AddieStan

Today, mes amis , the breakaway republic of AddieStan requires some maintenance of a technical sort, meaning that your blogstress will likely not be posting today. Fear not, devotees, she will return tomorrow -- goddess willing! Your cybertrix must admit, however, to some dread in contemplating her tinkerings. Technology can, indeed, be a wonderful thing (think: Spandex), but your Webwench being a creature of her senses, she often finds herself flummoxed in the binary world of cyberspace. So let's wish her luck as she endeavors to create an ever-more inviting stop on the information superhighway.

The Washington Post 's Dana Milbank dished about White House press operations on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" last night after Olbermann played a clip of White House press secretary Tony Snow being challenged by CBS newsman Bill Plante over the definition of the term "civil rights:" OLBERMANN : Big picture here. We had dictionary time with Tony Snow at that news conference. We got this memo from the communications director, Dan Bartlett, to the press. He‘s described all the progress that the White House has made on everything from Iraq to immigration, as if we, you know, we‘ve been out or something for the last five years. But does the—does the administration, the White House, still believe its main, if not only, problem is getting its message out correctly? MILBANK : Well, I don‘t think that they believe that. But it‘s the only thing that they can do something about right now. So I—you had this sort of unfortunate thing where Dan Bartle...

The liberal blogs were all abuzz yesterday afternoon over White House press secretary Tony Snow 's comparison of the Marriage Protection Amendment to "civil rights matters." (The proposed Constitutional amendment, being debated today in the Senate, would, if passed, forbid judicial challenges to anti-gay-marriage legislation at both the state and federal levels.) Raw Story has posted the relevant piece of the transcript from yesterday's White House press briefing: WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY TONY SNOW: Whether it passes or not, as you know, Terry, there have been a number of cases where civil rights matters have risen on a number of occasions, and they've been brought up for repeated consideration by the United States Senate and other legislative bodies... BILL PLANTE (CBS News): You mentioned civil rights. Are you comparing this to various civil rights measures which have come to the Congress over the years? SNOW: Not -- well, these -- it -- PLANTE: Is th...

Today heralds the kick-off of Marriage Protection week in the Senate, mes amis , leaving your blogstress to wonder when that venerable institution had become endangered. Has there been a sudden downturn in the fortunes of wedding gown designers? Are the florists suffering for lack of nuptial blossoms? Are the caterers letting go of staff? Why, no, mes cheris , indeed they are not. But the Republicans, standing with the veil yanked from their money-grubbing, treasury-looting, murderous agenda, desperately need an issue for the 2006 mid-term elections, so they have introduced the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment in the Senate, a bill that, if enacted, would amend the Constitution of the United States to protect anti-gay-marriage legislation from the equal rights clauses of all constitutions, state and federal. Muddling through the merde that is his approval ratings, President Bush needs to pacify the religious right he has so riled up with his "guest-worker" (inden...

A mere two blocks from your blogstress's Oppo Factory sits the highest court in the land, where nine black-robed justices reign Supreme. Just across the street from the Court's side entrance -- and the entrance to its underground parking garage -- an 850-pound granite monument displaying the Ten Commandments has been placed in the front yard of a house belonging to a religious right group, in defiance of city ordinances. The Washington Post 's Michelle Boorstein has been on top of this one from the start, and yesterday, with colleague Nikita Stewart, she reported on the continuing controversy: An evangelical Christian group unveiled an 850-pound granite sculpture of the Ten Commandments yesterday at its Capitol Hill rowhouse a stone's throw from the Supreme Court, despite a threat of $300-a-day fines. Faith and Action, which is headed by the owner of the house, the Rev. Robert Schenck, lacks the permits needed to erect the monument, said Lars Etzkorn, associate direc...

Those boy geniuses at PoliticsTV.com have created a Blogger Channel, and today's featured blogger is your very own Webwench. Check her out! And while you're there, run your eye over the blogging done by producer David Grossman.

Just when your blogstress thought that the American religious landscape had reached its peak of fantasmagoria comes word, via The New York Times , of "Faith Nights" taking their place alongside Bat Days and Frisbee Nights. Michelle Boorstein reports that the Atlanta Braves have three Faith Nights planned for this season, while the Florida Marlins and the Arizona Diamondbacks intend to follow suit. Herewith, Boorstein's description of a Faith Night event at a minor league football game: Before kickoff, a Christian band called Audio Adrenaline entertained the crowd. Promoters gave away thousands of Bibles and bobblehead dolls depicting biblical characters like Daniel, Noah and Moses. And when the home team, the Birmingham Steeldogs, took the field, they wore specially made jerseys with the book and number of bible verses printed on the back. As graven images go, bobbleheads are certainly a new twist on the old dashboard Jesus. But if they dare to bobble the Big Ma (a.k.a....

Dana Milbank has a delicious column up today about the dominance of golfspeak at the trial of David Safavian, the Bush appointee who was led out of the Old Executive Office Building last fall in handcuffs for his dealings with the infamous lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. You'll recall, mes amis , that one of the doings that first brought Abramoff into the media spotlight was his sponsorship of a golf outing in Scotland of which former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay availed himself. Earlier this month, a treasure trove of e-mails between Abramoff and others implicated White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, currently under investigation in the exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, in the tangles of the Abramoff web. From Milbank's Washington Sketch column: A thick stack of e-mails between Abramoff and Safavian -- which prosecutors have used to demonstrate Safavian's aid to Abramoff as he tried to acquire GSA properties -- also describes a golfing partnership in which...

MSNBC is reporting that Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, once the darling of the Saudis and a leader of the U.S.-supported mujahadeen forces that defeated the Soviets, has issued a videotaped threat, which NBC says it obtained as an exclusive, calling on Afghans to revolt against the U.S. occupation. Specifically targeted is U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, according to the MSNBC Web site. Although the video is posted here , it has not yet been translated from Dari, the Afghan Persian dialect in which Hekmatyar, a Pashtun, made his appeal.

For those perplexed by the shuffle of the loyal John Snow out of the post of Treasury Secretary to make way for Hank Paulson, Glenn Kellis of Ob:Blog explains all : A friend will help you move... but a real friend will help you move a body . That's the message that today's booting of Treasury Secretary John Snow revealed....Bush needs to move a body... It's a big, fat body and it will take the biggest guns of Wall street and a piano case to disguise it from the public until after the midterm elections. This is a good one, mes cheris ; check it out . Whatever the outcome, it's a relief to finally have Snow's demise complete. It's been a George Raft death scene.

Honestly, mes amis , some mornings your blogstress just does not know what impels her to meet the light of day to examine the nation's news on behalf of her devotees. In the end, it may actually come from some overdeveloped sense of moral obligation. (Yes, bad girls can have morals.) This morning the papers tell us of the first truly onerous decision to come out of the court of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a 5 to 4 verdict against whistleblower protections for public employees. If the Bush administration hadn't succeeded well enough in chilling speech in the government workplace, this decision should finish the deal. Thank you, Justices Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy, Alito and Scalito. From the indefatigable Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times : Although several employee groups raised immediate alarms, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in fact contained the counterintuitive implication that employees might fare better by speaking out as "citizens" ...

This past weekend, Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul erupted in violence after a U.S. military convoy caused a major traffic collision that killed at least five people. More were killed in the violence that ensued, said by some to have encompassed some 2,000 rioters. Even though the U.S. military contends that troops shot only into the air, no explanation was offered for the dozens of people in a Kabul hospital suffering from gunshot wounds. Among the dead -- reports range from between 14 to 20 killings -- was a seven-year-old boy. Carlotta Gall of The New York Times reports : Gunfire rang out as Afghan police officers and army soldiers tried to contain rioters who rampaged through the streets for about six hours, burning and looting a dozen offices, cars and police posts. By the end of the day at least 14 people were dead and more than 90 injured, hospital officials said. It was the bloodiest day in the capital since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. For an account from...

Over the course of the last several weeks, your blogstress has received a stream of e-mail in response to her May 5 essay at The American Prospect Online, which focused on a provocative advertisement about inclusion by the United Church of Christ that was rejected by the major television networks. Drawing particular attention was a single paragraph in your écrivaine 's piece -- an aside, a throwaway, really -- about her own experience of feeling rejected by her own church: In the Roman Catholic Church -- the church to which I was born -- a similar rite forms the central element of the celebration of Mass. At the Methodist service, I was beckoned to partake: "All are welcome at Christ's table," said the minister. In my own church, I am banned from receiving communion for multiple reasons (divorce, fornication, lack of commitment to the heterosexual lifestyle). No one ever asked me for my papers as I stepped up to the Communion rail, but my church's stance is ofte...

If you're not yet convinced, mes amis , that the executive branch has brought the reality of a police state to the federal level, consider this aside from Eggen's and VandeHei's piece on the tension between President Bush and House Speaker Hastert regarding the raid on Rep. Jefferson's offices: Another potential entanglement with the FBI arose yesterday when the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that federal agents are seeking to interview top House members from both parties as part of an investigation into leaks about the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program to the New York Times. This is apparently part of the same probe that is targeting reporters for daring to publish or broadcast information about potential government lawbreaking passed to the journalists by sources. If the FBI was doing its job, mes cheris , it would be investigating the NSA for violating federal law with its warrantless domestic wiretapping. Of course, most of th...

So, with President Bush having arrived at his answer (as posted below) to the constitutional crisis now attending the FBI raid on the congressional offices of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), your blogstress humbly asks her devotees, "What's wrong with this picture?" Bush's solution to his fracas with House Speaker Dennis Hastert over the Justice Department's transgression of the Constitution's separation of powers was to place the material seized from Jefferson's office under seal with U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement who, according to the president , is not involved in the Jefferson probe. While that all may sound well and good, your cybertrix asks her readers to consider just what the solicitor general does (he argues the executive branch's cases before the Supreme Court) and to whom he reports (the attorney general of the United States, to whom the FBI director also reports). If you don't believe your Webwench (and why would you not...

Your blogstress is the first to admit that she has never been much of a fan of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. But these days, he is looking to her like more of a -- well, if not a hero, then at least an erstwhile defender of the most fundamental aspect of our Constitution: the separation of powers . It all began with the FBI's raid on the offices of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), who is alleged to have taken bribes from companies that were looking to do business in African nations where Jefferson had ties. While Jefferson is indeed looking like quite the bad egg, at issue is whether or not the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- an arm of the Department of Justice which is, in turn, part of the executive branch -- as the right to lay siege to the offices of the legislative branch, and remove materials from said offices. The Constitution pretty clearly implies, "uh-uh." Hastert has been leaning on the Bush administration to step in and restrain its attorney general a...

Unless his defense attorneys make a miracle happen on appeal, it looks as though Kenny Boy, as President Bush likes to call him, is going to be spending a long time in prison. The only better result would be if they would send him to a real prison -- not some Camp Cupcake . Lay's co-conspirator, former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, has been spared of some seven or eight counts of insider trading, but he's been convicted of a dozen or so other felonious fraud counts. Now, will anybody look at the links between this massive fraud -- which cost thousand of people their retirement -- and the Bush presidential campaign . With Lay as a major fundraiser , the Bush campaign basically received a high level of donations from people who were flying high at the cost of the jobs of the rank and file, and the retirement income of investors and employees alike. Never mind the losses incurred by the havoc wreaked by Enron on the portion of the power grid that serves California.

CNN is reporting that a verdict in the Enron trial will be announced momentarily. Will former Enron CEO president Ken Lay, George Bush's #1 campaign contributor, face serious jail time?

After the ongoing expectation and subsequent daily disappointment of the unindicted status of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, your blogstress sees some glimmer of justice in yesterday's revelation by the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that Vice President Richard V. Cheney (the "V" stands for Vader; his cosmic first name being Darth, not Dick -- though the latter seems to suit him at least as well) may be called to testify as a government witness. Reporting from David Johnston in today's New York Times : On the issue of whether Mr. Cheney will testify, the brief said, "Contrary to defendant's assertion, the government has not represented that it does not intend to call the vice president as a witness at trial." Delicieux, mes amis, non? Well, not so fast. The guys on NPR are saying that this element of the brief filed yesterday by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is more a posture that says "Just try me" than an in...

Reading the news of the vote by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to move to the Senate floor the nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to the post of director of central intelligence (DCI), your ordinarily serene blogstress is beside herself with emotion that veers from despair to fury. Vous et moi have been abandoned, mes amis , by the majority of Democrats on the intelligence committee who decided to support Hayden. They are: Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Carl Levin (Mich.) and Jay Rockefeller (W.V.). Hayden, you'll recall, is the architect of the Bush administration's domestic spying program -- the one of which he assured the nation was only directed at suspected terrorists who make calls to people overseas. That turned out to be a lie , of course, proven by the big USA Today story that reported the extent of telecom companies' involvement in the scheme, which was revealed to involve the government's snooping on the telephone t...