If the Democrats used the winner-take-all system in the Primary that the Republicans do, right now the delegate count would be:

Clinton – 1427
Obama -1260

Chris and Vitodude,

These were the rules when the primaries began. Billy (like you guys) is dealing in hypotheticals and “what ifs.” Clinton and every other candidate knew the rules before entering into the race, so complaining now is a mute point. Here’s another hypothetical, if HRC would have conceded gracefully after those 11 consecutive losses; the dems would have a better chance of actually winning back the WH. She was already essentially mathematically eliminated after losing the Potomac Primaries by such large margins! As it looks now Clinton’s fledgling campaign and “win at all cost” strategy is probably costing the dems the WH for the next four years! I guess that is just peachy!

Here’s a side note, proportional representation has been used by the dems for over 30 years, as to not disenfranchise or delegitimize the democratic constituents in typically republican states. Obviously, this hasn’t been very effective as the only dems to occupy the WH since this time have been Carter and Clinton. Don’t blame Obama, blame the DNC. You can hate this now because Clinton is losing, but the facts and math remain the same. She has less of the popular vote and fewer delegates including FL and MI. As it stands now at least, slightly more than half of the people voting in the dem primaries are rejecting her candidacy. Therefore, she is being rejected by the majority of the dem primary voters in these contests! So stop whining!

Realist:

Talk about blowing this out of proportion. I was not “whining”, just stating a simple fact. Good luck to Obama; he will have to win every state he lost to Clinton to win the election…ha, ha, not going to happen. The general election is not a caucus and does not only contain “red” states.

Hi Chris,

If it is dirt you want to dig up here this is a not so exhaustive list of just some of HRC’s scandals, lies/misspeaks, and conspiracies followed by an addendum on her own Laundry List of Lies. Enjoy!

Hillary Clinton became the first first lady to testify before a grand jury when she was subpeonaed by the Whitewater grand jury.

* Took a $100,000 bribe, camouflaged as futures trades, from Tyson Foods Inc. At issue was a $100,000 windfall from cattle futures after a $1,000 investment.
* Speculated in Health Care industry futures while overseeing legislative reform of same.
* Failed to correct false testimony by co-defendant Ira Magaziner in Health Care trial.
* Ordered members of the Health Care Task Force to shred documents that were the target of a court probe.
* Obstructed justice by ordering the shredding of Vince Foster’s documents in the Rose Law Firm.
* In 1996, Hillary was accused by the Senate Special Whitewater Committee of ordering the removal of potentially damaging files related to Whitewater from Foster’s office on the night of his death and telling aides to lie about their removal. Of course, Hillary denied everything.
* Obstructed justice by keeping her billing records, a document sought under subpoena, in the White House residence.

* Lied to investigators about her knowledge about billing records.
* Lied to investigators about her involvement in the Castle Grande land flip con.
* Ordered the use of the FBI to discredit Travel Office employees.
* Lied to investigators about her involvement in the firing of Travel Office Employees. In May 1993, the co-president was accused of having a central hand in firing several long-time employees of the White House Travel Office, the better to give the pricey travel business to her Hollywood pals, Linda Bloodworth Thomason and Harry Thomason. Hillary denied everything and when Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray investigated Travelgate, he concluded that there was substantial evidence that involved Hillary but not enough to warrant an indictment.
* A Federal judge orders a trial on July 25, 1994 to determine if Hillary Clinton’s heath care task force illegally operated in secret.
* The White House finally releases more than 2,000 documents on June 25, 1996, relating to the travel office firings, originally requested two years prior by congressional investigators.

TravelGate

William Kennedy, David Watkins, and Patsy Thomasson was accussed of fabricating charges against White House Travel Office personnel to have the business taken over by Clinton friends. They coerced FBI and IRS agents into complicity with this scheme. Kennedy and Watkins have resigned.

Travel Office employee, Catherine Cornelius removed documents from White House Travel Office. Because those documents later became the subject of a trial against Office Director Billy Dale, that could amount to obstruction of justice.

Filegate

On June 6, 1996, The Los Angeles Times reported that the White House sought confidential FBI background documents on fired White House Travel Office chief Billy Dale. The next day, the White House admits it ordered FBI files of more than 330 people, including dozens of Republican leaders, saying it was working off an “outdated list” of people who had applied for access to the White House. Eventually it is discovered that about 1,000 people’s FBI files were obtained by Clinton officials.

Linda TrippOne of those people whose FBI file was obtained by the White House was Linda Tripp, who blazed onto the national scene when she released to Independent Council, Ken Starr, secretly taped conversations she had with Monica Lewinsky about the sexual conduct of the President. Tripp’s connection to FBI files also include her witnessing fellow employees copying FBI files onto White House computers when she worked in the Clinton White House. (The Washington Times, 9/4/98) Tripp is also at the center of conspiracy theories involving Vince Foster’s suicide. Tripp had worked in the early Clinton administration in 1992 as executive assistant to Bernie Nussbaum, then the White House counsel. Tripp first surfaced in the original report on Foster’s death by former independent counsel Robert Fiske. Fiske said in his report, that Tripp was the last person to speak to Foster before he committed suicide. It was also Tripp who provided testimony on what happened inside Foster’s office after word of his death surfaced, again leading to questions of impropriety.

Tripp also is the original source of information regarding Kathryn Willey’s reported claim that Clinton had kissed and fondled her, claiming to be the first person to talk to Willey after she left the Oval Office.

* In June 1996, White House security head Craig Livingstone, a political operative and former bouncer, illegally obtained over 700 FBI files of mostly White House personnel from former Republican administrations.
* On the 9th, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta offers a public apology for the White House’s obtaining the FBI files: “Mistakes were made. It is inexcusable.”
* President Clinton later offered a direct apology and calls the FBI files controversy a “completely honest bureaucratic snafu.”
* FBI Director Louis Freeh said on June 14, that he and his agency were “victimized.” He also says that the White House acquisition of the files represented “egregious violations of privacy.”
* The Washington Post reports on the 16th, Secret Service officials say the tracking system they used for White House passholders could not have generated the supposedly outdated list that the White House claimed it used to request FBI files on the now more than 400 former passholders.
* White House places personnel security office director Craig Livingstone, directly responsible for obtaining the FBI files, on administrative leave.
* House Government Reform and Oversight Committee begins hearings on FBI file affair on June 19th. Livingstone tells officials that the office holding the files was often left unsecured and that people with the lowest level security clearance were allowed access to the room. ABC News reports that Livingstone himself did not get proper security clearance until more than a year after he began his job as head of security.
* Attorney General Janet Reno calls on FBI to expand its probe to determine how and why White House obtained files on former Reagan and Bush administration staff members - later she reverses her earlier call for the FBI to lead the inquiry, and announces that Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr should investigate how the White House acquired the FBI files in an improper manner.
* New documents on June 25th, show that a total of more than 700 FBI background files were improperly obtained by the White House.
* Craig Livingstone resigns from the White House staff on June 26th.
* Anthony Marceca informs the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 28th, that he is taking the Fifth Amendment and will not answer any more questions concerning the White House acquisition of FBI background files.
* The diaries of the Dick Morris’ call girl, Sherry Rowlands, noted that Mr Morris described Mrs Clinton as the prime mover in the scandal when confidential FBI personnel files on leading Republicans were taken to the White House and scrutinised by political fixers. “It was Hillary,” Mr Morris replied when Miss Rowlands asked who was to blame for the scandal. “She ordered them. She’s a paranoid lady; she did it.”

CATALOG OF HILLARY CLINTON’S LIES

STUART TAYLOR JR, NATIONAL JOURNAL - Let’s take a trip down memory lane — from the tawdriness of the 1992 presidential campaign through the mendacity of the ensuing years — to revisit a sampling of why so many of us came to think that Hillary’s first instinct when in an embarrassing spot is to lie.

Gennifer and Monica: Former lounge singer Gennifer Flowers surfaced in early 1992 with claims — corroborated by tapes of phone calls — that she had had a long affair with then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who had arranged a state job for her. Bill Clinton told the media, falsely, that the woman’s “story is untrue.”

Although well aware of her husband’s philandering history, Hillary backed his squishy denials, famously asserting on “60 Minutes” that she was not “some little woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette.” More deceptively, she suggested to ABC’s Sam Donaldson that Bill’s contacts with Flowers were just an example of how he loved to “help people who are in trouble” and “listen to their problems.”

“Hillary’s words uncannily foreshadowed her insistence six years later to … a White House aide that Bill had ‘ministered’ to [Monica] Lewinsky because she was a troubled young woman,” Sally Bedell Smith writes in her fine new book about the Clintons, For Love of Politics. Hillary has continued to insist that she believed what she said about Lewinsky. But friends and former aides have told Smith and others that she knew her husband was lying all along.

Travelgate: The first Clinton scandal after Bill became president started in May 1993, when Chief of Staff Mack McLarty fired the seven employees in the White House office that arranges travel for the press corps. The White House cited gross financial mismanagement. (The charge was never substantiated.) The sudden firings created a media uproar, especially when the dismissed employees were quickly replaced by friends and relatives of the Clintons.

Hillary later told the General Accounting Office, in a document prepared by her attorney, that she had no role in the decision to fire the employees, did not know the “origin of the decision,” and “did not direct that any action be taken by anyone” other than keeping her informed.

But her statements were contradicted by evidence, including a long-concealed memo to McLarty and a written chronology prepared by White House aide David Watkins that came to light years later. Hillary, Watkins wrote, had said that “we need those people out and we need our people in” and had made it clear that “there would be hell to pay” unless she got “immediate action.” Another aide wrote that Hillary intimate Susan Thomases had said, “Hillary wants these people fired.”

While saying that no provable crime had been committed, Robert Ray, who had succeeded Kenneth Starr as independent counsel, reported in October 2000 that Hillary’s statements had been “factually false” and that there was “overwhelming evidence that she in fact did have a role in the decision to fire the employees.”

Cattle futures: The New York Times revealed in March 1994 that in 1978, just before her husband became governor, Hillary had made a $100,000 profit on a $1,000 investment in highly speculative cattle-futures contracts in only nine months. Hillary’s first explanation (through aides) of this extraordinary windfall was that she had made the investment after “reading The Wall Street Journal” and placed all the trades herself after seeking advice from “numerous people.” It was so preposterous that she soon had to abandon it. Eventually, she had to admit that longtime Clinton friend James Blair had executed 30 of her 32 trades directly with an Arkansas broker.

In an April 1994 press conference, Hillary denied knowing of “any favorable treatment” by Blair. But the astronomical odds against any financial novice making a 10,000 percent profit without the game being rigged led many to believe that Blair, the outside counsel to Arkansas-based poultry giant Tyson Foods, must have put only profitable trades in Hillary’s account and absorbed her losses. The heavily regulated Tyson needed friends in high places, and Bill Clinton helped it pass a 1983 state law raising weight limits on chicken trucks.

Removal of Vince Foster documents: During the same press conference, Hillary was asked why her then-chief of staff, Maggie Williams, had been involved in removing documents from the office of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster after his suicide. Foster had been a partner of Hillary’s at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark. “I don’t know that she did remove any documents,” Hillary said. But it was reported three months later that Hillary had instructed Williams to remove the Foster documents to the White House residence. Then they were turned over to Clinton attorney Bob Barnett.

Castle Grande: In the summer of 1995, the Resolution Trust Corp. reported that Hillary had been one of 11 Rose Law Firm lawyers who had done work in the mid-1980s on an Arkansas real estate development, widely known as Castle Grande, promoted by James McDougal and Seth Ward. McDougal headed a troubled thrift, Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, and had given Hillary legal business as a favor to Bill. McDougal and his wife, Susan, were the Clintons’ partners in their Whitewater real estate investment. Ward was father-in-law to Webb Hubbell, another former Rose Law Firm partner, who was briefly Clinton’s associate attorney general in 1993. Later, Hubbell went to prison for fraud, as did James McDougal.

Castle Grande was a sewer of sham transactions, some used to funnel cash into Madison Guaranty. Castle Grande’s ultimate collapse contributed to that of the thrift, which cost taxpayers millions. Hillary told federal investigators that she knew nothing about Castle Grande. When it turned out that more than 30 of her 60 hours of legal work for Madison Guaranty involved Castle Grande, she said she had known the project under a different name. A 1996 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. report said that she had drafted documents that Castle Grande used to “deceive federal bank examiners.”

Prosecutors later came to believe that Hillary had padded her bills; she “wasn’t guilty of [knowingly] facilitating nefarious transactions — she was guilty of doing less work than she took credit for,” Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. explain in their 2007 biography, Her Way. Hillary herself never took refuge in this explanation.

Billing records: Hillary’s billing records for Castle Grande were in a 116-page, 5-inch-thick computer printout that came to light under mysterious circumstances on January 4, 1996 — 19 months after Starr’s investigators had subpoenaed it and amid prosecutorial pressure on Clinton aides who had been strikingly forgetful. For most of that time, Hillary claimed that the billing records had vanished. But a longtime Hillary assistant named Carolyn Huber later admitted coming across the printout in August 1995 on a table in a storage area next to Hillary’s office; Huber said she had put it into a box in her own office, without realizing for five more months that these were the subpoenaed billing records.

This implausible tale, on top of other deceptions, prompted New York Times columnist William Safire to write on January 8, 1996, that “our first lady … is a congenital liar.”

The next day, the White House press secretary said that the president wanted to punch Safire in the nose for insulting his wife. Five days later, the president invited Monica Lewinsky to the Oval Office for what turned out to be one of their 10 oral-sex sessions. Two years and 13 days after that, Hillary was on the “Today” show suggesting that her husband’s Lewinsky affair was a lie concocted by “this vast right-wing conspiracy.”

http://nationaljournal.com/taylor.htm

HILLARY CLINTON claims she played pickup basketball when she was young, presumably to get ready for her race against Obama. Newsmax has compiled a list of other little known facts about HRC, an obscurity some feel is due to their non-existence:

- She was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. who climbed Mount Everest.

- She was a Yankees fan when she lived in Chicago.

- She told upstate New Yorkers she had been a “duck hunter.”

- She claimed on Sept. 11 daughter Chelsea was jogging around the World Trade Center.

HRC AND WEBSTER HUBBELL

SUSAN SCHMIDT, WASH POST, 1998 - Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr yesterday secured a new federal indictment of Webster L. Hubbell, alleging that the former top Justice Department official lied to Congress and federal banking regulators to conceal work that he, Hillary Rodham Clinton and their law firm did in the mid-1980s for a rogue savings and loan.

The 15-count indictment alleges that Hubbell covered up the Rose Law Firm’s involvement in a phony multimillion-dollar land deal that caused losses big enough to bankrupt Madison Guaranty S&L, the thrift owned by the late James B. McDougal, the Clintons’ Whitewater business partner. Hillary Clinton’s legal work for Madison in the mid-1980s is referred to throughout the indictment but she is accused of no wrongdoing. . .

Hubbell pleaded guilty in 1994 to charges lodged by the independent counsel that he bilked Rose Law Firm clients and partners. . .

The independent counsel lodged no Whitewater charges in his impeachment report to Congress on President Clinton and closed down his Arkansas office months ago without bringing charges against Hillary Clinton. The Hubbell indictment was issued by a grand jury here. . .

While Hillary Clinton’s name is not mentioned in the indictment, her actions are described, albeit obliquely. She is mentioned some 35 times throughout the indictment, but only as Rose’s “1985-86 billing partner” for the Madison account. The document describes some of her work on Madison’s ill-fated Castle Grande project, an 1,100-acre industrial and trailer park development south of Little Rock.

Some of the loans that the accountants were blamed for allowing Madison to make were Castle Grande transactions that Hillary Clinton and Hubbell worked on for his father-in-law, Seth Ward. The indictment charges that Hubbell falsely told regulators and Congress he did no work on Castle Grande matters and was not aware of what work Rose did for Madison.

The indictment contends that Hillary Clinton prepared a real estate option agreement used by Madison officials to deceive federal regulators about hundreds of thousands of dollars in bogus real estate commissions that were being paid to Ward. While charging there was a scheme to hide the commissions and the tottering condition of the thrift, the indictment makes no allegation that Hillary Clinton knew anything about it. . .

Starr also has been investigating payments of more than $700,000 in consulting fees to Hubbell from Clinton allies and Democratic Party supporters after he left the Justice Department in the spring of 1994 amid allegations he defrauded his former firm and clients.

LYING FOR HILLARY

One of the issues that came up in a lengthy suit (American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc, et al. v. Hillary Rodham Clinton, et al.) was whether White House aide Ira Magaziner, speaking on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s health task force, told the truth when he claimed that only federal employees were members of the group. This was found to be false and Judge Royce Lamberth issued an opinion, part of which follows:

“[I]t is clear that the decisions here were made at the highest levels of government, and that the government itself is–and should be–accountable when its officials run amok. . . The court agrees with plaintiffs that these were not reckless and inept errors taken by bewildered counsel. The Executive Branch of the government, working in tandem, was dishonest with this court. . . .

“The Department of Justice has a long tradition of setting the highest standards of conduct for all lawyers, and it is a sad day when this court must conclude, as did the United States Attorney in his investigation, that the Department of Justice succumbed to pressure from White House attorneys and others to provide this court with “strained interpretations” that were “ultimately unconvincing.”

“It seems that some government officials never learn that the cover-up can be worse than the underlying conduct. Most shocking to this court, and deeply disappointing, is that the Department of Justice would participate in such conduct. This was not an issue of good faith word games being played with the Court. . . . The United States Attorney found that the most controversial sentence of the Magaziner declaration–”Only federal government employees serve as members of the interdepartmental working group”–could not be prosecuted under the perjury statute because the issue of “membership” within the working group was a fuzzy one, and no generally agreed upon “membership” criteria were ever written down. Therefore, the Magaziner declaration was actually false because of the implication of the declaration that “membership” was a meaningful concept and that one could determine who was and was not a “member” of the working group. . . “

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1997 - It was just symbolic and, in the end, the money comes out of our pockets but at least one judge has called the White House for lying, assessing a fine of over a quarter of a million dollars. As the above excerpt from Judge Lamberth’s opinion indicates, this was no minor peccadillo but rather, “The Executive Branch of the government, working in tandem, was dishonest with this court.” At issue was the composition of Hillary Clinton’s health task force, a body stacked with those from the medical industry who would gain most from the faux reforms of the Clintonistas.

You might think a federal judge calling one of Mrs. Clinton’s top aides a liar would be big news, but the Washington Post found room on its front page for “Seniors Strut Their Stuff in Pool Pageant” while burying the health care story on page 21 under a boring headline. That was nine pages better than the New York Times, which ran the story under “Judge Rules Government Covered Up Lies on Panel,” hardly descriptive of the story’s significance.

ATTORNEY CLINTON

During the 1992 campaign, Hillary Clinton defended her role in the Madison Guarantee S&L scandal by saying, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas. But what I decided to do was pursue my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.”

Forgotten, however, is what inspired this homily: accusations that Ms. Clinton had represented Whitewater business partner Jim McDougal’s S&L before her husband’s government. Here’s what the New York Times reported on March 17, 1992: “Hillary Clinton said today that she did not earn ‘a penny’ from state business conducted by her Little Rock law firm and that she never intervened with state regulators on behalf of a failed Arkansas savings and loan association. . . “

Records would show that she did, in fact, represent Madison before the state securities department. After the revelation, she says, “For goodness sakes, you can’t be a lawyer if you don’t represent banks.”

Susan McDougal recalled Ms. Clinton coming in and drumming up the business. Ms. McDougal told the Washington Post: “The problem was finances, her finances.” The Washington Times quoted an unnamed Clinton business associate who claimed the governor used to “jog over to McDougal’s office about once a month to pick up the [retainer] check for his wife.”

Jim McDougal’s version of the story, according to the LA Times, was that Clinton asked him to throw some legal work his wife’s way to help the Clintons out of a financial crunch: “I hired Hillary because Bill came in whimpering that they needed help.”

Hillary Clinton wrote Jim McDougal enclosing a power of attorney for him to sign “authorizing me to act on your behalf with respect to matters concerning Whitewater Development Corporation.” Another power of attorney was enclosed for Susan McDougal. The power of attorney included the right to endorse, sign and execute “checks, notes, deeds, agreements, certificates, receipts or any other instruments in writing of all matters related to Whitewater Development Corporation.”

This letter, uncovered in 1993 by Jerry Seper of the Washington Times, directly contradicted the claim of the Clintons that they were “passive shareholders” in Whitewater.

From a 1996 Chicago Tribune editorial: “The legal issues will sort themselves out in time. But one thing has become all too clear. Bill and Hillary Clinton and their aides have made a concerted effort to deceive official investigators and the American public with half truths and outright lies . . . It’s not clear what the Clintons want to conceal, but it’s clear that they have made extraordinary efforts to do so.”

WHITEWATER

WHAT WHITEWATER WAS ALL ABOUT: Almost totally lost in the Clinton saga known as Whitewater is what Whitewater was originally all about. It was basically a land resort scam of the sort that local TV stations win awards for exposing. Here’s how it happened:

In the late 1970s, the Clintons and McDougals buy land in the Ozarks with mostly borrowed funds. The Clintons get 50% interest with no cash down. The plot, known as Whitewater, is fifty miles from the nearest grocery store. The Washington Post will report later that some purchasers of lots, many of them retirees, “put up houses or cabins, others slept in vans or tents, hoping to be able to live off the land.” HRC writes Jim McDougal, said that “If Reagonomics works at all, Whitewater could become the Western Hemisphere’s Mecca.” More than half of the purchasers will lose their plots thanks to the sleazy form of financing used. The McDougals will be among a number of close HRC’s friends and business associates who will end up in jail..

HRC AND ETHNIC SLURS

Virtually no attention has been given to Hillary’s Clinton’s reported anti-Jewish statements. This is another example of the impenetrable media bubble placed around HRC since her husband first ran for president.

There have been a few exceptions. For example, in August 2000, the NY Post reported:

“The Arkansas man who accused Hillary Rodham Clinton last month of uttering an anti-Semitic slur in 1974 has passed a lie-detector test arranged by The Post. Paul Fray, who has charged Mrs. Clinton called him a “f- - -ing Jew bastard” after Bill Clinton lost his race for Congress, cleared the polygraph exam administered Sunday near his home here. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Fray is truthful,” concluded state-licensed Arkansas polygrapher Jeff Hubanks, who gave the three-hour test. . . The findings were reviewed yesterday by another expert, Richard Keifer, a former head of the FBI’s polygraph unit who has 20 years of experience. Keifer judged the results “inconclusive” because they didn’t meet the high federal polygraph standards - but said he found nothing to indicate Fray was lying. Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said, “Paul Fray is an admitted liar, and we’re not going to be responding to his lies anymore.”

That same year former Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson claimed that in their frequent arguments, Bill and Hillary Clinton would use such expressions as “Jew motherf*cker,” “Jew Boy” and “Jew Bastard.”

That same year, the Review discussed the issue of how the media handles these matters:

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2000 - The kid gloves treatment of Hillary Clinton’s alleged ethnic slurs is, of course, in marked contrast to the media handling of, say, John Rocker, Louis Farrakhan or Jesse Jackson. But she is not the only one who has been give a pass. A reader sends along a 1997 issue of the Progressive with an article by Susan Douglas that includes this:

“As ABC News reminded us over and over, the lesson from Tiger Woods’s victory is ‘that anyone can make it to the top.’ Woods was immediately canonized by every news outlet in the land as a breakthrough, trans-racial saint, an agent of integration and goodwill. The newscasters genuflected. Once again, the future of western civilization was freighted onto the shoulders of the latest guy who can throw/hit/kick a ball. The media pilloried pro-golfer Fuzzy Zoeller for making racist remarks about fried chicken and collard greens. But they have virtually ignored Woods’s own racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks.

“In the April issue of GQ, Woods speculated that ‘good-looking women hang around baseball and basketball’ because ‘black guys have big dicks.’ And he asks: Why do lesbians always get to their destination so quickly? He answers: ‘Because lesbians are always going sixty-nine.’ This doesn’t fit into the pack journalism “new-messiah” image, now does it? So just let it slide.”

But the current masters of applying multiple standards to matters claimed to be worthy of zero tolerance may well be the Blair government. Not only was Tony Blair’s campaign to end under-aged drinking in bars celebrated by his son turning up dead drunk on a London sidewalk, but Home Secretary Jack Straw, riding in a car driven by a special branch officer, was pulled over for doing 103 mph on a motorway. The incident occurred at 8:55 am as Straw was rushing to a meeting with Blair, perhaps to discuss new measures to make the British behave. Straw, hit man for Blair’s zero tolerance policies, also has a son who got into trouble with the police after selling ten pounds (sterling) of marijuana to an undercover reporter.

Whatever the facts of the matter, the accusation in a new book that Hillary Clinton called one of her staffers a “Jew bastard” in 1974 adds a significant new problem to her already troubled effort. Clinton flatly denied the incident ever happened and quoted her husband as saying, “I was there on election night in 1974 and this charge is simply not true.”

The campaign also produced a 1997 handwritten letter from the man allegedly excoriated, Paul Fray, to Hillary Clinton in which he says, “I have wronged you. I ask for your forgiveness because I did say things against you, and called you names, not only to your face — but behind your back . . . names that are unmentionable.” The circumstances under which Fray allegedly wrote the letter are not clear but the document is reminiscent of the affidavits signed by various women denying being sexually involved with Clinton’s husband. The Clintons have the largest collection of affidavits and letters attesting to alleged non-events to be found in contemporary politics.

Fray’s comments, quoted in Jerry Oppenheimer’s new book, “State of a Union,” have been verified not only by his wife but by another Clinton aide at the time, Neill McDonald.

According to Michael Kramer in the NY Daily News:

“The slur allegedly was uttered at a heated, finger-pointing session at Bill Clinton’s Fayetteville, Ark., campaign headquarters on election night in 1974, following his defeat in his first try for political office, a run for Congress in Arkansas’ 3rd Congressional District. In the room that night were Bill Clinton; his then-girlfriend, Hillary Rodham; Paul Fray, Clinton’s campaign manager, and Fray’s wife, Mary Lee. Another campaign worker, Neill McDonald, was just outside the door and says he heard everything. The story of that encounter has been widely reported before, but without any charge that Hillary Rodham ripped into Paul Fray using an anti-Semitic slur. In interviews with The News on Friday and Saturday, the Frays and McDonald all confirmed that Hillary uttered the slur. McDonald said Hillary was speaking in the “heat of battle” and that he doesn’t believe she is an anti-Semite. McDonald added that he is and has always been a supporter of the Clintons.”. . .

Dick Morris has joined the fracas, repeating his previous claims that on one occasion HR Clinton said to him, “Money, that’s all you people care about is money.” Morris says he responded, “By money, Hillary, by you people, I assume you mean political consultants?” And she said, ‘Oh yes, of course that’s what I mean.’ But it wasn’t what I thought she meant.”

The president had risen to HR Clinton’s defense but his credentials are more than a little suspect ever since the tapes of his conversations with Gennifer Flowers, which included this Flowers comment on Mario Cuomo: “Well, he seems like he could get real mean . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have some mafioso major connections.” And Clinton replies, “Well, he acts like one.”

And then there’s that police sting video of Roger Clinton saying he has to get some cocaine for his brother who has a nose like a vacumn cleaner, in which Roger makes free use of the word nigger, a term trooper Patterson says he also heard from WJ Clinton when talking about Jesse Jackson and prominent Little Rock black figure, Robert ‘Say’ McIntosh.

CATTLE FUTURES

TWO MONTHS after commencing the Whitewater scheme, Hillary Clinton invested $1,000 in cattle futures. Within a few days she has a $5,000 profit. Before bailing out she earns nearly $100,000 on her investment. Many years later, several economists will calculate that the chances of earning such returns legally were one in 250 million.

AGBIZ TILLER - Mrs. Clinton’s ability to turn $1000 into a near $100,000 in ten months of futures trading, a congressional study would learn, coincided with a period of time that a select group of executives from packing houses, grain companies, feedlot operators and commodity brokers reaped tens of millions of dollars in an “insider” trading scheme in the cattle futures market. . . Between February, 1978 and April, 1979 some 32 cattle industry insiders made profits of $110 million by selling cattle futures after they received some 15 “secret signals,” which was followed within an average two and one half day period, by a marked drop in cattle future prices. Then Rep. Neal Smith (Dem.-Iowa), chairman of the House Small Business Committee, which released the report in February, 1981 noted that in all a total of some 1027 individuals made total net profits of approximately $156 million. Thus, three percent of the large traders — those with 50 contracts or more — with correlated trading activity and/or common business affiliations accounted for 70% of the total net profits of this group of traders. Mrs. Clinton traded 50 or more contracts three times . . .

A previous USDA study in 1979, for example, pointed out that during 20 of the 21 months preceding October, 1979 there was not a single day in which a farmer-feeder could have used the futures market to hedge in a profit and only five days in the remaining month that the farmer-feeder could have broken even . . . Meanwhile, the eight largest packers, who at the time were slaughtering 44% of the nation’s beef, held over one-half of the futures contracts and made twice as much money in the futures market as they did in trading cattle . . . In all, between February, 1978 and December, 1980, some 29 “secret signals” were given although Smith’s Committee staff made no estimates on the profits earned after April, 1979 . . . There are estimates that 75% to 95% of individual investors lose money in commodity futures markets.

WASHINGTON TIMES, 2007 - Mrs. Clinton initially explained her success by claiming to have done all her own research studying the Wall Street Journal. Then she admitted that Jim Blair, the outside counsel for Tyson Foods, advised her and placed most of her trades. Mr. Blair helped her open her trading account in mid-October 1978. That was three weeks before her husband rode to certain victory (63 percent of the vote) in his race for Arkansas governor, a position from which he would enforce the state’s environmental policies affecting chicken waste and appoint numerous regulatory officials overseeing Tyson. The odds of a retail trader executing the intraday transactions that generated a 530 percent overnight return, which Mrs. Clinton achieved on her first day, “are about the same as [the odds] of finding the Dead Sea Scrolls on the steps of the State House in Little Rock,” according to estimates by Wall Street Journal financial columnist Caroline Baum and commodities speculator Victor Niederhoffer in their devastating account of Mrs. Clinton’s trading activity.

HRC AND WAL-MART

WARD HARKAVY, VILLAGE VOICE 2000 - Twice in three days last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton basked in the adulation of cheering union . . . They would have dropped their forks if they had heard that Hillary served for six years on the board of the dreaded Wal-Mart, a union-busting behemoth. If they had learned the details of her friendship with Wal-Mart, they might have lost their lunches. . .

As she was leaving the dais, she ignored a reporter’s question about Wal-Mart, and she ignored it again when she strode by reporters in the hotel lobby.

But there are questions. In 1986, when Hillary was first lady of Arkansas, she was put on the board of Wal-Mart. Officials at the time said she wasn’t filling a vacancy. In May 1992, as Hubby’s presidential campaign heated up, she resigned from the board of Wal-Mart. Company officials said at the time that they weren’t going to fill her vacancy.

So what the hell was she doing on the Wal-Mart board? According to press accounts at the time, she was a show horse at the company’s annual meetings when founder Sam Walton bused in cheering throngs to celebrate his non-union empire, which is headquartered in Arkansas, one of the country’s poorest states. According to published reports, she was placed in charge of the company’s “green” program to protect the environment.

But nobody got greener than Sam Walton and his family. For several years in the ’80s, he was judged the richest man in America by Forbes magazine; his fortune zoomed into the billions until he split it up among relatives. It’s no surprise that Hillary is a strong supporter of free trade with China. Wal-Mart, despite its “Buy American” advertising campaign, is the single largest U.S. importer, and half of its imports come from China.

Was Hillary the voice of conscience on the board for American and foreign workers? Contemporary accounts make no mention of that. They do describe her as a “corporate litigator” in those days, and they mention, speaking of environmental matters, that she also served on the board of Lafarge, a company that, according to a press account, once burned hazardous fuels to run its cement plants. . .

And the Clintons depended on Wal-Mart’s largesse not only for Hillary’s regular payments as a board member but for travel expenses on Wal-Mart planes and for heavy campaign contributions to Bill’s campaigns there and nationally. . .

During the same period, small towns all over America began complaining that Wal-Mart was squeezing out ma-and-pa stores and leaving little burgs throughout the Midwest and South with downtowns that featured little more than empty storefronts.

MOTHER JONES, 2003 - More than two-thirds of all Wal-Mart employees are women — yet women make up less than 10 percent of top store managers. Back when she was first lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton became the first woman appointed to the Wal-Mart board, and tried to get the company to hire more women managers, but that effort apparently went the way of national health insurance. Wal-Mart today has the same percentage of women in management that the average company had in 1975.

LISA FEATHERSTONE, NATION, 2005 - Unlike so many horrible things, Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. The Arkansas-based company prospered under the state’s native son Bill Clinton when he was governor and President. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, were close to the Clintons, and for several years Hillary Clinton, whose law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company’s board of directors. Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform” has provided Wal-Mart with a ready workforce of women who have no choice but to accept its poverty wages and discriminatory policies.

FLAG BURNING

ST PETERSBURG TIMES EDITORIAL, 2005 - Sen. Hillary Clinton’s decision to co-sponsor a bill to make it a crime to burn the American flag amounts to political pandering of the worst kind. She was against outlawing flag-burning before she was for it.

The New York Democrat says she opposes a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning but has signed on to a bill that would ostensibly accomplish the same thing by federal statute. Her position is unprincipled. Clinton may think this is a middle-ground position with broad political appeal, but most people will see it for what it is. . .

The measure she has co-sponsored along with Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, is the Flag Protection Act of 2005. One provision would make it a crime punishable by up to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine, to burn an American flag of “any size” if a person knows that it is “likely to produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace.”

The crime is not the act of burning the flag (since old and tattered flags are burned regularly by veteran groups) but to burn a flag in criticism of the American government when someone is nearby who cannot control his impulses. This gives remarkable power to those in our society who resort to violence in response to disturbing speech and messages.

The Democratic Party doesn’t need another candidate who lacks the backbone to take a clear, principled stand, and it certainly doesn’t need a candidate who doesn’t believe in the First Amendment.

JOHNNY CHUNG

CNN, MARCH 1998 - Democratic fund-raiser Johnny Chung has agreed to plead guilty to election law violations and cooperate in the ongoing Justice Department investigation into illegal campaign fund-raising in the 1996 elections. . . Chung became a major figure in the Democratic fund-raising scandal when it was learned he made almost 50 visits to the White House. During one visit, Chung gave first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s then-chief of staff, Maggie Williams, a $50,000 check for the Democratic National Committee. The check was delivered inside the White House. Two days later Chung was able to bring a group of Chinese businessmen to watch President Bill Clinton deliver a radio address in the Oval Office. They then had their picture taken with the president. The DNC returned more than $300,000 that Chung raised because of questions about the source of the money.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/03/05/chung.pleads/

MANA FROM HAVANA

NY POST, 2000 - Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate campaign returned $22,000 in “soft money” to a businesswoman linked to a Democratic campaign contribution from a drug smuggler in Havana. The donation by Vivian Mannerud Verble, first reported by The Post, was the largest single contribution received by Clinton’s soft-money committee. Verble, whose company runs charter flights between Cuba and Miami, also served as the fund-raising intermediary between Jorge Cabrera and the Democratic National Committee in 1995, according to congressional investigators. The probers reportedly learned that Cabrera cut a $20,000 check to the DNC from a bank account in which he also kept profits from his lucrative cocaine trade. The DNC eventually returned the money, while Cabrera pleaded guilty to importing 6,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States. He is serving a 19-year federal prison sentence in Florida . . . Although Verble was never charged with any criminal wrongdoing, she was at the center of one of the most embarrassing fund-raising scandals in the Clinton administration..

ANOTHER LAND DEAL

JERRY SEPER, WASHINGTON TIMES, 2000 - The Arkansas Supreme Court, which is considering disbarment proceedings against President Clinton, yesterday said it also is investigating whether first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton engaged in fraud in a questionable Whitewater-related land deal. The probe, confirmed by the court’s Committee of Professional Conduct, has focused on accusations about Mrs. Clinton’s legal representation of a failed Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association real estate venture, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. called a “sham.” A major area of concern is an option agreement that facilitated a $300,000 payment to Seth Ward, father-in-law of Mrs. Clinton’s law partner, Webster L. Hubbell. The option, written by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Hubbell while they were at Little Rock’s Rose Law Firm, guaranteed Mr. Ward a payoff and negated his liability in the project.

HILLARY CLINTON SAYS SOME TORTURE ACCEPTABLE

BEN SMITH, NY DAILY NEWS - Despite her apparent opposition to torture, Hillary Clinton said in a Daily News editorial board meeting yesterday that the practice is acceptable in some circumstances. Clinton got a rousing reception from the human rights community, and seemed to take an uncharacteristically bright-line stance, in a recent statement on the Senate floor during the debate over torture.

“Have we fallen so low as to debate how much torture we are willing to stomach?” she asked at one point, and left anti-torture commentators, and even Clinton critics like Andrew Sullivan, with the impression that she’d emerged into a kind of un-Clintonian moral clarity and said no to torture.

But at yesterday’s Daily News editorial board meeting, it emerged that she’s not actually against torture in all instances, and that her dispute with McCain and Bush is largely procedural.

She was asked about the “ticking time bomb” scenario, in which you’ve captured the terrorist and don’t have time for a normal interrogation, and said that there is a place for what she called “severity,” in a conversation that included mentioning water-boarding, hypothermia, and other techniques commonly described as torture.

“I have said that those are very rare but if they occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that,” she responded. “Again, I think the President has to take responsibility. There has to be some check and balance, some reporting. I don’t mind if it’s reporting in a top secret context. But that shouldn’t be the tail that wags the dog, that should be the exception to the rule.”

Asked again about these methods, she said:

“In those instances where we have sufficient basis to believe that there is something imminent, yeah, but then we’ve got to have a check and balance.”

TO INDICT OR NOT TO INDICT

ON APRIL 27, 1998, deputy independent counsel Hickman Ewing met with his prosecutors to decide on whether to indict Hillary Clinton. Here’s what happened as reported by Sue Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf in their book, “Truth at Any Cost:”

“[Ewing] paced the room for more than three hours, recalling facts from memory in his distinctive Memphis twang. He spoke passionately, laying out a case that the first lady had obstructed government investigators and made false statements about her legal work for McDougal’s S & L, particularly the thrift’s notorious multimillion-dollar Castle Grande real estate project. . .The biggest problem was the death a month earlier of Jim McDougal. . . Without him, prosecutors would have a hard time describing the S & L dealings they suspected Hillary Clinton had lied about.”

CNN, MAR 18, 1999 - Deputy independent counsel Hickman Ewing testified at the Susan McDougal trial Thursday that he had written a “rough draft indictment” of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after he doubted her truthfulness in a deposition. Ewing, who questioned Mrs. Clinton in a deposition at the White House on April 22, 1995, said, “I had questions about whether what she was saying were accurate. We had no records. She was in conflict with a number of interviews.”

Ewing said those interviews by investigators were primarily with other people in the Rose Law Firm. Ewing said he had questioned Mrs. Clinton about her representation of Jim McDougal’s Madison Guarantee Savings & Loan when she was at the Rose Law firm in Little Rock. “I don’t know if she was telling the truth. I did not circulate the draft. I showed it to one lawyer (in the independent counsel’s office) who said he didn’t want to see it,” Ewing said, under questioning from McDougal attorney Mark Geragos. . .

Ewing also testified that in a later deposition with both the president and first lady on July 22, 1995, he had questions about the truthfulness of both Clintons. McDougal’s attorney Mark Geragos asked Ewing: “Did you say the Clintons were liars?” “I don’t know if I used the ‘L-word’ but I expressed internally that I was concerned,” Ewing said.

LINCOLN BEDROOM

FOX NEWS, 2000 - Hillary Rodham Clinton denied allegations that she or her fund-raisers offered overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom and Camp David to supporters of her Senate campaign. “We have friends and supporters come and spend time with us and spend the night with us that we are getting to know and who like spending time with us,” Clinton said when questioned at a campaign stop at a western New York diner. “I don’t see what’s news about that.” . . . White House staffers said that since the summer of 1999 there have been at least 26 instances in which people, mainly couples, were overnight guests after donating to the first lady’s campaign or promising to do so. . . “The Lincoln Bedroom was never sold,” Clinton said in 1997, when the White House released a list of 938 guests who had spent the night at the executive mansion up to that point in the Clinton presidency. The list included the names of political supporters, as well as entertainment luminaries and old Clinton friends

CASTLE GRANDE

1999 Mrs. Clinton is mentioned 36 times in the fraud indictment against Webster Hubbell. Writes the AP’s Peter Yost: “Starr alleges Hubbell concealed his own and Mrs. Clinton’s work during the 1980s on a failed Arkansas land deal, known as Castle Grande, that federal regulators say was riddled with ‘insider dealing, fictitious sales and land flips.’” Yost notes the criminal contempt trial of Susan McDougal: “The indictment against Mrs. McDougal details a series of grand jury questions about Mrs. Clinton and Castle Grande that Mrs. McDougal refused to answer.” The Castle Grande project involved a baroque set of deals aimed at least in part in shoring up the McDougal’s failing savings and loan.

Not until the immaculate reconception of Mrs. Clinton’s billing records in 1996 did her extensive role in the matter come to light. Billing records documenting HRC’s work on the Castle Grande development scam were discovered in the family quarters of the White House. HRC said she has no idea how they got there.

She also claimed that she could not remember her work on the project nor 15 conversations with Hubbell’s wheeler-dealer father-in-law, Seth Ward. In the end, Castle Grande cost the S&L nearly $4 million in unpaid principal and interest.

THE TRAVEL OFFICE CASE

1993 - HILLARY CLINTON and David Watkins move to oust the White House travel office in favor of World Wide Travel, Clinton’s source of $1 million in fly-now-pay-later campaign trips that essentially financed the last stages of the campaign without the bother of reporting a de facto contribution. The White House fires seven long-term employees for alleged mismanagement and kickbacks. The director, Billy Dale, charged with embezzlement, will be acquitted in less than two hours by the jury. An FBI agent involved in the case, IC Smith, will write later, “The White House Travel Office matter sent a clear message to the Congress as well as independent counsels that this White House would be different. Lying, withholding evidence, and considering - even expecting - underlings to be expendable so the Clintons could avoid accountability for their actins would become the norm.”

CNN OCT 18 2000 - Independent Counsel Robert Ray’s final report on the White House travel office case found first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony in the matter was “factually false,” but concluded there were no grounds to prosecute her. The special prosecutor determined the first lady did play a role in the 1993 dismissal of the travel office’s staff, contrary to her testimony in the matter. But Ray said he would not prosecute Clinton for those false statements because “the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that she knew her statements were false or understood that they may have prompted the firings. . . The final report concludes that “despite that falsity, no prosecution of Mrs. Clinton is warranted.”

TPR, 2000 - Here is what Ray said, which we were only able to find buried in the NY Times and not at all in the Washington Post (which played the story on A6): “It is, in the independent counsel’s judgment beyond peradventure, that as a matter of historical fact, Mrs. Clinton’s input into the process was a significant - if not the significant - factor influencing the pace of events in the travel office firings and the ultimate decision to fire the employees. Accordingly, the independent counsel concludes that Mr. Clinton’s sworn testimony that she had no input into Watkins’s decision or role in the travel office firings is factually inaccurate.” In other words, she lied.

Robert Ray, the prosecutor may not be able to say this, but we, as citizens, can. Just as we can say with enough certainty for electoral purposes that she lied about Whitewater, her legal activities in Arkansas, her investment in cattle futures, her missing file boxes, and her activities in the wake of Vince Foster’s death. We may be wrong about any or all of these, but if so it is only because Mrs. Clinton herself has deliberately, cynically, and deceitfully attempted to conceal matters from us. We may be wrong, but we are entitled to make the judgment.

It is worth recalling that Mrs. Clinton was mentioned 36 times in the fraud indictment against Webster Hubbell. She also said “I don’t recall” or its equivalent 50 times in a statement to a House investigating committee that was only 42 paragraphs long.

Mrs. Clinton’s victim, Bill Dale, put it this way: “Everyone, especially Robert Ray, knows Hillary Clinton lied under oath about her key role in firing me and my colleagues . . . Of course, the Clinton Justice Department prosecuted me with no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part. Despite my 38 years of government service, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to destroy my good name. They put my wife and me through pure hell.”

Number of times Hillary Clinton said “I don’t recall” or its equivalent in a statement to a House investigating committee: 50. Number of paragraphs in this statement: 42

IT TAKES MORE THAN A VILLAGE TO GET CREDIT FROM CLINTON

Things that happened to Barbara Feinman after becoming ghostwriter for “It Takes a Village,” Hillary Clinton’s book-like substance:

– She got no acknowledgement in the book by HR Clinton, contrary to what was stipulated in the contract.

– A reporter asked her how much she had written and she replied, “All I can say is they didn’t pay me $120,000 to spell-check it.”

– The White House spread rumors that Feinman had been fired.

– Simon & Schuster refused to pay the last $30,000 of her fee. Asked why, Feinman was told that the White House didn’t want her paid.

[Reported by William Triplett in Capital Style]

From a 1996 Chicago Tribune editorial: “The legal issues will sort themselves out in time. But one thing has become all too clear. Bill and Hillary Clinton and their aides have made a concerted effort to deceive official investigators and the American public with half truths and outright lies . . . It’s not clear what the Clintons want to conceal, but it’s clear that they have made extraordinary efforts to do so.”

WIKIPEDIA - Clinton’s acknowledgment section began: “It takes a village to bring a book into the world, as everyone who has written one knows. Many people have helped me to complete this one, sometimes without even knowing it. They are so numerous that I will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually, for fear that I might leave one out.” .

THE PETER PAUL FUNDRAISER

Three days after telling the Washington Post that Peter Paul made no contribution to her August 12, 2000 gala and that her campaign would not accept contributions from him, Hillary sent this letter

[The story that follows has many loose ends, but one thing is certain, and eerily typical of the Clinton saga: the extraordinary number of criminals, con artists and other low life the Clintons have had as friends, employees, business partners, and supporters. This story involves just one fundraising event yet the cast of Clinton connected criminals include Peter Paul, Aaron Tonkin, Jim Levin, and Raymond Reggie. Add the McDougals, Web Hubbell, Dan Lasater, Jorge Cabrera, and the more than 40 other convicted individuals and companies connected to the Clinton machine and you have to start wondering when the Democrats discover this may not be the best they can do.]

IN AUGUST 2000 Hillary Clinton held a huge Hollywood fundraiser for her Senate campaign. It was very successful. The only problem was that, by a long shot, she didn’t report all the money contributed: $800K by the US government’s ultimate count in a settlement and $2 million according to the key contributor and convicted con Peter Paul. This is, in election law, the moral equivalent of not reporting a similar amount on your income tax. It is a form of fraud. Hillary Clinton’s defense is that she didn’t know about it. That has so far worked in court but whether it will meet similar approbation in 2008 among the media, opponents and the general public remains to be seen. To some it is what some lawyers call the ostrich defense: I had my head in the sand while everything was going on or, yes, I signed the letter but I never actually read it.

It’s not working too well in the Enron case. Reports Carrie Johnson of the Washington Post, “Former Enron Corp. executives Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay say they held their heads high when they led the energy company. But jurors will be allowed to consider whether they intentionally buried their heads in the sand to avoid blame for fraud.

U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III this week granted the government’s bid for a controversial jury instruction known as ‘deliberate indifference’ or ‘willful blindness.’ The language allows jurors to consider whether Skilling and Lay averted their eyes from fraud within Enron’s ranks to deny responsibility for it later. . .Defense lawyers argue that the jury charge, also known as an ostrich instruction, will prejudice their clients and improperly lower the government’s burden of proof to a ’should have known’ standard common in civil cases where financial damages — not prison time — is at stake.”

Whether Hillary Clinton engaged in ‘deliberate indifference’ or ‘willful blindness’ remains to be determined by the voters but you can almost guarantee it will become a matter of interest to them.

The initial reaction was reported by Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post on August 15 2000: “Is Hillary Clinton soft on crime? We certainly hope not, even though convicted felon Peter Paul–who served three years in prison two decades ago after pleading guilty to cocaine possession and trying to swindle $8.7 million out of the Cuban government– helped organize Saturday’s star-glutted $1 million fundraising gala for Clinton’s Senate race at businessman Ken Roberts’s Brentwood estate. . . [Paul] added that he only produced the gala and hasn’t given or raised money for the first lady’s New York campaign. “And we will not be accepting any contributions from him,” Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson vowed.

Later, Paul would change his story claiming that his involvement stemmed from his desire to hire ex-president Bill Clinton, a deal he claimed became contingent on his not only producing but funding the HRC gala, costing him $2 million in kind and in cash. The Clinton campaign would also have to change its story: by September, Paul’s Stan Lee Media had contributed $100,000 to HRC’s campaign despite Wolfson’s protest. According to Salon, “Bill Clinton was reportedly promised an additional $15 million in Stan Lee stock to join the board. . . Paul also says then-DNC Chairman Ed Rendell said it would be ‘nice’ if Paul gave $150,000 to the DNC after Paul sought a presidential pardon for his two prior convictions.”

The man with whom Clinton was allegedly going into business had a known criminal past. According to Worldnet Daily, “Paul has pleaded guilty to a 10(b)5 violation of the Securities and Exchange Commission for not publicly disclosing control of Merrill Lynch margin accounts that held stocks in his company, Stan Lee Media. . . Under the Carter administration, he was convicted for cocaine possession and an attempt to confiscate more than $8 million from Fidel Castro in a black market coffee transaction the Cuban dictator was using to defraud the Soviet Union.”

The Washington Post reported that “In 1983, Paul violated parole by traveling to Canada under a false identity and ended up pleading guilty in federal court to making false statements to customs inspectors. Paul went to prison in California. When paroled, he stayed in California.”

The Post also noted that, “In 1998, Paul co-founded Stan Lee Media, a Hollywood-based Internet animation studio. The company was named for Paul’s business partner, Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. Almost from the start, prosecutors alleged, Paul and a few co-conspirators manipulated the market for the stock of Stan Lee Media: They artificially inflated the stock to a peak value of $350 million, creating a false appearance of demand by making transactions through and between accounts that Paul controlled but maintained in the names of others. Paul and his co-conspirators misused the brokerage account to borrow more than $4 million from Merrill Lynch, money prosecutors say they used to buy real estate, travel and make political contributions. Stan Lee was never implicated in the scheme.”

After the indictment and the collapse of his firm Paul filed suit arguing that Hillary Clinton had never properly reported his $2 million contribution to the campaign. The suit was thrown out because Paul had become a fugitive under arrest in Brazil. On his return, however the suit was refiled.

A Clinton fundraiser, David Rosen, was acquitted of three counts of election fraud but last December his superior, Andrew Grossman, admitted responsibility for three false FEC reports for which the campaign paid a fine of only $35,000.

There is one other thing, as Worldnet Daily reports: “Bill and Hillary Clinton head an all-star cast of witnesses in a lawsuit by business mogul Peter Franklin Paul that alleges the former president reneged on a $17 million deal in which he promised to promote a business in exchange for massive contributions to his wife’s Senate campaign.

“The potential witness list includes celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Brad Pitt, Barbra Streisand, James Brolin, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, George Hamilton, Olivia Newton John, John Travolta, Diana Ross, Shirley McLaine, Michael Bolton, Toni Braxton, Paul Anka and Larry King.

“Also on the list are former Vice President Al Gore, the Clinton’s daughter Chelsea Clinton, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, former California Gov. Gray Davis, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terrence McAuliffe, CBS News reporter Mike Wallace and ABC News reporter Brian Ross.

“Paul told WND these people, and many others, have direct knowledge of the alleged frauds. He says he explained, for example, in person to actors Pitt and Travolta that his personal contribution of some $2 million for a Hollywood gala and fund-raiser for Sen. Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000 was done in exchange for Bill Clinton promoting Paul’s Internet business, Stan Lee Media, after leaving office.

“Clinton was promised an additional $15 million in stock to join the board of the company, which Paul formed in partnership with famed Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee.”. . . On April 7, a judge in Los Angeles dismissed Sen. Clinton as a defendant in the civil lawsuit, but she will be deposed as a material witness in preparation for a trial set for March, 27, 2007.”

The story - and not just the characters behind it - is a remarkable one, making all the more incredible the failure of the establishment media to report it in more than a perfunctory manner. Two excerpts from a sworn statement of Paul give the flavor:

- “While attending the August 13, 2000, brunch at Barbra Streisand’s house, Chelsea Clinton came up and spent approximately 25 minutes with my wife, Mr. Oto, and myself, recapping the events of the day before, and narrating what her parents did after they left the Gala VIP Dinner at 2:30 a.m. the night before. Chelsea related that she and her parents had stayed up playing scrabble, discussing the Gala and the prospect of her father�s working with the creator of Spider Man when he left the White House. . .”

- “Through the Secret Service, I arranged for a private meeting with the Clintons at the National Italian American Dinner in Washington in 1994, where my then-client, ‘Fabio,’ chased Hillary Clinton around a conference table and then physically lifted the First Lady, from her sitting position on the floor, for a series of romance-pose photographs.”

Clearly, ex-con Paul is not someone to trust easily. But the same is true of Hillary Clinton, the only