AddieStan

It's the gift that just keeps giving: Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade and those who leverage the hatred when Mel sustains criticism for having done so. In response to your blogstress's American Prospect Online essay, The Shylock Code , your cybertrix has received a variety of e-mails. Here is one she finds particularly amusing: So. Your article says, basically, that because YOU tell the truth when drunk, therefore EVERYONE must tell the truth when they are drunk. How stupid are you?   And above and beyond all of that: Mel has the RIGHT to believe as he wants, as we all do, that includes you. He does not practice discrimination at work as told by the countless number of Jewish employees/associates coming forward and claiming this. So he has NOT broken any law, not crossed any PC line. He has on countless occasions given charitably to many different causes.   The media, that includes you, needs to get off his back, leave him alone to heal his wounds, before this stupid ha...

Since the posting of her essay, The Shylock Code , at The American Prospect Online (now featured at CBS News Online ), your blogstress has received some very interesting e-mail. As expected, the piece certainly has smoked out some hard-core anti-Semites, as well as a couple of appreciative readers and one truly confused one. Let us begin with the perplexed: Your article on Mel Gibson leaves me cold.  I really don't understand the flip-flopping you were doing.  One minute you denounce that, God forbid you were taken as being Jewish, then the next minute you refer to Mel as speaking the truth.  Do you like Jews or do you hate Jews?  Which is it?  I am totally confused.   You seem to know all the Shylock words and what they mean.  Do you speak them often?   What are you trying to prove?   I have a lot of questions here but I don't think I will get one answered. --Flowkay Fear not, Flokay; your cybertrix is here to answer your questions. "The Shylock Code" essay is wri...

Somewhere along the way, as she mulled over the strife in the Episcopal Church, your blogstress apparently included a link to the blog of a conservative Episcopalian -- one dedicated to preserving the orthodoxy that banishes women from the pulpit and gay people from the clergy. The name of the blog is TitusOneNine , so named for a particular verse from St. Paul's letter to Titus: Speaking of the duties of a man of God, Paul writes of the importance of "holding firmly to the faithful word as respects his [art of] teaching, that he may be able both to exhort by the teaching that is healthful and to reprove those who contradict." Your Webwench's inclusion of the link to the conservative blog, TitusOneNine, brought forth this reply from a reader who prefers to be known as Wilspon, under the amusing, if irreverent, subject line, TightAssOnline: From your site I learned of the e-address of the starch-minded American wannebe Anglicans, TitusOneNine, and recommend a meditat...

Not a terrorism suspect. While doing her occasional perusal of newspapers from exotic locales, your blogstress came across this in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn : Leo gets stately reception in US By Our Correspondent WASHINGTON, Aug 9: Pakistan’s snow leopard Leo is on the front page of the State Department’s website, not as a terror suspect , but as a welcome guest . [Emphasis added by cybertrix.] The write-up, complete with six stately pictures of the regal visitor from the Naltar valley, describes Leo’s visit as demonstrating ‘the breadth of US-Pakistani relations’.

Crashing the centrist party at Slate, American Prospect editor Michael Tomasky disproves the "Dems-gone-McGovernite" braying of Lieberman partisans, and does so through the clever device of applying that logic to other current Democratic primary races, where it simply does not hold up. Similarly, Greg Sargent, on his blog The Horse's Mouth, presents a hypothetical mainstream-media news analysis piece that spins yesterday's terrorism news as being good for the Democrats. One wishes that the DNC would grab Sargent's line. Meanwhile, your blogstress's editor, Sam Rosenfeld, frets over what the anti-war rhetoric does for the Dems, while setting the politics of Connecticut into context: I agree that the upper-middle-class ascendancy within the Democratic Party over the past decades is a real phenomenon and a problematic one. But again, a Democratic primary in the richest state in the country -- a liberal, anti-war state, lacking any kind of modern populist poli...

Your blogstress asks for the prayers of her devotees in the wake of her publication, on The American Prospect Online, of her latest essay, The Shylock Code . Read it, and you'll understand why your Webwench requires this added cloak of spiritual protection. And while you're over at the Prospect, do have a look at their blog, TAPPED , where you'll find the musings of an array of clever writers.

It's been a while since your blogstress received bon mots from our friend, St. Jacques du Fenway, but yesterday's post, in which your Webwench suggested to to Joe Lieberman that he abandon his independent run and instead take an academic post somewhere, raised some hackles: Ma chère écrivaine, Please do not foist Lieberman on the pristine world of academia. What have we done to deserve such a punishment? --St. Jacques du Fenway

Given the president's statement , just minutes ago, on the apparently foiled U.K.-based terrorism plot, it seems quite clear to your blogstress that this latest turn of events will be used as yet another reason to further concentrate power in the executive branch. Yesterday we learned that the administration wants to revise the War Crimes Act to exempt the abuse of imprisoned "enemy combatants" from oversight by U.S. courts. We saw how AOL posted online the search history of one its subscribers, and we know that the U.S. is searching such information -- as well as your phone records -- without going to the courts for warrants. And sitting in the Senate is a bill supported by Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter that would officially exempt the administration from obtaining the warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Hold on to your hats, don't use the phone, your e-mail or travel.

Because of the proliferation of material on the Joe Lieberman / Ned Lamont contest all over the blogosphere, your blogstress has had precious little to say about the primary for the Democratic nomination for Connecticut's Senate race. In short, her blogging colleagues have had that ground more than covered. However, the announcement by U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman that, having lost his primary race, he will run as an independent , has your Webwench a bit dazed. Does the senator not understand just how vain, pompous and sanctimonious this makes him look? Indeed, he seems intent on proving the accusations against him by the party's left wing: that he never really cared about the Democratic Party to begin with. Before he sacrifices every last shred of his dignity to his apparently massive ego, it would behoove Mr. Lieberman to step away from the Senate battle and take up an academic post for a while, from which he could maintain his public profile by becoming an analyst for a te...

As he so often is, the Washington Post 's E.J. Dionne shows himself once again to the the voice of reason among the nation's pundits: Some events are so important that the battle to interpret their meaning begins even before they happen. So it is with today's Democratic primary challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut. [...] There is, in any event, a major flaw in the claim that Lieberman's troubles reflect an end to the role of moderates in the Democratic Party: Lieberman is the one prominent moderate to receive serious opposition in this year's primaries. As Robert L. Borosage of the liberal Campaign for America's Future noted, antiwar Democrats limited their challenge to one of the most pro-Bush Democrats in one of the most Democratic states in the country. Moderate Democrats in Republican-leaning states were left largely undisturbed. Moreover, opposition to the war in Iraq and to Bush has spread well beyond the left. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Li...

A member of the board of the anti-choice group, Feminists for Life , has purchased the birthplace of feminist icon Susan B. Anthony, offering the probability of a new feminist museum with an anti-choice spin. If the group's name sounds vaguely familiar to your blogstress's devotees, it's likely because Jane Sullivan Roberts , wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, brought attention to the group when it was revealed that she had served as an executive vice president of the organization, and as its board counsel. Though revered by many white women as a symbol of their right to vote, few are aware of the racism exercised by Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton when they decided to leave black women out of the suffrage equation. In fact, Anthony and others in her circle were said to be quite motivated by the thought that the black man might achieve the right to vote before white women. One suffrage newspaper editorialized : What an insult to the women who have labored thirty year...

Your blogstress would like to think, that with the recently expressed consternation of the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, the Bush administration had hit bottom in its secrecy addiction and was soon to be on the road to recovery. But, alas, your Webwench knows that there are no depths to which these usurpers will not plunge, and that the consternation of Republicans regarding the administration's unconstitutional behavior usually amounts to nothing more than bluster. In today's New York Times , Mark Mazetti reports on the noise made by committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) over the Bush administration's classification of information contained in a portion of a committee report on its use of prewar intelligence. The portion in question focuses on Cheney pal Ahmad Chalabi and the role the latter's Iraqi exile group played in passing bad info to the U.S. Government. From the New York Times : Congressional officials said Thursday that they were puzzle...

From her friends at the Christian Newswire, your blogstress received a press release from a Rev. Jesse Lee Paterson (author of Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America ), who condemns "Hollywood insiders" and "media" (read: Jews) for picking on poor, suffering Mel Gibson: Now there appears to be an orchestrated campaign by some Hollywood insiders and media to personally destroy Gibson. Hmmm...From your Webwench's vantage point, it seems that Mr. Gibson is doing a pretty good job of destroying himself. These same people opposed Gibson’s blockbuster ‘The Passion of the Christ’ which despite opposition from liberals was a huge hit among audiences. These ‘smear merchants’ [blogstress's note: read 'Jews'] are using this incident to get back at Gibson. Note that Rev. Paterson recently partnered with the Heritage Foundation -- the grandaddy institution of the right wing -- to produce a conference on "Moral Reconstruction" in urban...

At last, actor Stephen Baldwin, brother of the famous actor and notorious liberal, Alec Baldwin, has found a way to differentiate himself from big bro and the rest of his brotherly pack: turn right. From a religious right public relations firm (and our side wonders why they're ahead), your blogstress received the following: Actor Stephen Baldwin Heads Lineup of Speakers At Revelation Generation Christian Music Festival On Labor Day Weekend King of Kings Skateboard Ministry Will Also Drop-In to Frenchtown, NJ to Perform a High-Adrenaline Skating Demo at the Festival FLEMINGTON, N.J., July 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- Joining an all-star music line up, several prominent speakers will be featured at Revelation Generation , a day-long Christian music festival over Labor Day weekend. Scheduled for September 2 at Revelation Farms in Frenchtown, NJ, actor Stephen Baldwin and Duffy Robbins top the list of speakers who will reach the teen and youth at the event with their own unique messa...

Where, oh where, can your blogstress be -- and why has she deprived her devotees of a post full of witticism today? Well, mes amis , your cybertrix had to indulge those people who believe her to be a serious journalist or commentator or something, and stand before a video camera at PoliticsTV.com and pontificate . (And you know how she just hates doing that!) This she did in her capacity as a contributor to TAPPED , the Weblog of The American Prospect Online . CLICK HERE TO VIEW YOUR BLOGSTRESS HOLDING FORTH. (And, yes, your Webwench is now painfully aware of just how badly she needs a haircut. No e-mails, please, on that subject.)

Your blogstress has received a tip from a dear reader that the standing committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas has voted to stop ordaining women. (There are three other U.S. Episcopal dioceses that do not ordain women, including the Diocese of Ft. Worth.) This would appear to be the response of the Diocese of Dallas to the election of Bishop Kathleen Jefferts Schori to the top leadership post in the Episcopal Church USA.

Andrew Sullivan just made an amazingly ignorant comment while psychoanalyzing, on " The Chris Matthews Show ," the leader of the arguably free world. President Bush's problem, Sullivan asserted, is that, as "a recovering alcoholic," the president sees everything as either black or white, and therefore cannot deal with all "the grey" that has occurred over the course of the last few weeks. It seems that Mr. Sullivan is in need of a 12-step refresher course. It is drinking alcoholics who typically have the black-white worldview; in most recovery programs, alcoholics are taught to accept nuances (key phrase: accepting life on life's terms).

Persuant to your blogstress's previous post on the nation's presidential primary set-up, herewith some useful statistics on race within the states discussed. Numbers represent the percentage of people who, on the 2000 Census , identified themselves as "Black or African American" : 12.3 percent - United States of America 02.1 percent - Iowa 00.7 percent - New Hampshire 06.8 percent - Nevada 13.6 percent - New Jersey

The notion of an early presidential caucus in Nevada (advanced, of course, by favorite son, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ) seems to be gaining ground among Democrats. From the Associated Press : WASHINGTON - Democrats were lobbied hard by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and organized labor before they picked Nevada as the best bet to energize the party's early presidential voting in 2008. A Democratic rules panel on Saturday recommended that Nevada hold a caucus after Iowa's leadoff contest in mid-January 2008, but before New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. South Carolina was awarded an early primary a week after New Hampshire. While this would probably prove to be something of a bone-warming respite for us frostbitten reporters who flock to Des Moines and Manchester in January, your blogstress offers an alternative, if only slightly less frigid, plan. Rather than have all the early candidate-settling voting taking place in states with unique characteristic...

Your blogstress has a new essay posted at The American Prospect Online that offers a suggestion for how to do just that. CLICK HERE TO READ "FIGHTING RIGHT" AT THE AMERICAN PROSPECT ONLINE