gulf Coast Community College. During the course of his speech, Mr. Bush lauded a mother-and-son team who are both graduating today, and who lost a respective son and brother "while fighting terrorists over the Horn of Africa." Your cybertrix had missed the U.S....

Your blogstress agrees with Matt Stoller that Qwest Communications deserves to be rewarded for its lonely position as the one telecom that refused to provide the National Security Agency (NSA) with the customer information the agency was demanding for the domestic spying program it conducts for the White House. Qwest is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Here's its latest earnings report . (Do be aware, dear readers that the company is not entirely pristine. The last CEO left after admitting that he had misrepresented earnings.) Depending on where you live, you may also be able to procure your long-distance service from Qwest , or use them as an ISP.

At Americablog, John Aravosis calls our attention to the revelation, unveiled last night by USA Today , that the White House domestic spy program, conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), is worse than most have feared, and its scope stands in direct contradiction to President Bush's assertion that only calls and e-mails that involved one overseas party were targeted. Non, mes amis, non! Qui est le target de ce programme? Vous, mes amis, vous! That's right, darlings, there's not an American who's not in the NSA's sights. And it's all been done with the cooperation of telephone service providers -- with one notable exception: Qwest, the Colorado-based telecom. However, if your service is provided by AT&T, Verizon or BellSouth, you're totally screwed. As part of his post, Mr. Aravosis provides handy links to instructions for encrypting your e-mail. It's really come to that. Can't wait to find out what Gen. Michael Hayden, who oversaw...