Saint Hillary
It's hard to think of a more unqualified candidate for Girl Scout of Washington. But Hillary, queen of the Arkansas mafia, has appointed herself to that role in this, the next stage of her pre-2008 media makeover.
In a recent thank-you note to donors, she vowed to fight for "an end to cronyism, incompetence and cover-ups" on the GOP-run Hill. She's referring, of course, to the Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Apparently, she thinks she's put enough distance between herself and her own ethics clouds that few will recall how she fell under them on a routine basis when she shared(and abused) power with the president, and before her power was limited to just 1/100th of 1/2 of 1/3 of the government.
Allow us to refresh the scandalous record, starting with her central role in Travelgate. This, you'll recall was one of the first in the parade of scandals we know as the Clinton administration.
There is fresh evidence that Hillary ordered the purge of career White House Travel Office officials to make room for the Clinton's cronies from Arkansas - and used the FBI and IRS to persecute those innocent workers.
New details of her involvement come from the FBI official who wrote the Travelgate report to Congress, L.C. Smith, head of the bureau's Arkansas field office at the time, he calls "absurd" Hillary's claims that she had only a limited role in the affair.
"It was Hillary Clinton's former Rose Law Firm partners, Vince Foster and Bill Kennedy, who were obviously feeling the pressure" to frame Travel Office chief Billy Dale and others who got in the way. "Combine that with the appearance of longtime Hillary confidantes Bernard Nussbaum and Patsy Thomasson on the scene, and it was clear to me that Hillary was the one applying the pressure."
In the end,"the allegations of misconduct by loyal,longtime employees was of the White House's making and was ultimately unsubstantiated," Smith says in his memoir, "Inside: A Top G-Man Exposes Spies, Lies, and Bureaucratic Bungling Inside the FBI."
It took a pro-Clinton jury only a short while to find Dale innocent of all charges the White House trumped up against him. But the damage was done - Hillary had ruined his career and his life, and still has offered no apologies to him or his family. And yet she now proclaims to be the avenger of victims of cronyism.
Oh yes, she also says she's fighting against cover-ups. Hmm. Maybe she can finally explain one of her own-namely, how her billing records went missing while under subpoena in the Whitewater probe.
Hillary may be running for Senate re-election, but her obsession is to return to the White House, this time to occupy the Oval Office, and to do that, her handlers have told her she'll have to loosen up a bit. So, first came the smile, followed by the jokes and a glimmer of personality. But she was still too liberal, so then came the hawkish views and other feints to the right, leaving the hardest obstacle - her pathological dishonesty.
Now suddenly the scruples. Voila! The rehabilitation is complete: Meet St. Hillary, the defender of all that is right and decent. Yes, she's almost ready to seize power again - if, that is, she can get way with the con.
But once a phony, always a phony. And Hillary has really outdone herself in the hypocrisy department this time. Instead of pointing out the speck in the eyes of her colleagues across the aisle, she should worry about removing the log in her own.
Investors Business Daily, Issues and Insights, Thursday, January 26, 2006 |
