AddieStan

A colleague on a ListServ in which I participate has pointed out the oddness of the bin Laden video's many minutes of a frozen frame. It just happens to be the many minutes in which "bin Laden" goes on about current events and offers reading suggestions to the American people. You know, I was always a bit suspicious. The recommendation that we, citizens of the Great Citizen, would find redemption in the writings of Noam Chomsky always struck your ecrivaine as odd. Libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism don't seem to make a good match-up with radical islam. (Can't imagine there's a lot of Chomsky on the reading lists at the local madrassah .) Check out the bin Laden video and accompanying critique on Booman Tribune.

Today's anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has a particularly eerie feel to it, perhaps because in 2007, six years later, the anniversary falls for the first time on the same day of the week on which the attacks occurred. It was a Tuesday, and a gloriously beautiful one, at that. At least today in Washington, D.C., we are spared that similarity. The skies are grey and the air quite sticky. The fall-out from the attacks continues to plague U.S. foreign policy, and on that end, your blogstress has a piece scheduled to run today at The American Prospect Online that examines current Pakistani politics in light of that nation's post-9/11 relationship with the world's only superpower.

You may have heard, mes amis , that non-gay Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) yesterday petitioned the Minnesota court "to let him take back the guilty plea he made after his arrest in a men's room sex sting, saying he is innocent but panicked under intense anxiety," according to Reuters . Our friend, the Internationalist -- not a chap ordinarily prone to the evils of partisanship -- offers this in response to Sen. Craig's wide-stance panic: The Republican Truth Deficit should give the sub-prime market a run for its money...The Republicans seem to have trouble telling the truth these days, even as they are resigning... I would think that the pressure to adhere to public expectations (or White House desires) would be off when an official decides to quit. But the truth is taking a hit even as the Republicans are quitting. Senator Craig lies to compound his lies. I'm no attorney, but isn't knowingly filing a false plea perjury? Then when "outed" and pumm...

In case you missed it, there's been a debate bubbling up -- and one bound to bubble over -- about whether or not Sen. Larry Craig was the victim of entrapment by the Finest of Minneapolis when he was arrested there in a men's room after allegedly having signaled his desire to have sex with an undercover police officer. First to pose that question -- and bravely so, considering his credentials as a bona fide liberal -- was Matthew Yglesias , who, noting the foot-tapping, do-you-wanna-do-it signal Craig copped to making, wrote on his eponymous blog at The Atlantic: Now, common sense indicates that the officer in question is correct and Craig's foot-tapping was a cruising signal, but surely tapping one's foot isn't a crime in Minnesota. Whatever Craig intended to do here, he doesn't seem, in fact, to have done anything lewd. Last Sunday, in the New York Times 's Week in Review section, writer Laura M. MacDonald weighed in with a similar sentiment: WHAT i...

I know the anniversary of the storm's landfall has passed, but that doesn't mean your blogstress intends to forget about the lives ruined by the government's failure to protect and care for the million-plus people whose lives have been upended by Hurricane Katrina, the storm that devestated the Gulf Coast two years ago. Your ecrivaine had hoped to be in New Orleans for this year's anniversary, as she had for last year's but, alas, other work got in the way of her getting that far south. On a joyful note, your Webwench did enjoy hearing, once again, the sound of New Orleans jazz as played by the Treme Brass Band (pronounced "tre-MAY"), only this time in Arlington, Virginia, as part of the wonderful "Planet Arlington" concert headlined by South African trumpeter and singer Hugh Masekela . The last time your net-tete heard the Treme players was during the jazz funeral in New Orleans last year that marked the one-year anniversary of the storm. T...

The American Prospect Online today offers a look at an arresting Web comic on the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Have you been tossing and turning at night, wondering the reason for the death of the portly religious-right front man, the Rev. Jerry Falwell , from cardiac arrest at the tender age of 73, or of former Southern Baptist Convention President Adrian Rogers , who died of colon cancer at the virtually adolescent age of 74? And what about the revelation of yet another anti-gay darling of the Republican religious set having been revealed as a practitioner of homosexual-like tendencies? [Sen. Larry Craig denies that he is gay, despite having fluttered his hankie at an undercover cop in the stall next to his in a men's room in Minnesota.] Well, Pastor Rick Scarborough has the answer, according to Right-Wing Watch , a blog of People for the American Way: In Isaiah 3, God pronounces nine things that happen to a nation that turns its back on God. Included in the list are such things as rampant homosexuality, (Is. 3:9); apathy among the citizenry, (vs. 6-7); crime (v.5); and immature leader...

American Prospect writing fellow Dana Goldstein has a fascinating post up at her personal blog on how Anne Rice -- she of Interview With a Vampire fame -- has endorsed Hillary Clinton , even though Rice herself has converted to Catholicism and become ardently anti-abortion. Figures that the purveyor of tales of the undead should become the defender of the unborn.

...dammit! Fredo footsoldiered its undoing; now it's time for Congress to seize back its constitutional powers from the executive branch -- by whatever means necessary. Your blogstress offers a prescription at The American Prospect Online. And while you're there, check out TAPPED to learn about the Fredo-Sanjaya connection .

White House photo by Chris Greenberg President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush sit with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his wife, Rebecca, during a visit Sunday, Aug. 26, 2007, at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. Well, you can't say it's been a boring summer here in Our Nation's Capital, mes amis . New York may be empty while tout le monde vacays in the Hamptons, and the population of D.C. maybe reduced to the people who actually live here, but the White House keeps churnin' out the hits: the Libby pardon, the Rove resignation and, now, Fredo 's farewell. Over at his dashing, redesigned blog, the Media Consortium's Brian Beutler examines the irrelevance of the label "Washington insider" when assessing a bureaucrat's virtues. Alberto Gonzales , of course, was a Washington outsider, but too much of a parent-pleasing, White House insider to do his job properly. Your blogstress, however, cautions her devotees not to fall for ye...

Is it just your blogstress, or is anybody else sensing a big-ass shoe about to drop? On today's resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the New York Times has an early piece, posted here at MSNBC.

With Congress slated to return next week to the big, white building down the block from your blogstress's Oppo Factory, your cybertrix endeavors to suppress the the hope that Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont will actually make good on his to charge the president with contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a Senate subpoena for documents related to the illegal NSA wiretapping program that Congress so cravenly passed earlier this month. The need for hope-suppression stems from the numerous disappointments your Webwench has suffered, longing for indignant Democrats to do more than express indignation at the flouting of the Constitution by the autocrats that inhabit the executive branch. But blogstress, they plead; we haven't the votes to save the Constitution! Saving the Constitution would divide the republic! (Note to Dems: absent a working Constitution, there is no republic.) Here's a suggestion from one Harvey Silverglate , who represented Mike Gravel , the...

You may recall that your blogstress has a veritable herd of brothers, several of whom have appeared on this site under assumed names. Your Webwench can't possibly understand why they would wish to obscure their blood connection to your cybertrix. Be that as it may, one bold soul, Timothy C. Stan , steps into the light to discuss the phenomenon of soundtrack music for the retail environment. The topic came up because of our common fondness for Talking Heads, and my horrified elation at finding myself serenaded, while shopping for canned goods (to have on hand in the event of an al Qaeda attack on Capitol Hill) at the local Giant Superstore, by David Byrne singing "Burning Down the House." Whatever happened to the Montivani Orchestra? The elation was short-lived: David Byrne was next replaced by Reba McEntyre , who sang, "The Angel in Your Arms This Morning (Is Gonna Be the Devil in Someone Else's Arms Tonight)". Tim, who has done serious career time in th...

Wonderful lede graf in today's Washington Post story by Peter Baker on the Bush administration's newly revealed manual for how to deal with protesters at presidential appearances: Not that they're worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn't want any. While your blogstress concedes that even before the hole in the ozone layer permitted the blogosphere to hover closer to earth, newswriting had become more colloquial and casual in tone, there are syntactical qualities here that tend to be more peculiar to bloggers. As in, people who blog. Oh, and the piece is a must-read. Not that I'm paranoid or anything.

Last week, he promised to go all elusive on us and everything, inviting us to call him Moby (although the whale's last name may prove a more apt moniker), today, your average Sunday-morning couch potato just couldn't get away from Karl Rove , even if she wanted to. (Click here to read, at The American Prospect Online, your Webwench's morning-after piece about Rove and the rightie who may have done him in.) There he was on "Meet the Press" telling David Gregory that he didn't have to testify before Congress because the nation's founders granted him executive privilege -- apparently through some sort of special dispensation: KARL ROVE: We have a constitutional separation of powers. The founders talk about this. They, they understood this issue, and they wanted to insulate the judicial, the executive and the legislative from each other in this respect. So, the founders are apparently talking to Karl Rove telling him that "separation of powers...

From a reader who simply calls himself "the man," comes this photo statement, which is one among many on the same visual theme that devotees can find at the Web site, Made You Think . Better yet, you can participate in the documentation of the turdification of the national discourse, mes amis . Write into the man, and he will send you little flags designed for adorning the scat of your choice. A sort of organic take on the Flat Stanley craze of some years ago. Your blogstress, being a paradoxical creature of both refined tastes and low humor, is quite charmed by the man's project. Though, by her lights, not even Flat Stanley can equal the titillation of Ukulele Boogaloo's fabukelous Ukulele World project, a sort of uke-porn meets travelogue thing.

At Pottersville , they're offering the "Top Ten Likeliest Items Left in Karl Rove's Desk Drawers," only three of which can we print on this dysfunctional-family-friendly blog: 10) Letter opener still caked with human brain matter. 9) 14 pages of emails from Mel Martinez at the RNC filled with jokes about Jerry Falwell’s death. 8) Expired contract with Satan with loopholes circled in red ink. Of course, we can't stop you from driving through Pottersville .

From the New York Times obituary by Peter Keepnews : Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940’s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners’ expectations, died early today in Manhattan. He was 83. [...] Mr. Roach was an innovator in other ways. In the late 1950s, he led a group that was among the first in jazz to regularly perform pieces in waltz time and other unusual meters in addition to the conventional 4/4. In the early 1960s, he was among the first to use jazz to address racial and political issues, with works like the album-length “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.” The "Freedom Now Suite" was a collaboration with, among others, his first wife, Abbey Lincoln, who has an extraordinary new record out. It's called "Abbey Sings Abbey," and it features fresh recordings of pieces penned by Lincoln herself. The instrumentation is acoustic, with a gypsy feel.

It would be one thing if this nasty, racist old man took his show over to satellite radio, where people have to pay to hear his crap, but to have him return to public airwaves -- a public trust, owned by toi et moi , is truly a slap in the face to women and Americans of African descent. At 12:30, Jennifer Pozner of Women in Media and News will appear on the Fox News Channel to argue against any deal that would return Imus to the airwaves. And check out Maretta J. Short , president of the New Jersey chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), who has been on the front lines of the Imus wars since the multimillionaire bully tried to demean the accomplishments of the women's basketball team at Rutgers , the state university of New Jersey. CLICK HERE TO HEAR MARETTA SHORT TAKE DOWN IMUS

Here's a snip from an interview Karl Rove gave to the McClatchy newspapers: Rove also expects congressional Democrats to continue efforts to get him to testify in an inquiry into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. "They're going to keep coming after me," Rove told McClatchy. "They've got a bunch of guys auditioning for the role of Captain Ahab, and I'm Moby Dick." Well, he is big and white.