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Politics : Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator from New York? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (1486)	9/21/1999 7:34:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3389

HILLARY'S SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS By DICK MORRIS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "There is absolutely no reason for the White House to review or pass judgment on this [the Clintons'] mortgage." - Jim Kennedy, spokesman for the White House Counsel's Office, Sept. 15, 1999: [Hillary's spokesman Howard] Wolfson said Mrs. Clinton had said the mortgage arrangement had been cleared with the White House Counsel's Office." - The New York Times, Sept. 18 SO which is it? Did the White House counsel's office "review or pass judgment on the Clinton's mortgage," as Hillary says, or not, as Jim Kennedy says? The problem with Clinton scandals is that they are the gifts that keep on giving. None is ever really over. Rather than tell the truth and take the hit, the Clintons always are inclined to let it ride, stonewall it and let the contradictions pile up. But what works behind the high and protected walls of the White House won't cut it on the stump in a Senate race. Hillary has twisted herself into knots like a pretzel on a host of issues. The blatant contradictions in her story and the areas in which she and her husband refuse to come clean will suffice to keep the issues broiling throughout her irrational effort to win a Senate seat in a totally alien environment. Explore the ways in which the Clintons have left the issues and questions on the front burner: The Mortgage Deal: The same Jim Kennedy who denied that the mortgage had been reviewed by the White House Counsel's Office said that the "Clintons have no intention of revealing what was promised in their deal with Terry McAuliffe." So now, any reporter worth his or her byline is speculating, digging, inferring and imagining what the deal provided. All ask themselves, "What doesn't she want us to know?" Is it that McAuliffe is helping them pay the interest and taxes on the property (which would eat up about 40 percent of the Clintons' pre-tax income if they had to pay it themselves)? Or is it that they got a below-market interest rate in return for McAuliffe's collateral? (It appears to be at least more than half a point below the publicly advertised rate for "jumbo" mortgages.) Or did the Clintons agree not to treat the collateral as a gift which, had it been a gift, might have forced McAuliffe into making a public personal disclosure of his investments and interests? Hillary's role in the FALN clemency: She and he both say she had no role. But the New Republic reports that "her recent claim that she literally 'didn't know anything about the issue' before the president announced the clemency offer is hard to believe." The magazine reports that on "Aug. 9, two days before the president announced the clemency deal, New York City Councilman Jose Rivera personally presented Hillary with a packet on clemency, including a letter asking her to 'speak to the president and ask him to consider granting executive clemency' to the prisoners." The New Republic also reports that "Hillary may also have heard something about the issue from clemency advocate Dennis Rivera ... head of the health-care workers' union." One more possibility: The magazine mentions that Harold Ickes, her de facto campaign manager, has been a longtime lobbyist for Puerto Rico statehood. It totally defies credibility that the president, who talks to Hillary about everything, would not have discussed a clemency which New York's Puerto Rican leaders wanted, and which would have such repercussions in her Senate race. Her prompt endorsement of the clemency further shows the ridiculousness of her claim to total ignorance. Reporters will peck and peck and peck at both Riveras and the other New York Hispanic politicians until they get to the truth of the first lady's role. Her totally implausible denial just eggs them on. Executive Privilege on the FALN documents: The president's brazen and totally unjustified invocation of executive privilege in refusing to release the background documents behind his decision to free 16 felons assures that the pot will keep boiling. Senators and congressmen will haunt the White House demanding to know what is in the documents. Reporters will publish leaks and more leaks of their content. The FBI and the Bureau of Prisons can be counted on to leak information about the prisoners including tapes of their phone calls. And every time one of the terrorists gives an interview, it will be front-page news. Each inflammatory statement will cause a new wave of outrage against the pardons. In the space of a few weeks, Hillary has managed to stain her candidacy with two scandals which will be kept alive by her own refusal to disclose documents or to tell the truth. When Hillary Rodham Clinton first burst on the national scene, political consultant James Carville bragged that she had an IQ which would "boil water." Now that we see the same rigidity, doctrinaire stonewalling and inflexible self-righteousness which doomed health-care reform back in 1994, we have to wonder if Carville was speaking not of the Fahrenheit scale but of Centigrade in his measurement of her intellect. nypostonline.com