AddieStan

And so it came to pass that Barack Obama felt the need to leave his church . After the egomania of retired Pastor Jeremiah Wright caused Obama endless woes on the campaign trail (not to mention a National Review cover story on black liberation theology ), your blogstress finds some irony in the fact that the final blow to Obama's ability to remain both a member of Trinity United Church of Christ and a viable presidential candidate came in the form of a sermon from a Roman Catholic priest, Michael Pfleger . Speaking a guest preacher in Trinity's sanctuary, Pfleger mocked Hillary Clinton 's tearful moment in New Hampshire, saying she was crying only because she was losing to Obama, a black man, while she is white, "entitled", and "Bill's wife." For one, your blogstress is not surprised to hear such sexist and demeaning comments flow from the mouth of a Catholic priest. Only this week, the pope reaffirmed church policy to excommunicate Catholic...

From your blogstress's fellow traveler, In These Times columnist Hans Johnson , comes this informative analysis of California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage last week in the nation's most populous state. Here's a taste: Sixty years ago, against a steep and contrary bent of public opinion, the same court upheld the right of a Mexican American woman, Andrea Perez, to marry her African-American sweetheart, Sylvester Davis, in Los Angeles. It took two decades for the U.S. Supreme Court to finally follow California’s lead and nix all such bans on interracial marriages. In the current marriage case, Carlos Moreno, the court’s sole Latino justice, and two others joined the ruling by George, an appointee of former Republican governor Pete Wilson. George became the court’s chief justice the very month (May 1996) that fellow Californian Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, confounded religious conservatives by striking down an ant...

Indeed the time did arrive, mes amis , for your blogstress to offer an adult-type comment on yesterday's decision by the California Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. Adult-type meaning an expression of opinion that goes beyond your Webwench's native suspicion of marriage as a desirable state. And so, your ecrivaine dares to posit, at The Guardian's lively opinion site, Comment is Free, that when the "gay marriage" decision becomes an issue in the presidential campaign, it will likely hurt John McCain more than it will the Democratic nominee. CLICK HERE TO READ "MARRIAGE, CALIFORNIA STYLE" AT COMMENT IS FREE

Having been married once, your blogstress has never been one to beat the gay-marriage drum so loudly. While she understands that there are no equal rights for queer folk until we are free to marry within our own gender frames, it is an issue with such improbable personal ramifications for your Webwench that she has scarely ever worked up a dewy glow over it. Marriage is marriage, with all the attendant dynamics, and once was enough for your ecrivaine . She simply doesn't see where being married to a woman would be much of an improvement on that shopworn theme. That said, today's decision from the California Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage is a mind-blower. It's good stuff on the rights front. Gonna be evil in the presidential election. My solution? Keep the state out of the marriage biz altogether. Marriage is the business of the churches.

The plot thickens in the strange tale of the paleo-Catholic, gay-baiting, Rove-hating Bush administration nemesis and appointee, Scott Bloch , who heads the Office of Special Counsel. We recently learned from the Associated Press (AP) that shortly after the departure of Karl Rove from the White House, a task force for an investigation launched by Bloch stood poised to request documents from the Justice Department, only to have Bloch shut down the probe. The investigation was focused on the possible political use of federal prosecutors to smear Don Siegelman , the Democratic governor of Alabama, in a way that would prevent his re-election. It is suspected that Rove was involved. I have long suspected that another investigation led by Bloch's office that looked at the use of government personnel by Rove's office in conducting political operations in the 2006 elections on behalf of the Republican Party was the thing that caused Rove to resign . But perhaps that was just the ...

Crowded out of news coverage by the election and the tragedy in Burma is the curious case of Scott Bloch , who heads the Bush administration's Office of Special Counsel. Anybody who doubts the penchant for vindictiveness exercised by Club Bush -- or the long reach of departed Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove -- should view the case of Bloch as a cautionary tale. Bloch started off as what appeared to be a team player, using his office to terrorize gay people who worked in government -- especially those career attorneys who worked in his office. But when Bloch's antics began to chalk up bad publicity, he was asked to resign, and refused. Then he set about finding his pound of flesh -- in none other than Turd Blossom (as Rove is affectionately called by the president). As your blogstress wrote last year at The American Prospect Online : Bloch's inquiry lifted the lid on what many of us, dismissed as too partisan to be heeded, had already known: that under Rove's tutel...

Tom McDermott , the white mayor of Hammond, Indiana , used his star turn on CNN last night to accuse Rudy Clay , the black mayor of Gary, Indiana, of something that smells "corrupt" in the slow pace of election returns coming out of that urban center in last night's presidential primary. The accusation came just around midnight, central daylight time, when the Indiana race, quite surprisingly, remained too close to call. McDermott is a Hillary Clinton supporter, and Clay, a Barack Obama supporter. Still awaiting transcript; will post tonight. (Your blogstress will be travelling much of the day.) UPDATE: Here's the transcript . Excerpt below. MCDERMOTT: I'm not going to pick on where I'm from. I'm proud to be from Lake County. And there is hanky-panky in politics all across the state of Indiana, all across the United States. I'm not going to dig into Lake County's past. But I can tell you that this is -- it looks improper, what's happenin...

Harold Ickes is known as Hillary Clinton 's arm-twister , the guy who's leaning on uncommitted superdelegates to move his candidate's way. Ickes is also the force behind a for-profit data aggregating firm , Catalist, mentioned in a recent TAP piece by Holly Yeager . Catalist provided the data used by Women Voices Women Vote (WVWV), the non-profit group behind troubling robo-calls received by North Carolina voters in the run-up to tomorrow today's primary. (Both the Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns are also using Catalist data to target voters.) The WVWV calls are under suspicion as possible voter suppression tactics and, just days ahead of the North Carolina presidential primary, may have targeted registered African-American voters in that state. (Read Dana Goldstein 's TAPPED post here .) Critics contend that the WVWV calls to voters already registered to vote in the primary -- and the general election -- were seemingly designed to cause confusion, sin...

Today sister Pam Spaulding has a thing or two to say about North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley's gay-baiting endorsement of Hillary Clinton , a week ahead of his state's presidential primary. Quoting the reporting of Eloise Harper of ABC News, Pam tells us: The Governor formally expressed his support saying that there was "nothing I love more than a strong powerful woman." Easley concluded his remarks saying Clinton -- "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy". Sez Pam: Note that Hillary, who was right there with the NC gov, said nothing about his remark. Of course Easley infamously received the endorsement of Equality NC in his re-election bid, then in a debate said he'd sign a marriage amendment if it hit his desk, so why should we be surprised. And who is Hillary trying to court here -- the "traditional Southern conservative." Take the homo money and run, as it were. CLICK HERE TO READ "N.C. GOV. EASLEY BACKS CLINTON WITH TACKY GAY-BAITING...

A friend calls your blogstress's attention to a rather striking development in Democratic campaign portraiture: social realist or constructivist posters officially sanctioned by the campaigns. According to l'amie de ton écrivane , it appears as if Obama's going for the Leninist aesthetic, while Hillary's down with Mao. Is this really a good idea?

In a fit of spring cleaning, your blogstress set about washing her tchotchkes . No sooner had she immersed her figurine of the Blessed Mother holding the toddler Son of God, when baby Jesus's head detatched itself from His body. Your blogstress asks for your prayers, fearing this to be some sort of omen, perhaps resulting from her publication of yet another piece about the pope -- this one asking whether he seeks to provoke violence with certain symbolic acts. You can find it at The American Prospect Online . Meanwhile, your Webwench has fired up the hot glue gun.

At this point, your blogstress no longer really cares who wins the Democratic nomination for president; she just wants the race to end. Le fin, s'il vous plait.

At least according to the New York Times 's resident conservative commentator, David Brooks . After saying that he understood the likely complaints to come from viewers that the questions nearly all focused on the campaign's hot buttons, such as Barack Obama 's pastor and Hillary Clinton 's false memory of her own heroic trip to Bosnia, Brooks went on to laud ABC hosts George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson for asking "stupendous" questions, which included a challenge to pledge not to raise taxes on a certain income group of voters. Herewith your blogstress's favorite passage from a blog post from Mr. Brooks, posted after last night's awful debate: Both promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 or $250,000 a year. They both just emasculated their domestic programs. Just for the record, your blogstress is all for the "emasculation" of domestic programs. We would all benefit from their feminization.

Hillary : I'll tell the superdelegates that I'm a fighter. That's how, dammit! Barack : Defining moment in history. People lost trust in gov't -- not just Dems, but indies and Repubs, too. Change happens from the bottom up. That's why we don't take PAC money. Woman, 74, never voted before, says she's voting for me. (Gotta call that round for Hill, huh?) All right; shake hands; go home.

Hillary Clinton just said that we should stop putting oil in the strategic petroleum reserve, and "sell some of it off"? How strategic is that? Great. We have depleted armed forces and then we'll have depleted oil reserves. I barely heard what Barack Obama said, because it just sounded like the same old. Nobody mentioned public transportation. Our rail system, if you can call it that, is the embarrassment of the industrialized world. We have very little in the way of viable public transportation in the suburbs, never mind rural areas. People need to get out of their damn cars. (How does your blogstress maintain her girlish figure? Her bicyclette, mes amis .)

Charlie Gibson : "We're running short on time."

...what, with all this talk about Iran, Iraq, the economy and taxes. Let's keep this thing focused on sniping about race and class, kids! We need some good TV here!

That Jeremiah Wright -- he just won't go away. Charlie Gibson just asked why Barack Obama disinvited Pastor Wright from the launch of his campaign, if he did not indeed know of Wright's comments about 9/11. Obama explained that he was responding to different comments by Wright that had been published in Rolling Stone . For her part, Hillary Clinton sounded very defensive when asked to defend her assertion that she would have left the church if Wright had been her pastor. Later, she said that Obama's explanation "is something that deserves further exploration." Then she went on to assert that Wright had "given over the church bulletin" for a message the leader of Hamas.

Obama just invoked the furor Clinton 's famous cookie-baking comment to say that she was doing the same thing to him -- in light of his "bitter" comment -- as was done to her in 1992.

Moderator George Stephanopolous earned a steely look from Hillary Clinton when he ask her not to respond to his assertion that she had told Bill Richardson that Barack Obama cannot win the presidency. Then Stephanopolous framed a question in such a way that Clinton and had to say that Obama could win the presidency.