ShareThisNEW YORK -- America's chief domestic priority this year is to prevent Hillary Rodham Clinton's election as president of the United States. Beyond her dreadful ideas, she shares her husband's allergy to the rule of law and the basic standards of fairness and honesty that most people expect of themselves.Instead, the Clintons do whatever it takes to accomplish whatever they want. And if normal conduct or even federal statutes interfere, they smash right through them.Consider the unfolding controversy over whether Florida's and Michigan's delegates will participate in August's Democratic National Convention. Despite signing a pledge Sept. 1 to isolate these renegade states for voting before Feb. 5, as Democratic regulations require, the Clintons now want to seat these pro-Hillary delegations. Lagging behind, the Clintons demand an 11-inning game. Then again, their partnership is a pageant of disdain for the rules.-- Hillary Clinton famously turned a $1,000 cattle-futures investment into a $99,540 bovine bonanza in conjunction with Tyson Foods' counsel, James Blair, and her REFCO agent, Red Bone. When investors sued it for fraud, REFCO brokers Bill McCurdy and Steven Johns testified that they backdated transaction slips after hours, behind locked doors. They allocated gains to favored customers' accounts and losses to the portfolios of less-connected dupes. This occurred June 27, 1979 -- Clinton's most profitable trading day. After she collected her 9,954 percent return on investment, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's administration secured Tyson at least $9 million in state loans and special permission to dump chicken waste into local rivers.-- As first lady, Hillary Clinton concocted her notorious health-care nationalization scheme with a public/private task force behind closed doors, thus violating the 1972 federal open-meetings law.-- After White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster died from a gunshot to the head in Fort Marcy Park near Washington in July 1993, his office should have remained sealed for forensic purposes. Yet, two days later, "After speaking with the first lady, I arranged for the (Clintons' personal financial records in Foster's office) to be temporarily kept in a locked closet in the White House residence," Maggie Williams -- Clinton's then-chief of staff and current campaign manager -- told the Senate Whitewater Committee on July 26, 1995. The Clintons' personal attorney, Robert Barnett, took control of these files five days later. White House lawyer Clifford Sloan's contemporaneous notes support Williams' account: "Get Maggie. Go through office. Get HRC-WJC stuff." Presidential attorney Stephen Neuwirth testified that his boss, White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, said "the first lady" worried that law-enforcement officials would have "unfettered access" to Foster's office.-- Long-subpoenaed billing records from Hillary Clinton's days at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm magically materialized at the White House in January 1996 -- just four days after a statute of limitations expired, thus sparing her from potential civil liability for advising Madison Guaranty, a failed bank whose collapse cost taxpayers $60 million.-- For his part, William Jefferson Clinton successfully perjured himself in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit. While Clinton apologists still claim this was "just about sex," Jones' case, and the entire Monica Lewinsky matter, revolved around whether the president could evade every American's legal duty to testify truthfully under oath. Clinton skirted this rule, too. His disbarment granted this outrage a minimally just denouement.-- As they departed the White House, the Clintons left with furniture, lamps, prints and other items totaling $28,000. After an enormous public outcry, the former first grifters returned this truckload of public property swiped from the Executive Mansion.-- Today, Hillary Clinton's tax returns remain concealed, while Barack Obama released his. How did she "loan" her campaign $5 million in January? Voters need such answers now, not after Election Day, especially since Bill Clinton's speech and business income enhances their combined wealth. How better to befriend a potential American president than to funnel cash to her husband?Hillary Clinton's insistence on seating the Florida and Michigan delegations -- never mind her pledge to boycott these states if they subverted the process -- confirms how she and her husband will leave no corner uncut to advance their naked ambition.She must be stopped. Florida and Michigan knowingly and deliberately violated Democratic Party procedures, and now must endure the consequences. For once, Hillary Clinton also must obey the rules, just as her John Hancock promised.(New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.murdock(at)gmail.com.)2
Clinton bends the rules -- when she can't break them
Submitted by SHNS on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 18:31
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
Breaking rules, hiding information
Have anyone, democrat or republican, sought more detailed answers from Hillary about:
• Norman Hsu and his bundling of money for her campaign?
• How "dishwashers, waiters and others" managed to pour $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury?
• Bill's trip to Kazakhstan with Canadian magnate, Frank Giustra, that netted Giustra $3 billion and Bill's foundation a $131 million contribution from Giustra?
• How powerful foreign donors to Bill's presidential library, such as the Saudis, may pose a serious conflict of interest to Hillary's foreign policy actions as president?
• How Bill's tangled ties to an investment concern of Clinton friend, Ron Burkle, and it's dealings with Dubai may yet, again, threaten to compromise Hillary Clinton's execution of foreign policy as president?
• The fact that with all of these questionable financial dealings, the Clintons have been unwilling to release their tax returns, especially in light of Hillary Clinton claiming that the $5 million she lent the campaign was "her own money?"
• And, finally, though we, as Democrats, don't care who Bill schtupps (and, no, none of us believe he has kept his fly zipped the last seven years), you can be damn sure the Republicans will be digging hard (no pun intended) to see just what Bill has been up to since leaving office.
Hillary's campaign team
Hillary should hire Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf (remember the" Bagdad Bob" on Iraqi TV during the invasion?). He should be able to pass her test about the "experience" required in communicating to the media. If Hillary added him to her staff, Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Howard Wolfson could stay on as her trusted and loyal advisors but all three should have to clear their public comments with their new mentor.