AddieStan

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...

The attorney general of the United States said, on ABC's Sunday talk show, "This Week," that reporters who publish classified information will be prosecuted. According to the Associated Press (AP), Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to say whether or not the Justice Department would prosecute The New York Times for its December 2005 reporting that revealed the existence of a massive domestic spying program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) at the behest of President Bush. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected." Before rushing to the conclusion, mes amis , that Mr. Attorney General means only to protect your security and mine, your blogstress urges you to consider the fact that ...

Photo: 2005 © A.M. Stan for AFGE It's been a weekend of highs, lows and best-of-bad-choices for the good people of New Orleans -- including those in the Katrina diaspora. Those who might like to see the city take on a whiter character were dealt a setback this week with the re-election of Mayor Ray Nagin . Yet, given the mayor's performance during Hurricane Katrina, any large celebration would be premature. On a more distressing front, the city's congressman, Rep. William Jefferson, is being investigated for taking bribes, and the case against him looks pretty good. This couldn't come at a better time for those on the light side who would like to play the race card, since the bribes allegedly taken by Jefferson, an African-American, are said to have been for the securing of contracts between a Louisiana firm and African governments. In fact, the releasing of a previously sealed affidavit by the FBI, and a very dramatic raid on Jefferson's offices conducted this ...

If anything good is to come from the hype surround the movie version of the "Da Vinci Code," it is perhaps the mystery that surrounds the life of Mary of Magadala, who was arguably the most important disciple of Jesus of Nazareth. Although the movie reduces the importance of the Magdalene to her role as a breeder, the movie's release has given others the opportunity to delve deeper. In " An Inconvenient Woman ," Newsweek 's Jonathan Darman, together with collaborator Anne Underwood, offer, in this week's cover story, a succinct yet substantive history of the myth of Mary Magdalene, even as they explore possible historical truths. "The Da Vinci Code" seems to think that the secret tradition of Mary Magdalene speaks to the carnal. In reality, it tells of something far more subversive: the intellectual equality of the sexes. The current Magdalene cult still focuses on her sexuality even though no early Christian writings speak of her sexuality at...

This week, the newly formed Network of Spiritual Progressives met in Washington, D.C., to share insights among members and to eke out something like an agenda, according to Neela Banerjee of The New York Times : [A]t a session on ethical behavior, including sexual behavior, the 50 or so activists talked little about what to tell Congress about abortion or same-sex marriage. Instead, the Rev. Ama Zenya of First Congregational Church in Oakland, Calif., urged them to talk to one another about their spiritual values and "to practice fully our authentic being." Kimberly Crichton, a Washington lawyer and Quaker, grew impatient. "I think we would be more effective if we focused on specific legislation," Ms. Crichton said. "Are we going to discuss specific policies?" Ms. Zenya replied: "What we envisioned this time is saying we are a religious voice. More relationship-building, consciousness-raising." The man in the pew in front of Ms. Crichton transla...

In an e-mail exchange with your blogstress, her good friend, Phillip Coons of The Delusional Duck , writes: Forget what you read about the general and Rumsfeld being at odds or that special provisions will be written so that technically Hayden won't be in the DoD [Department of Defense] chain of command while serving as director. For the folks at the CIA to ever trust him, he has to shed the uniform. What do you think, mes amis ?

Can anybody tell your blogstress how the nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to the directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) went, in the course of a day, from being " troubled " to " on track "? At his nomination hearing, Hayden consistently stonewalled on significant questions: detainees, NSA domestic spying and his role in such. (Of course, toi et moi will never know what he told the senators on double super-secret background in the closed session.) Your cybertrix believes that unless every Democrat on that committee votes "no" on moving this nomination to the floor, the idea of an opposition party is a cruel illusion. CLICK HERE FOR A TRANSCRIPT OF THE HEARING FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

On a different subject, a visit to The Delusional Duck yielded this overlooked tidbit on the criminal investigation of Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley and his precessor, Gen. John Jumpers, for some funny business regarding a $49.9 million contract. Duck drew on the work of ABC's indefatigable Brian Ross for the goods. You'll recall that your blogstress had a conversation with Mr. Ross earlier this week for FishbowlDC in which Mr. Ross alleged that the government had turned anti-terrorism tools on reporters, including him.

Your blogstress's good friend, Phillip Coons of The Delusional Duck writes: Addie, I feel this is an important point! From Navy Times : Asked whether he is considering retiring from the military to take the CIA post, Hayden, dressed in his Air Force uniform bearing a host of medals, told the panel: “The fact that I have to decide what tie to put on in the morning doesn’t change who I am.” He said a more important issue was whether he could “bond” with those at the CIA. If the uniform “gets in the way of that, I’ll make the right decision.” CLICK HERE FOR A TRANSCRIPT OF THE HEARING FROM THE WASHINGTON POST