AddieStan

You'll recall, dear reader, yesterday's madness about the meltdown at SoapBlox , a Web host for a number of progressive blogs, which was hacked by no-one-knows-who. There was much drama, as Paul Preston, SoapBlox's founder and keeper, prematurely declared his enterprise dead -- only to have a raft of contributors cry "Say it ain't so!" and contribute, via blog comments and other electronic means of communications, ways to salvage his servers. All that may make this seem like less of a story than we originally thought (panicked visions of site files lost forever seemed to be coming true), but today's more sober assessment by Preston strikes your cybertrix as even more troubling than the original fear: Starting on Tuesday, some of the SoapBlox servers were infiltrated by a currently unknown source for unknown reasons. SSH access was acquired by the hackers, where they were able to install port scanning scripts on to the machines. SoapBlox servers were the...

UPDATE #2: SoapBlox seems to be backing off its announcement of its own demise , though the site's communicator, who posts under the handle "pacified", still doesn't seem to know quite what to do in the face of the Big Hack. He's apparently scrubbed this earlier post from his homepage: SoapBlox is dead.All these hackers messing with our stuff, and we here at SoapBlox have no clue what to do. We don't have enough knowledge, time, money, or care to fix it. So I hope the Hackers are happy. If you want the data from your blog, we will get it. But we are not going to try and restore anything. Consider this the "We're Out of Business" post. UPDATE #1: Pam's House Blend is back up; no further word on the fate of SoapBlox. Blue Jersey still down, as is Swing State Project . Just received word that SoapBlox , a Web-hosting service that caters to progressive sites, has been hacked so severely that it is reported to be dead, leaving a number of si...

The great E.J. Graff of the Schuster Center for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis, offers the following suggestions for Secretary of Commerce: …Carol Goldberg, former CEO of Stop&Shop, major grocery chain in New England …Rosabeth Moss Kanter, high-flying Harvard Business School prof …Evelyn Murphy, former Lt. Gov of Massachusetts, Ph.D., economist, author, founder and president of WAGE (Women are Getting Even)

Maureen Dowd makes your blogstress a bit crazy. When she's good, she's very, very good, and when she's bad she's a very mean lady. Today we find her in good witch mode, promoting the candidacy of Caroline Kennedy for U.S. Senate from the Great State of New York: People complain that the 51-year-old Harvard and Columbia Law School grad and author is not a glib, professional pol who knows how to artfully market herself, and is someone who hasn’t spent her life glad-handing, backstabbing and logrolling. I say, thank God. The press whines that she doesn’t have a pat answer about why she wants the job. I’ve interviewed a score of men running for president; not one had a good answer for why he wanted it. You go, girl!

With Bill Richardson bowing out of the cabinet post to which he was named, an unforeseen opportunity to name another woman to the Obama cabinet. A female Secretary of Commerce would be especially meaningful, given this recent Catalyst study highlighting the paucity of women at the top of corporations (where they comprise 60 percent of the staff). Who should it be? Geraldine Layborne , former head of Oxygen? Suzanne de Passe , former Motown honcho? How about Esther Dyson , the high-tech genius and venture capitalist? Name your suggestions. Nature abhors a vacuum, now, doesn't she? Hat-tip to Jill Zimon of Writes Likes She Talks for word of the Catalyst study via Women's eNews .

In our Viagra culture, it does not surprise your blogstress that women could easily be left out of the economic-stimulus-qua-jobs-building program that President-elect Obama has promised us. With their emphasis on infrastructure and green retrofits for job creation, the ideas being batted about appear to heavily favor jobs whose prerequisite skill sets belong largely to men. In the meantime, our health-care and educational infrastructures are also coming undone; these are sectors where women predominate, and little attention has been given to job creation in these human spheres. Linda Hirshman, with whom your blogstress sparred most vigorously during the primary season, first brought this state of affairs to our attention on the op-ed page of the New York Times not very long ago. Now, a group of women, including feminist economists, have launched an online petition to the president-elect, politely asking that half of the population be dealt into the new New Deal. Here's the t...

One of your blogstress's favorite Americans, Michael Tomasky , offers up his year-end list of 2008's worst Americans . Tomasky is the writer/editor at the helm of Guardian America, the online U.S. incarnation of the British newspaper. CLICK HERE TO READ 'WELCOME TO AMERICA'S HALL OF SHAME

Today, that would be Spencer Ackerman (a.k.a., Attackerman) who, in his vigilence , is defending the honor of the female sex against the designs of right-wing commentator Dennis Prager, who has been writing how married women are obligated to put out for hubby whenever the latter expresses his "needs". Kyle of Right-Wing Watch suggests that Prager subscribes the " Phyllis Schlafly School of Marriage Counseling ", the doyenne of the right having uttered this last year at an appearance at Bates College: "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape," she said. Hat-tip to the fabulous Frankie G. of The Beltway Sewer.

Your blogstress is still wrestling with the decision of Barack Obama (whom her feminist self supported all the way back in the primaries) to anoint the right-wing, anti-gay, anti-woman Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the presidential inaugural ceremonies. Mon Dieu, mes amis ! How to make sense of it? One hopes that Mr. Obama has a trick or two up his sleeve in bestowing this honor on one who has compared pro-choice people to Holocaust deniers, equated gay marriage with polygamy and marriage between an adult and a child (and later denied having done so), and preaches that wives should submit to their husbands. To many liberals, Warren's words are hard not to take personally, especially if you're a woman and/or a member of the LGBT community. This is no mere game of "dozens"; reports come in daily of LGBT people assaulted or killed for no other reason than being queer; meanwhile the terrorism of anti-choice forces has reduced abortion, in many are...

The pushback by the LGBT movement against the anointment of Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama has been such that Warren felt compelled to go before his own congregants to clarify his views on gay marriage, taking great pains to say that he never equated gay relationships with incest or polygamy. (He just said he disagreed with allowing gays to marry, just as he disagreed with allowing adults to marry children, brothers to marry sisters, and men to have more than one wife. Not that he was equating them or anything.) Here's Pastor Rick: CLICK THESE WORDS TO VIEW VIDEO Meanwhile, on "Hardball" last night, Mike Rogers of blogActive and PageOneQ masterfully reframed the conflict over Obama's invocational choice as one that sees the LGBT movement at its most powerful, ever. Check out Digby's recounting at Hullabaloo : ...Rogers took a very unusual tack and said that [the well-known Reverend Eugene]...

While your blogstress's heart is in Jersey City, she does have familial ties to Chicago's South Side, so the pronouncement of one G-man on the comparative status of the Land of Lincoln was less painful, perhaps, than it was for her fellow dwellers of the Meadowlands: Robert Grant, FBI special agent in charge of the Chicago office, said even the most cynical FBI agents were "disgusted and revolted" by what they heard on the recordings [of Gov. Rod Blogojevich trying to sell a Senate seat]. "If it isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States," Grant said of Illinois, "it’s certainly one hell of a competitor." C'mon Jersey! You're slippin'!

cross-posted from The Huffington Post On Thanksgiving Day, four generations of my family will gather at my parents' home to consume a meal largely beige in color, and devoid of anything green (save for the peas that come, frozen, in a bag with the little white onions). "I was going to put out celery and olives," my mother said, "but then I always wind up with a year-old jar of olives takin' up space in the refrigerator. So, I figured, let's just skip it this year and see if anybody notices." It's unlikely that anybody will. We'll all be too busy jockeying for position in the house we call Stanadu, looking to make the funniest joke, take the longest solo during the annual Making of Bad Music Cooperative that takes place in Mom and Dad's living room and trying to keep kids, grand-kids and great-grandkids from maiming themselves and/or each other. There will be disputes over how strong to make the coffee, and did you really have to bring som...

...and maybe you are, too. Did you oppose Proposition 8, the onerous California ballot measure that put an end to same-sex marriage in that state? Are you gay? Do you believe in the separation of church and state? Well, then, you just may be part of "a gay, secular fascism," according to our thrice-married former speaker. Now, why would the disgraced leader of a momentary revolution choose to hang his hat in this issue? Your blogstress explains over at The Guardian America: When Georgia senator Saxby Chambliss found himself facing a runoff, his campaign called in the big guns, including Gingrich and John McCain, ABC News reported, to campaign for him. It is said that Jim Martin, the Democratic challenger to Chambliss, cannot win without strong support in his runoff battle from African-Americans. Gingrich and his compatriots have apparently taken note of two facts. First, in California, exit polls showed that African-Americans voted overwhelmingly against same-sex marria...

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post There a lot of things one can say about Sarah Palin, but this one cannot be disputed: by one measure, at least, she is true to her word. Sarah Palin is not going anywhere. That, you'll recall, is what the Alaska governor and former vice presidential candidate told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas on the day before Halloween, "I think that if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken, that -- that would bring this whole -- I'm -- I'm not doing this for naught." When her remarks were widely interpreted as indication of a likely 2012 presidential, she artfully dialed back. The day after the Vargas interview, she told me , "I'll be campaigning for John McCain's re-election in 2012." That commitment now wiped off the slate by reality's eraser, Palin has set off on a charm offensive that will serve her well should she choose to toss her hat back...

In 2000, I had the great honor and pleasure of profiling Miriam Makeba, the great anti-apartheid activist, for Salon. She was at all times purely herself, cantankerous, generous and embracing life. May she rest in peace. CLICK HERE TO READ 'THE RETURN OF MIRIAM MAKEBA'

Here's a transcript of my Election-Night liveblog for The Huffington Post . I've cleaned it up a bit. Your blogstress so hates to learn that her slip is showing. Adele Stan: Election Results Liveblog (11/04/2008) 3:26 p.m. Adele Stan: The religious right, it seems, is already looking past today's election, looking to rally the base once more around the culture wars. Tonight the Family Research Council will host its first-ever election-night Webcast, following not just the presidential and congressional-level races, but paying special attention to those all-important ballot measures -- like California's Proposition 8, the passage of which will end the right to same-sex marriage that California's people won via a court decision several months ago. The issues touted in the teaser video sent around via e-mail by FRC's Tony Perkins include "abortion, gambling, man-woman marriage and stem-cell research." Below find the code for doing your own oppos...

...for The Huffington Post . Check me out there after lunch sometime. (Well, even a blogstress needs to vote, mes amis .) Have you done your civic duty?

Hard to imagine, but once upon a time, your blogstress was married. Because that is not a condition she is eager to repeat, she is often delinquent in weighing in on the issue of marriage equality. (It is, of course, all about me.) But the fights over same-sex marriage now being waged across the country -- most notably, in California, where the Proposition 8 ballot measure threatens that state's equal-rights application of its marriage law -- are about more that your or my right to marry the consenting adult of our choice. This battle is about the fundamental equality of all human beings. Period. Marriage indeed comes with serious responsibilities, as well as significant privileges. For instance, where there is no same-sex marriage, you likely cannot name your same-sex partner as the beneficiary of your pension, if you have one. You cannot be named "next of kin," so you may be barred from visiting your partner in the hospital. If a same-sex couple raises a child to...

cross-posted from The Huffington Post Can you be a supporter of Sarah Palin and still be a feminist? Well, I guess you could call yourself a feminist -- that is, if you think that, as a woman, you still have rights equal to those of a man when: * You do not have the right of self-determination over your own body * Even if impregnated through rape or incest you are forced to bear a child * You're told you're entitled to equal pay, but forbidden to sue for it under most circumstances * Information on how to prevent your own pregnancy is withheld from you in sex education classes * If you're a spiritually powerful or otherwise unusual woman, your harassment can justified as protection from "witchcraft" In that case, I guess it could be said that Elaine Lafferty, a former Ms. magazine editor proudly stumping for Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, is a feminist. Otherwise, it just doesn't add up. In an apparent diversion from answering the questi...