Greenwaldian outrage sure to follow. From The Hill:
Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance.
Government surveillance will be at the forefront of the political debate this fall as congressional Democrats and President Bush square off over legislation allowing electronic spying on U.S. soil without a warrant.
Well, I continue to believe the characterization of the NSA program as “spying” is a bit loaded and misleading, but why quibble about semantics? After all, one man’s data mining program designed to target information/communication traffic patterns, and from there ferret out specific targets (none of which surveillance carries evidentiary value in a court of law) is another man’s paranoid hybrid of 3 Days of the Condor and The Conversation — so who are we to make value judgments?
Anway:
Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents.
In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.
“The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill,†Gerth and Van Natta wrote in reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. “Bill’s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.â€Â
A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year.â€Â
Gerth told The Hill that he learned of the incident in 2006 when he interviewed a former campaign aide present at the tape playing. He has not revealed the aide’s identity. Clinton’s campaign has not disputed any facts reported in the final version of his book, which became public this spring, he said.
“It hasn’t been challenged,†said Gerth. “There hasn’t been one fact in the book that’s been challenged.â€Â
Sure. But before the wingnuts get too excited, let me point out the obvious: what Hillary was doing was protecting the Executive from a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy — and so by extension, she was protecting the country, of which President is the titular head, from the domestic portion of “all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Which makes her something of a war hero.
Whereas what Bush did, in his neverending quest to SHRED THE CONSTITUTION AND ESTABLISH A RIGHT WING THEOCRACY, was secretly enact (well, he did let some folks in on it, including Democrats, but that fact has been whitewashed over so many times now that it’s practically opaque) a spy program that featured NSA agents in white vans, stinking of coffee and chips, monitoring the phone calls of ordinary American citizens. Who, you know, happened to be calling hot spots in Pakistan 3 of 4 times a month.
Whether or not they listened in on the content of these calls without a warrant is a matter of pure speculation. But no matter. The evil intent was there.
So remember, come election time: Hillary spying on political enemies (who happen to be conservative) = good and fair; whereas the NSA doing what it is the NSA does — only, in the aftermath of 911, increasing the scope of their military data gathering to include phone traffic, one half of which was inside the US (when I make those calls, they’re called international, and I’m billed accordingly, but again — nitpicking) = civil liberties violations the likes of which caused the esteemed Russ Feingold to read poorly-argued blog posts from a non-practicing ex-pat (?) attorney (and “Constitutional scholar”) into the Congressional record.
God bless America!
What you should do is reformat that last paragraph and put it in the sidebar boilerplate.
When the trolls come a-calling, you can offer them a saving in effort. They need not type in their arguments, they can just cut and paste, and reduce the wear and tear on keyboard and mouse.
Regards,
Ric
Pretty Nixonian behavior on Hillary’s part. Perhaps you do become that which you hate.
The endnotes of the book cite a single anonymous source to make the claim and the Clinton campaign has so far denied it.
Either way, this reminds of a past claim about Clenis family’s alleged spying habits that had lacked truth.
Info included right there in the excerpt, AJB.
Although the single anonymous source is said to be a campaign aid present for the playing of the tape, the author of the book is a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist at the NYT, and — unless you can show me a denial — I’m going to take Gerth’s word that it hasn’t been challenged.
So whose credibility are you taking issue with, exactly?
Spell it out for us, brother!
Jeff – The very notion that the Clintons could have done something wrong, much less illegal, is beyond their realm of comprehension.
So, basically, Republicans “sieze on allegations” made by others to “tarnish” their opponents.
Which, he, isn’t very nice.
On the other hand, completely making shit up out of whole cloth and slinging it at your opponents like Democrats do (Phony Soldiers Congressional Letter, anyone) must be Just That Much Worse.
Darnit if choosing the lesser of two evils doesn’t just suck. But at least it consistently puts me in the same place, which is something.
“We don’t comment on books that are utter and complete failures,†said Clinton’s press secretary
Not the most persuasive example, but it does bring this to mind:
Does there exist an argument (so to speak) from the Anglo-American left (this is a Whitey thing) that isn’t, finally, about shopping — a claim to morality or intelligence or transcendence or plain dominance that isn’t, really, a declaration of desirability to marketers (or an ill-disguised imploration thereto) (or vice-versa)?
I’m not kidding. It’s in everything, once you notice to notice it. That their being “part of the solution” so often takes the form of conspicuously moralized upscale wastefulness isn’t what I mean, exactly; I mean their talking like this. I’m not sure it’s anything fundamental, but it’s always there, so it can’t mean nothing.
(Not that I don’t have any idea, but I don’t like the one I have.)
Notice how the sales of the book, in the eyes of Ms. Clinton and her Press Secretary, determine the veracity of the statement? They did not actually deny this, no?
That makes it kinda more ironical that Bill’s book on Giving has been such a, um, utter and complete failure.
“…stinking of coffee and chips…”
I hope that those chips weren’t cooked in trans-fats. A healthy agent is a loyal agent.
I can’t imagine Hillary’s long-term strategy RE: this accusation will be to wave her hand and ignore it. Taking on the journalist isn’t a winning gameplan, so the aide is probably in her long-term planning. If the accusation gains legs watch for the aide’s name to come out, and for lots of demons to exit the closet.
C’mon, now. Princess Di was in Paris, it’s true, but imagine the blow to Western prestige if she’d have married a Muzzie.
No, psychologizer, it isn’t fundamental, but it’s a first derivative of something that is fundamental.
Today’s WASA pseudo-Left is utterly removed from anything resembling the original theoretical focus of the Left. I say “theoretical” because Leftist ideals have always been much more strongly advanced by academics and other haut-bourgeois elements than by the Workers they putatively support, but at least in former times the Left had some contact with actual, real, live members of the Proletariat. This is no longer the case; instead their contempt for the unwashed masses has become evident and permeates their every cause and pronouncement.
The result is that they live in a world and economy in which everything is marketing — they produce nothing, living entirely as either middlemen and financiers or “knowledge workers” a.k.a. academics and wannabees. Show ’em a shovel and they’ll call it an implement. It therefore follows that they judge everything not by any intrinsic value it might have, but strictly by whether or not they can sell it. That is, after all, their entire experience. The fact that this makes them the villains of their own rhetoric is simply another of the multitude of ironies we all have to live with.
Regards,
Ric
A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us…”
It is completely unbelievable. How many of you believe for a minute that a Clinton intelligence machine would be the least bit bothered by wire-tapping laws? I mean, beside the good perfesser and his little lap dogs? Hillary worries me mostly domestically with her leftie cant, foreign policy wise I think she may be meaner than Bush, especially if she is worried about being perceived as soft and womanly. A view also inconceivable to most clear thinking adults.
“That makes it kinda more ironical that Bill’s book on Giving has been such a, um, utter and complete failure.”
hf,
I think entitling it Getting might have made it a moderate best seller. ‘Specially with really fuzzy lingerie shots of Flowers and Lewinsky plus his wife in her dominatrix outfit in the background.
“‘Specially with really fuzzy lingerie shots of Flowers and Lewinsky plus his wife in her dominatrix outfit in the background.”
Hey, hey, HEY! They’re trying to sell a book here, not induce vomiting.
“Honey? Junior ate ant poison again and we’re out of the ipecac!”
“Get that Clinton book, the one with Billy’s women on it.”
“But – but my gloves are in the other room…”
“Dammit! It’s ant poison! You can always use lye later!”
…or something.
Hillary Milhouse Clinton
(Not my originization, sadly, but I’m at a loss where I read it.)
“The result is that they live in a world and economy in which everything is marketing  they produce nothing, living entirely as either middlemen and financiers or “knowledge workers†a.k.a. academics and wannabees. Show ‘em a shovel and they’ll call it an implement. It therefore follows that they judge everything not by any intrinsic value it might have, but strictly by whether or not they can sell it. That is, after all, their entire experience. The fact that this makes them the villains of their own rhetoric is simply another of the multitude of ironies we all have to live with.”
Ric –
Plain and simple, the left KNOWINGLY caters to ignorance, because they have come to the conclusion that any day now, the ignorant will reach the 51% mark.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid they are onto something. They BUY their votes with lies and OUR money – and when you add our money to the convicted criminal’s (George Soros), it ain’t no piddling amount.
“Life should be free, and responsibility is old hat” sayeth Hillary.
“Hey! Follow me! I’m the pied piper” – Al Gore
It’s worse than that, Lost Dog. Let us take Prof. Caricature as an extreme example.
From our point of view, a university or college serves two purposes. One of them is the overt one: to discover, codify, and transmit knowledge. That’s the one we like to brag about as being what the places are for, but really it’s the less important of the two.
A “school” is two stumps, one for teacher and one for student. We might like to make it a bit more elaborate in the interest of comfort and economy, but the tasks outlined above could be done at one Hell of a lot less expense than what we fork over for a Harvard or a UC Berkely. The elaborate and enormously expensive provisions for Higher Education are examples of conspicuous consumption, evidence that we are rich enough to endow and maintain facilities several orders of magnitude more than is strictly necessary. (Note that it isn’t just us — there is hardly an example of a dictator or tyrant who won’t support a “world class University”.) Dr. Caric is an excrescence on that system, a chrome-encrusted, light-bedecked tailfin on the SUV of the Education system we support.
But from his side it looks quite different. He toils not, neither does he spin; and he would have to be a lot stupider than he appears to be to fail to realize that to the extent that he does anything at all it’s obstructive at best, destructive in the ordinary case. Never the less, we support him in the comfortable middle-class life style to which he has become accustomed, and as he looks around at his fellows (ilk!) he sees that, to a close first approximation, the more destructive they are the higher they rise in the hierarchy of Education.
The only conclusion he can possibly reach is that we are a bunch of idiots. We pay him to destroy the very system we use to create the wealth to support him, and from where he sits that can only be because we are gullible fools. Perhaps (certainly not always) to a lesser extent, the same is true of the legions of bureaucrats whose only real contribution is to eat up our substance. It’s the ultimate source of the “conservatives are stupid” notion, and you can’t say they don’t have a point.
Regards,
Ric
Pish tosh. So a couple of “laws” got violated. A mere bagatelle. Stop it with all the negative waves, Moriarity!…
Thank Bog Her Liberalness was able to save the Constitution!
It was this post by Scott Johnson at Power Line blog.
On the subject of Hillary, I’m trying to locate that full scale investigative piece the NY Times put out on the Peter Paul litigation. You know the case, the one related to the video that’s been so hot on google for the past few weeks about campaign finance fraud in Hillary’s 2000 Senatorial run. Great video if you haven’t seen it. Some claim it’s the largest campaign finance fraud in history. The litigation has been kicking around for years and Hillary’s side has been losing rulings but the MSM won’t touch it. I thought the Times finally ran their piece. Then again, I may have been dreaming.
Actually, I think Bob Tyrrell used to refer to Hillary Milhous Clinton in editorials for the American Spectator back when she was still
Queenthe Wife of the President.daleyrocks – The MSM has given the Peter Paul finance scandal little to no press. Again, it is Hillary, and she would just never do anything wrong.
Stop it with all the negative waves, Moriarity!…
I’m trying to be positive!
JD – No shit! Can you say SUPRESSION of negative stories?
daleyrocks – It will be up to a Republican candidate to point out these truths, at which point in time the truth will magically morph into attacks and smears. Allah knows that the other Dems will not go near these issues.