On Clinton Secrecy

She still hasn't released their tax returns. She still hasn't published her daily schedule as First Lady. And now this:

Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.
The archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

Officials with the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., criticized Hillary Clinton this week for not doing more to see that records from her husband's administration are made public. "She's been reluctant to disclose information," Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, told reporters in a conference call in which he specifically cited the slow release records from the Clinton library. "If she's not willing to be open with (voters) on these issues now, why would she be open as president?"

...Former president Clinton issued 140 pardons on his last day in office, including several to controversial figures, such as commodities trader Rich, then a fugitive on tax evasion charges. Rich's ex-wife, Denise, contributed $2,000 in 1999 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign; $5,000 to a related political action committee; and $450,000 to a fund set up to build the Clinton library.


Obama campaign manager David Plouffe nailed it:

"Behind closed doors, they’re trying to prevent the American people from evaluating [Clinton's White House] experience," he said. "You have to wonder whether she’ll be open and honest with the American people as president."

He also noted, again, that Clinton doesn't need to wait until April 15 to release the last six years of tax returns.

Clinton is "one of the most secretive politicians in America today," he said.


via USA Today and Politico

Bill Clinton Endorses Obama

And Bill was like "OH NO YOU DIDN'T"....

Yesterday was a bad day for Former President/Future First Lady Bubba. First, he was heckeled by pro-lifers at a rally:



Then, at a seperate rally, the Ametuer Gynecologist was heckled by an Obama supporter:

Robert Holeman came to Timken High School here today with a message to deliver to Bill Clinton. He did -- and he said the former president wasn’t happy about it.

Clinton spoke to a capacity crowd in this Northeast Ohio town, the third of five events today in the Buckeye State. He told voters that the contest was “the power of speeches against the promise of solutions by a world-class change maker.”

Throughout the event, as Clinton made his case for his wife, Holeman’s dissenting voice could be heard. At times he simply shouted Obama’s name. When Clinton would set up a sure applause line, Holeman could be heard heckling. As soon as Clinton finished speaking, the Canton native made a beeline to the ropeline to give Clinton a piece of his mind.

“I asked the president to please stop the bickering between the campaigns,” Holeman said in an interview afterwards. “All this name calling is like the bully in the yard. He can’t get his way, he can’t get nothing done.” Holeman said he thought Clinton was “gasping for air.”

Here's a little bit of the video. Holman claims that Bill "popped" him in the face.



This should come as no surprise. Remember this from 1992?



Stay classy, Clintons.

via MSNBC

It's My Primary and I'll Cry If I Want To

Hillary isn't the only Clinton who can cry on cue. Remember this?



via Sully

Kathleen Willy and Ghost Cat Warn Barry

Kathleen Willy, famous for getting felt up by Ametuer Gynecologist Bill Clinton in 1993 and accusing Hillary of putting a hit out on her cat, is back in the news. This time it's an open letter to Son of a Luo Tribesman, Barack Obama:

My advice: Make sure that your personal and tax records are secure. Also, get a shredder, and use it!

Then, of course, there's the Clintons' secret private-investigator army, which no doubt has already been deployed to counter the threat that you present. I know that army's tactics well. They have threatened my children and my friend's children. They've threatened and killed my pets. They've vandalized my car. They've entered my home and stolen my book manuscript. They've destroyed my peace of mind … just so Hillary Clinton can sleep easier.

Umm......thanks?

via WorldNetDaily

Hitch Reams Billary

Best parts:

This calculated willingness to shop on both sides of the street of racial politics was actually analyzed quite shrewdly by Dick Morris, the former consigliere of the gruesome twosome, in conversation with Sean Hannity last week. The Clintons, he thought, would be quite happy to lose big to the "black vote" in South Carolina. It would enable them to signal that they were the ones to stem the flow of the color tide. Morris' host protested that this seemed a touch cynical. Morris jovially assured him that he knew the people he was talking about.

As indeed he did. It was Hillary Clinton who insisted on recalling Morris to the embattled White House, notwithstanding his various disgraces and notwithstanding the fact that he had been the adviser and strategist for Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Why am I saying "notwithstanding"? It was because he had performed so well for Helms, including helping him with the famous "white hands" ad that showed a white man crumpling up a letter that told him of preference for "minorities" in hiring, that Morris was thought of by the then-first lady as such a guru.


And:

I never quite understand how the Clintons' initial exploitation of racism was overlooked the first time around and has been airbrushed from the record since. After falling behind in the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and after being caught lying about the affair with Gennifer Flowers to which he later confessed under oath, Clinton left the campaign trail and flew home to Arkansas to give the maximum publicity to his decision to sign a death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was a black inmate on death row who had shot himself in the head after committing a double murder and, instead of dying as a result, had achieved the same effect as a lobotomy would have done. He never understood the charge against him or the sentence. After being served his last meal, he left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, as he told the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber, "for later." Several police and prison-officer witnesses expressed extreme queasiness at this execution of a gravely impaired man, and the prison chaplain, Dennis Pigman, later resigned from the prison service. The whole dismal and cruel and pathetic story was told by Marshall Frady in a long essay in The New Yorker in 1993 and is also recounted in a chapter titled "Chameleon in Black and White" by your humble servant in his book No One Left To Lie To. For now, I just ask you to imagine what would have been said if a Republican governor, falling in the polls, had gone out of his way to execute a mentally incompetent African-American prisoner.

via Christopher Hitchens at Slate

BREAKING NEWS: Clintons are Scam Artists

photo via Paul J. Richards/Scanpix

Great piece from Paul Loeb:

Hillary Clinton is now campaigning in Florida and arguing that the state's delegates should count, along with those from the Michigan primary. This would sound fair enough, unless you know that both Michigan and Florida moved their primaries up after the Democrats agreed that the only states to vote before February 5th ("Super Tuesday") would be Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina (picked because they were relatively small states, representing different demographics). The Democratic Party agreed that votes from the two renegade primaries would not count. The major candidates made an explicit agreement not to campaign in either state. Florida law required that all candidates keep their names on, but Obama and Edwards pulled their names from the Michigan ballot.

Now Clinton is trying to change the rules mid-game. She's arguing that her delegates from Michigan should count after all. (Running essentially unopposed, and with a netroots campaign to get Democrats to cross over and vote for Romney, she still got only 55% of the vote, since 40% voted "uncommitted" and Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel -- and Chris Dodd, who'd already dropped out -- split the remaining 5%.) She's campaigning in Florida with a wink and a nod (doing closed talks and photo ops, not public rallies), while trying to get those delegates to count too. She seems to be banking on the hope that a Florida win, even if only symbolic, will erase Obama's momentum from his massive South Carolina victory.

via Paul Loeb at HuffPo

Sour Grapes

Colbert on Clintons

via Sully

Sisterhood of the Traveling Skirts

Unpresidential

Here's a clip from a heated exchange between Ametuer Gynecologist Bill Clinton and a CNN reporter:

Michelle Speaks Out

It's nice to see both Obamas standing up to Billary:

"The one thing that is clear is that when power is confronted with real change, they will say anything," she said.

...She described his decision after college to do community work instead of going to Wall Street to "make millions," then his decision after Harvard Law School to take on civil rights work and the state legislature. She said his books are the only reason they recently got out of debt.

"It would seem to me that before anyone would open their mouth to even claim to want to be president of the United States they would have to show that kind of commitment to regular folks," she said.

Get 'em.

via Greenville Online