AddieStan

How do you know when it's an election year? When some yahoo puts up a bill for a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the American flag. Thankfully, that amendment failed yesterday in the Senate, likely laying it to rest until the next big election year (2008). Now, don't get your blogstress wrong -- she is not a fan of flag-burning. She herself has never desecrated an American flag, or any other sort of flag, or any other sort of symbol, be it prefaced by the words national, religious or sex. Desecration of any sort, she thinks, is an act expressive of such hatred as to visit some mighty bad karma on the desecrator. And karma or not, who wants to live a life animated by a fuel so toxic as rage? Rage is the fossil fuel of the emotional world; it emanates from a primitive origin, pollutes all who come in contact with it, and generally raises the temperature of a given environment to destructive ends. Your Webwench, though admittedly a hybrid, seeks to shift he...

So much of import has taken place since your blogstress left Our Nation's Capital (to which she has thankfully returned) for the wilds of ruburban Massachusetts, to which she traveled for the celebration of the college graduation of her delightfully Webwench-like niece, Megan . Among the week's notable occurrences was the publication by The New York Times , the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post (among others) of reports on the Bush Administration's unprecedented spying on the banking records of thousands of American citizens. This revelation was followed, within hours, by an ostensible foiling of an ostensible terrorist plot, whose ostensible plotters were, conveniently, poor black men with long hair -- just the sort of folks whose mug shots strike fear into the hearts of middle-class white people. graphic: 1010 WINS Yesterday, President George W. Bush and his vice president, Darth Vader Cheney, used their scheduled public appearances to condemn the media -- The...

Another gem from your blogstress's pal, Geoff Harper (a.k.a, The Bassman):

Geoff Harper, the friend your blogstress calls The Bassman (for his groove on the big fiddle -- not on the high seas), smells something fishy in the tale of the disappearance of Washingtonian publisher Philip Merrill, who turned up floating inanimately in Chesapeake Bay due to what the media are calling an apparent suicide. From Thursday's Washington Post : Merrill, 72, was found with a shotgun wound to the head and a small anchor tied around one or both ankles, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Writes Bassman : If I were going to commit suicide, I would take my boat out on the bay, tie an anchor to my foot, and jump overboard as I shoot myself in the head with a shotgun. Yes, I think that must be the best way to do it.

Photo: Der Spiegel /DPA As if we needed any further proof that our commander-in-chief just doesn't get it, President George W. Bush flicked off protests by tens of thousands in Vienna -- where he and his secretary of state are meeting with European Union leaders, in order to make an ill-advised remark on the gender of the U.S. secretary of state and the Austrian foreign minister. While the remark itself wasn't blatantly offensive, one might term it as exhibiting the soft bigotry of low expiation. Herewith, from Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times : [Bush's] visit, aimed at expanding trade and spotlighting unity, was marked by protests and calls within Europe for United States to shut down its detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Vienna today carrying banners reading "World's No. 1 Terrorist," a reference to Mr. Bush, whose policies on Iraq remain hugely unpopular here. Stolberg reports that Austri...

What your blogstress won't do for her devotees! For the last two days, mes amis , she has been swimming in a sea of alphabet soup, trolling through the roils of HTML code and Perl, vexing her pretty little head in order to bring the satisfaction of the AddieStan experience to a whole new level for you, her reader. As this work is not yet complete, her posting may be a bit intermittent today and in the coming days, so she begs your patience, mes cheris . Do bear in mind what they say comes to those who wait. (Hint: ask Martha Stewart.)

This week will see the launch of Radio Free AddieStan, a podcast featuring discussion, interviews and the writing, acting, musical and voicing talents of your blogstress's colleagues, Tim Caggiano and Frank Gilligan (who also serves as our brilliant producer). Stay tuned as we fine-tune the technology for your listening pleasure. Radio Free AddieStan is a joint project of Beltway Sewer Productions and Breakaway Radio.

From Neela Banerjee of The New York Times comes this ray of hope and specter of controversy: The Episcopal Church elected Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada as its presiding bishop on Sunday, making her the first woman to lead a church in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Bishop Jefferts Schori is a controversial choice by the Episcopalians, not just for her gender (pockets of the Anglican union, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, still reject the ordination of women), but for her support of the ordination of Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who is gay, as bishop of the church's diocese of New Hampshire. Addressing the controversy surrounding her selection, her eminence offerred this, according to Banerjee, at a press conference: "Alienation is often a function of not knowing another human being," she said at a news conference after her election. "I have good relations with almost all the other bishops, those who agree and those who don't agree with me. I...

Speaking of Memorial Day 2006, while the denizens of New Brunswick, New Jersey, endured the bad rhymes of so-called Christian rock, we in the nation's capital were rocked all weekend long by the unmuffled din of Harley Davidsons roaring through our streets with no regard for the fact that some of us actually live here and would have liked to hear our jazz and conversation during our family picnics. Your blogstress fails to appreciate the sound of a Harley; take the muffler off a Japanese bike, and it wouldn't sound all that different. In fact, your cybertrix once had a Pinto with a bad exhaust system from which issued a reasonable approximation of the Harley soundscape. While your Webwench may be annoyed by the annual Rolling Thunder rudenessfest in Our Nation's Capital (not to mention the sight of that many fat, furry white people convening here all at once), she cannot hope to match the dudgeon in which her friend Frank Gilligan (your blogstress's partner in musical...

Your blogstress's old friend, Mike from Jersey, responded to the AddieStan post, Sermon on the mound , with his own anecdote from the university town of New Brunswick: I have my own faith story: last weekend we were at our town’s Memorial Day parade. Singing on a flatbed was a Christian rock band. The parade seemed to stall with these guys right in front of us. The singer was wailing about Jesus and saviors and what-not for about five minutes while tattooed proselytizers were distributing church literature. The tattoos were all bible verse and crosses à la Max Cady ("Cape Fear"). It was pretty wild.

For New York-area transplants to Washington such as your Webwench, the hiring of Erik Wemple, editor of Washington CityPaper to lead the venerable, if tumultous, Village Voice , was an exciting turn of events. However sorry we were to lose Wemple's editorial prowess in the service of the city where real people actually live that comprises Our Nation's Capitol, it was gratifying to think that Wemple's sensibility would permeate the Voice , which has been locked in a struggle with its new owners for its very soul. Well, it seems as if the souless have prevailed ; Wemple has rescinded his acceptance of the post at the helm of the Voice . Good for him for having the integrity to refuse the job on any but his own terms. The Apple's loss is our gain, as Wemple stays on at CityPaper .

If her devotees had at times seen your blogstress's dire warnings about the state of the U.S. Constitution in a Chicken Little light, your cybertrix finds herself sadly vindicated by yesterday's decision by the Supreme Court, which renders the Fourth Amendment -- the one that ostensibly protects U.S. citizens from unreasonable search and seizure -- virtually toothless. No longer are police required to announce themselves before barging into your home with a warrant. (And, of course, the Great Decider has already determined that his minions do not need a warrant of any kind in order to monitor your telephone calls and e-mails.) From Charles Lane in today's Washington Post : At issue in yesterday's case, Hudson v. Michigan , No. 04-1360, was the "knock and announce" rule, which has deep roots in Anglo American law. In 1995, the court made it part of what defines a "reasonable search" under the Fourth Amendment, without saying how it should be enfo...

If the nation's journalist weren't chilled enough by government spying on their phone calls and " target=resource window>threats of prosecution for the publication of dubiously classified material, today comes word from The New York Times 's Neil A. Lewis that the Pentagon has expelled from the illegal U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, reporters from The Miami Herald , The Los Angeles Times and The Charlotte Observer who had been reporting on the suicides of three inmates, which took place over the last weekend. Lewis's piece is cryptic, but surely more will emerge on this story as the reporters return stateside to write of their ordeal. READ THE L.A. TIMES ON THE GUANTANAMO SUICIDES READ THE MIAMI HERALD ON THE GUANTANAMO SUICIDES READ THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER ON THE GUANTANAMO SUICIDES

President Bush just concluded a Rose Garden press conference intended as a briefing on his surprise trip, made yesterday, to Baghdad. On the subject of a draw-down of troops, Bush used the press conference to address the Iraqi insurgency this way: Don't bet on it; don't bet on American politics forcing my hand [to withdraw troops], because it's not going to happen. I'm going to make decisions not based upon politics, but based upon what's best for the United States of America. In other words, what the American people want will have no bearing on the president's prosecution of the war. Your blogstress also took note of the president's riff on leadership, which he characterized as a determination to succeed at those actions one has chosen to take; he also spoke of willfulness. Ecoutez closely, mes amis , and you will hear not the desire of an executive who seeks to lead his people in their self-chosen destiny, but rather a man determined to make the world ...

The Associated Press offers coverage of the mixed reception received today by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) from the liberal crowd at the Take Back America conference, from which your cybertrix blogs: Clinton's attempt to strike a moderate stance on the divisive issue of the war contrasted sharply with the angry words of another potential presidential contender, Sen. John Kerry, the party's 2004 standard-bearer, who called the war ''immoral'' and a ''quagmire.'' Your blogstress, once an unabashed Hillary fan, now believes that the former first lady suffers from a very bad instinct for timing. Straddling the center, a technique perfected by her husband during his presidency, was a necessity for any liberal seeking to retain power in the 1990s. But over the course of the last few years, the country has moved signicantly to the left -- and it never was as conservative as conventional wisdom would have it. Move with the tao, Hillary, and s...

A spirited discussion, arbited by Robert Borosage, took place today between Michael Tomasky, editor of The American Prospect , and writer Barbara Ehrenreich at the Take Back America conference. The volley focused on Tomasky's premise that, if they care to win elections and generally do the right thing, Democrats need to articulate their vision in terms of the common good. (Tomasky first put forth this idea in his piece , "A Party in Search of a Notion," for the Prospect 's May issue, on which your blogstress has previously riffed .) Ehrenreich appeared to take issue with Tomasky's point, though it was hard to discern on what grounds. Her problem with Tomasky's notion appeared to be that with the gulf that now exists between the haves and have-nots, there's no common ground to be had. Tomasky countered with an anecdote about how President Lyndon B. Johnson presented the 1965 Civil Rights Act to the American people: Johnson introduced the topic in a nat...

Even as an army of liberal bloggers moved themselves from the Las Vegas confab known as "Yearly Kos" to the D.C.-based Take Back America conference, the Kos gathering continued to make news. Here's Howie Kurtz , media critic for the Washington Post: Well, that liberal bloggers' confab in Las Vegas must have been a big deal--the NYT and WP each sent two reporters. That's more important in the gravitas sweepstakes than a bunch of presidential candidates being there, don'tcha think?

Today comes word that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will not be indicting White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, a fact that brough a tear to your blogstress's eye. Still, however fun it would have been to see the Pilsbury Dough Boy do the perp walk in cuffs, your Webwench knows all too well that even incarceration would have done little to spare us from the implementation of old pasty-face's evil genius in the 2006 elections. How, you may ask, does your cybertrix know this? Why, she's from Jersey, silly -- the land where some of the nation's larger cities have been run from jail cells.

Your blogstress reaches her devotees today from the hotel known in Washington as the Hinkley Hilton (so nicknamed because it's the place where John Hinkley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan). What brings your cybertrix to such digs? Why, that would be the annual Take Back America conference hosted by the Campaign for America's Future . Yesterday, your Webwench attended a lively panel discussion hosted by Mother Jones publisher Jay Harris, which included an all-star cast of progressive media types, including the media structure maven Tracy Van Slyke, publisher of In These Times , Cenk Uygur of the Sirius Satellite Radio show, The Young Turks , Robert Greenwald, the filmmaker who has brought vous et moi such gems as "Outfoxed" and "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," and Alex Walker, executive editor of TomPaine.com . It was Harris who, several years ago, convened a group of liberal media types to create a mutually supportive consortiu...

Your blogstress directs her readers to this post at Democrats.com, where devotees can find the text of an NBC story done two years ago by Jim Miklaszewski about how the administration put the kaibosh several times on capturing Zarqawi. At NPR, Mary Louise Kelly does a fascinating piece on geek-com-terrorism-expert Evan Kohlmann, who monitors jihadi Web sites in his pajamas -- for a living. On last night's edition of The Daily Show , Jon Stewart did a piece poking fun at the 17 suspected terrorists arrested by our neighbor to the north for issuing a statement on their hatred for Canada because of its role as a U.S. ally in the Afghanistan invasion. "Afghanistan?" said Stewart. "That was so two jihads ago."