Free Republic

Pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain. Be afraid. Be very afraid, for if you don’t obey the Great and Powerful Oz will turn her wrath on you. Yawn. Hillary Clinton’s favorite girlhood movie was the “Wizard of Oz.” But now, as the primaries clank along, her subjects are refusing to wear the green-tinted glasses and buy her act. She’s less and less terrifying every day, and fewer of those closest to her -- her Senate colleagues -- are intimidated. Despite their best efforts, the Clintons' powers seem to have gone on the fritz, and those Democrats who...

What is it about Democratic politicians and their irresistible urge to lie? Even in the post-President Clinton era, lies continue to flow from the lips of prominent Democrats with regularity only matched by lots of fiber. Within the past two weeks alone, we’ve seen Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former Chief of Staff, Christine Beatty, surrender to authorities after being indicted for conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice. Hillary Clinton said she was “sleep-deprived, and I misspoke” when she highly exaggerated about her trip to Bosnia as First Lady 12 years ago, and claimed she was under hostile sniper...

Sen. John McCain’s "Straight Talk Express'' will roll out for a nostalgia tour this week, a bus-storming tour of many of the touchstones in the senator’s long life. Yet, for the two Democrats still battling over their party’s presidential nomination, this will be a season to forget – if they can. *snip* How much will it matter this fall, should Obama claim the Democratic nomination, that he devoted two decades to a church whose pastor spoke of damning America for its racial practices? *snip* How much will it matter, should all or half of the delegations of Florida and Michigan...

Faced with a growing chorus to abandon the uphill battle against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton is falling back on what she sees as her trump card - her gender.At other perilous junctures like the eve of the New Hampshire primary and the eve of Super Tuesday, the former First Lady highlighted her femininity during televised tearful moments. Now she is portraying the calls for her to quit as male chauvinism. In comments leaked to the New York Times, Mrs Clinton is said to have told aides that she would not be "bullied out" of the White...

...Which brings us back to our question: Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded? Sometimes only a shrink can decipher why some politicians persist in flagrantly taking giant risks, all but daring others to catch them in the act (see: Spitzer, Eliot). Carl Bernstein, a sometimes admiring Hillary Clinton biographer, has called the Bosnia debacle “a watershed event” for her campaign because it revives her long history of balancing good works with “ ‘misstatements’ and elisions,” from the health-care task force fiasco onward. But this event may be a watershed...

A golden rule in the game of American (or any modern professional) politics is that if you are behind in a campaign and you’re running out of time, you “go negative”. Twenty years ago I actually took a class in professional campaign tactics at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government. We examined case studies of campaigns in recent years and saw the very precise metrics that the professionals use to gauge how much you lose if you throw mud at someone – because you look like a sleazebag – compared with how much damage you can inflict. The...

For all their delight in soaring voter registration and strong poll numbers, some Democrats fear the contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton might have a nightmarish end, which could wreck a promising election year. The chief worry is that Clinton may carry her recent winning streak into Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina and other states, leaving her with unquestioned momentum but fewer pledged delegates than Obama. Party leaders then would face a wrenching choice: Steer the nomination to a fading Obama, even as signs suggested Clinton could be the stronger candidate in November; or go with the surging...

Now that Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, LESS HONEST, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while Democrats rip one another apart.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean yesterday admonished Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to stop attacking one another because it's demoralizing the party's base and damaging its chances of winning back the White House in November. Lecturing the two rivals for escalating campaign attacks that he said have gotten too personal, and bluntly telling their supporters to "keep their mouths shut," Mr. Dean warned that the party's convention this summer could get "really ugly and nasty" if their bitter battle for the nomination is not settled soon. Mr. Dean called on the 350 unpledged superdelegates, who will likely...

It is amazing how loud some of the buzz is for Sen. Hillary Clinton to "do what's best for the party" and get out. More than any other week, this one seemed to have the most actual calls for a Clinton withdrawal. It started last Friday with Bill Richardson. It has continued throughout the past seven days with calls from both Sen. Barack Obama supporters (Chris Dodd and Pat Leahy) to supposed uncommitted Dem bigwigs (Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi).

Hillary Clinton distances herself from adviser who branded Lord David Trimble a 'crankpot' By Toby Harnden in Washington Last Updated: 2:41am GMT 28/03/2008 Hillary Clinton's campaign has disowned a senior adviser who branded Lord Trimble, former Northern Ireland First Minister, a sexist "crankpot" whose views were suspect because he was a Protestant. Under fire: Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are greeted by a smiling eight-year-old Bosnian girl in 1996 "It is not the campaign's policy to attack leaders from other countries," said Howard Wolfson, Mrs Clinton's communications director. Jamie Rubin, a former assistant secretary of state in Bill Clinton's administration, lashed...

BREAKING: Dean wants closure by July 1 A potential game-changer from CBS News and "The Early Show." Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says he wants superdelegates to make a decision by JULY 1 -- the most specific he has been in his effort to prod the party to decide between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before the Democratic National Convention in late August. Harry Smith asked if after the nominating contests end with the South Dakota and Montana primaries on June 3, "Do you want the superdelegates to have some sort of vote immediately so that you'll know months...

Accused Saddam Agent Says He Met With Hillary at White House By IRA STOLL, STAFF REPORTER OF THE SUN | March 27, 2008 A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996. In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was "very receptive" to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton "passed a message to the State...

Lessons in Disillusion with the Political Class by Ross Mackenzie Thursday, March 27, 2008 There may be more to the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright story than the disconnect between what the two have been saying. Far more than an Obama in the 20-year embrace of a conspiracy theorist and black supremacist, presenting himself as a racial transcender. In a 2006 sermon at Howard University, Wright said: “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president . . . and no black woman can ever be considered for...

Hillary Clinton has a solu tion to her Tuzla problem - let's talk about Rev. Je remiah Wright some more. On the day after the CBS News aired video making a hash of Sen. Clinton's claim to have landed "under sniper fire" in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996, she raised for the first time the issue of Barack Obama's relationship to Rev. Wright. In this, she followed a Clinton family pattern so well-established it's almost boring: Misrepresent the truth as convenient - then, when caught, go on the offensive.

*** Next she'll say that she was threatened by Bosnian snipers disguised as little girls hiding Uzis in the flowers...... NAMES REDACTED Ozone Park *** The master of deceit, Bill Clinton, and his sidekick, Hillary. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" still rings in my ears. Lavallette, NJ ***What a sick lie. I'm sorry I ever voted for the Clintons and did so twice. If she gets the nod by conniving, I'll be voting for Sen. John McCain. Surfside Beach, NC *** I don't see how anyone can support Clinton now that she has been caught with...

WASHINGTON -- As the Clintons enter their 17th year at the center of the national stage, some Washington pundits are running out of patience with them. My condition is more desperate. I am running out of jokes about these two perennial college kids. History eventually will remember them as the reincarnation of Warren and Florence Harding. For now, they come off as two undergraduate BSers on a protracted spring break. Hillary BSes about her indispensability to the first Clinton administration. Bill agrees with her and BSes about everything under the sun. At the beginning of their delightful presidential campaign, a...

Some Democratic Party leaders are growing more concerned that the protracted, caustic fight for the presidential nomination will cripple the eventual nominee, and there are new signs they have reason to worry. More party leaders are saying that the increasingly personal crossfire between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns serves only to write the script for Republican ads in the fall and to give John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, a head start in framing his candidacy. While the Democrats have been arguing almost daily the past two weeks about each other's electability and integrity, McCain has visited Iraq...

Last night, Greta van Susteren interviewed Hillary Clinton on Fox News. This was the most interesting exchange: VAN SUSTEREN: And if he says, no, I won't do it, that leaves Michigan and Florida out. And does that leave you out? CLINTON: No. Not at all, because we are going to make sure those votes get counted, one way or another. VAN SUSTEREN: How? CLINTON: Well, you know, you can always go to the convention. That is what credential fights are for. You know, let's have the Democratic Party go on record against seating the Michigan and Florida delegations three months...

You'll recall Hillary Clinton's recent speech in which she attempted to play up her foreign policy experience by recounting her "harrowing" 1996 trip to Bosnia. "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." Well, mainstream media has discounted that account, and such luminaries as comedian Sinbad have chimed in as well. It appears, however, that Clinton caved in too soon when she admitted overstating the dangers, as Barely Political...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's positive rating has dropped to a new low of 37 percent in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday. According to the poll, the New York senator's positive rating slid 8 percentage points in two weeks and she had a negative rating of 48 percent in a week where she admitted making a mistake in claiming she had come under sniper fire during a 1996 trip to Bosnia.

WASHINGTON Norma Woods and Democrats like her could become the party's worst nightmare. A mother of seven, a grandmother of 15, Woods said she's a loyal Democrat and a Hillary Clinton supporter. But if Barack Obama wins the party's presidential nomination, Woods said she may sit out the November election. "Only one time I didn't vote," said Woods, who wouldn't reveal her age. "I was busy having a baby." November is a long way off, and Woods is leaving room to change her mind. Still, she represents a conundrum Democrats must face. It's the possibility of alienating one of the...

Election '08: Shrewdness and audacity have been political trademarks of both Clintons, but now Hillary has certainly overextended herself by trying to remedy an obvious deception with an even bigger untruth. Trailing Barack Obama in delegates, and faced with the mathematical impossibility of pulling ahead of him in the handful of contests left, Sen. Clinton is in dire need of some kind of meltdown in which Obama would collapse in the polls against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain. Instead, her worse nightmare has materialized. Last week, she was caught fabricating what took place as she arrived in Bosnia as first...

Two things have become obvious about the state of the Democratic nomination for president. The first is that the stars haven'’t been better aligned for Democrats to win the White House since FDR crushed Hoover in 1932. The second is that six more weeks of attacks and counterattacks between the Clinton and Obama campaigns will move them perilously close to accomplishing the otherwise unimaginable job of giving the Republicans another term in the White House. Just this past week, Clinton supporter James Carville called Bill Richardson’'s endorsement of Barack Obama on Good Friday a Judas-like “act of betrayal�. Not to...

HILLARY: SWIFTBOATED!March 26, 2008 Hillary is being "swiftboated"! She claimed that she came under sniper fire when she visited in Bosnia in 1996, but was contradicted by videotape showing her sauntering off the plane and stopping on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem. Similarly, John Kerry's claim to heroism in Vietnam was contradicted by 264 Swift Boat Veterans who served with him. His claim to having been on a secret mission to Cambodia for President Nixon on Christmas 1968 was contradicted not only by all of his commanders -- who said he would have...

Not only is CBS not giving up on this story, but they've brought out a few other videos of Hillary "misspeaking."

Hillary is a congenital liar - William Safire From the New York Times January 08, 1996: Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady - a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation -is a congenital liar. 1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the governor's wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer...

The action-adventure genre got a sexy shot in the arm in 1983 with the debut of Hillary’s Hellcats, the Friday night NBC series starring Farrah Sansabelt-Haggar as Hillary Dale, leader of an undercover international all-girl danger squad. The series is best remembered as the launching pad for starlet Quiana Morganny, whose bikini-clad portrayal of singing Hellcat Sheryl Ravencroftington led to millions of dorm poster sales, two top-20 singles, and a career as spokeswoman for Eco-Soft toilet tissue. Despite its fast-paced action and feminist empowerment message, the show generated lackluster Nielsens and was canceled after only 12 episodes. Some TV critics...

The USAF Aircraft Commander of Hillary's C-17 that landed in Bosnia speaks about what all Hillary has said.

Seinfeld's George Costanza famously quipped: "It's not a lie if you believe it." This is how a Clinton -- take your pick, Hillary, Bill or Chelsea -- makes it through the day. Better living through self-delusion. Seeking to burnish her foreign policy leadership credentials, Sen. Clinton has repeatedly peddled a harrowing anecdote about dodging sniper fire during a trip to Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1996. She brought her then-teenage daughter Chelsea on the dangerous mission. And entertainer Sinbad. And singer Sheryl Crow. And, oh, yeah, there was 8-year-old Emina Bicakcic, a Bosnian girl who calmly embraced the intrepid first lady and...

I fear this glorious story is near an end, so here’s Hunt getting in some last licks about how “insulting” her lies are to the people who protected her. Not an uncommon sentiment, it seems: “She has no sense of what a statement like that does to soldiers.”

Is it too early for Hillary Rodham Clinton to suggest Barack Obama as her vice president on the ticket? Yes, absolutely. The answer for Clinton, however, appears to depend on your definition of what "smidgen" is. Only "smidgens of difference," she said, separate them in the critical delegate count needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The operative word is derived from "smidge," or "barely detectable." For example, the 5,963,110 votes that Florida counted in the 2000 election allowed Gov. Jeb Bush to award his brother George W. a disputed victory. His margin of 537 votes - .0009 percent -...

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton's lies about risking her life under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia as first lady have infuriated the US military brass and troops. "She has no sense of what a statement like that does to soldiers," fumed retired Maj. Gen. Walter Stewart, the former head of the Pennsylvania National Guard. "She is insulting the command in its entirety," he said yesterday.

Hillary Clinton has many admirable qualities, but candor and openness and transparency and a commitment to well-established fact have not been notable among them. “Since her Arkansas years [I wrote], Hillary Rodham Clinton has always had a difficult relationship with the truth… [J]udged against the facts, she has often chosen to obfuscate, omit, and avoid. It is an understatement by now that she has been known to apprehend truths about herself and the events of her life that others do not exactly share. ” As I noted: “Almost always, something holds her back from telling the whole story, as if...

Hillary Clinton regaled reporters for the umpteenth time with her fairy tale about a heroic landing through a hail of sniper fire 10 years ago.....This is pure, calculated fabrication. Lies, all of it. Fraudulence of this scope and severity makes Al Gore's claims that he invented the Internet look downright quaint. Throughout even the most polarizing of political eras, there is one thing both sides have always been able to agree upon: The Clintons lie with abandon......in the 1993 firing of the White House travel staff, investigators concluded Hillary's sworn testimony was "factually false." In 2000, The NY Times...

Hillary's house of cards is falling all around her with her claims of having had to duck enemy sniper fire during debarkation at her Tulza, Bosnia trip in 1996. She made all sorts of claims that her trip was a harrowing one that placed her in danger and that this fact should lend credence to her claims of somehow having foreign policy experience. But, she also doled out another line that is turning out to be just another lie and it is a line that it seems most MSM outlets are giving her a pass on thus far. To further...

WASHINGTON -- If Republicans picked a theme song to describe the gloomy political climate they face this year, it would be "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." With Americans at war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the economy tilting toward recession, it is hard to imagine the election-year environment can get any bleaker for the GOP, though that seemed to be the case this week. The consumer-confidence index plunged deeper, as the jobs picture grew darker, and gas prices continued to rise, up to $4 a gallon in places. The housing market, despite a rise in existing-home sales last month,...

Now that Hillary Clinton has been nailed in an outright fabrication of her role in Bosnia, it is time to remind ourselves of another, even more galling fantasy that Hillary tried to sell the voters. After 9/11, Hillary had a problem. New Yorkers were desperately focused on their own needs for protection and they were saddled with a Senator who was not one of them -- an Arkansasn or was it a Chicagoan? Interviewed on the "Today" show one week after 9/11, she spun an elaborate yarn. The kindest thing we could say was that it was a fantasy. Or...

Has Hillary Clinton’s Tuzla fantasy opened a bigger can of worms for the presidential aspirant? Jake Tapper at ABC News wonders whether the press should take a look at earlier Hillary anecdotes to determine whether a pattern of fabulism exists. Sure enough, he discovers an old chestnut from 1994 that Hillary has not bothered to dust off for the current campaign: In light of Tuzla-gate (catchy, no?), reporters are going over past statements by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, (and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois) to see if others don’t stand more rigorous examination.One that may get renewed scrutiny is a story...

Did I tell you how I organized and piloted a relief mission to bring penicilin, amoxycilin, and 1,000,000 MREs for the starving Children™ of Bosnia? I remember like it was yesterday. The tiny island nation of Bosnia was alone in its war against fascism. America had yet to enter the war, but the Children™ cried for help and something had to be done. Did I mention the Children™? So I also brought 10,000,000 condoms on a tip from Donna Shalala. When we entered Bosnian airspace the sky was filled with the Serbian Luftwaffe intent on shooting down our humanitarian expedition....

My latest article is up at Pajamas Media. It’s about the Tuzla Affair – Hillary’s fib about how she had to dodge sniper fire on a 1996 trip to Bosnia and why the incident will remind Democratic voters about what they hate about the Clintons. A sample: The reason why we might indeed inquire about a lack of curiosity about the story from the press is because this is not the first time that Hillary Clinton or her surrogates have told the story of the First Lady parachuting into Bosnia…er, that is, coming under sniper fire. According to the Obama...

Hardball had some fun at Hillary's expense this evening over the mystery of The Sniper Who Didn't Fire. Credit Politico's Roger Simon with making the panel's most devastating remark. Hillary's Heminwayesque claim has been that "we used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady." Chatting with host Chris Matthews, Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson, and Perry Bacon of WaPo, Simon observed what in retrospect might be obvious but something I hadn't previously heard anyone else remark. ROGER SIMON: She says I was there because it was too...

In general I've little interest in the Hillary Clinton-bashing pervasive in the men's and fathers' movement. One example of Hillary's alleged misdeeds which is often cited by men's activists is the "No woman is illegal" incident. It occurred while Clinton was campaigning in Nevada in January and is based on the following from the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "Clinton and her busload of traveling press moved from there to the popular local Mexican restaurant Lindo Michoacan, where a 'roundtable' that was actually square passed a microphone around to tell her people's concerns about the mortgage crisis and foreclosures. She took notes...

In light of Tuzla-gate (catchy, no?), reporters are going over past statements by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, (and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois) to see if others don't stand more rigorous examination. One that may get renewed scrutiny is a story she told “Women in Military Service” in 1994 -- that shortly after the end of the Vietnam war, she looked into joining the Marines. In June 1994, Clinton told an organization trying to build a memorial for women who had served in the armed forces, that while living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1975, “I decided that I was very interested...

Chelsea was confronted at a townhall meeting, and spun it like a pro. Her father would be proud.

In addition to her telling the Bosnia trip LIE on March 17 2008, she also told “the Bosnia sniper fire” LIE in a campaign speech on February 29 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDkTUtTGXU "One of the great honors of being First Lady and of being a senator is the time that I was privileged to spend with our troops here at home, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Bosnia, Kosovo, and places around the world. I remember particularly a trip to Bosnia where the welcoming ceremony had to be moved inside because of sniper fire." Hillary Clinton- February 29 2008, WACO, TEXAS.

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE The Clinton campaign says Senator Hillary Clinton may have “misspoke” recently when she said she had to evade sniper fire when she was visiting Bosnia in 1996 as first lady. She has been using the episode as an example of her foreign policy bona fides. “I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady,” she said last week. “That’s where we went. I remember...

Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Bill Clinton, could not go because they were "too dangerous." When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about "landing under sniper fire" and running for safety with "our heads down." There are numerous problems with Clinton's version of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said she "misspoke" last week when she said she had landed under sniper fire during a trip she took as first lady to Bosnia in March 1996. The Obama campaign suggested it was a deliberate exaggeration on Clinton's part. Clinton often cites the goodwill trip she took with her daughter and several celebrities as a part of her foreign policy experience. During a speech last Monday about Iraq, she said of the trip: "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport,...

"I remember landing under sniper fire," Clinton recounted. "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."