Has anyone seen this site?

Because it pays to know what the other side is thinking, one of my alter egos regularly drops Dick Morris' e-mail blasts in my Inbox. It's not nearly as bad as you would imagine. He is, after all, a pollster who on occasion offers some well-founded insight.

It's been entertaining, too, because his unbridled, visceral hatred of all things Clinton drives Dick seriously and embarrassingly off the reservation when the subject is Hillary Clinton. I mean the kind of stuff that would make even Karl Rove go "eeeeiiuw."

So with that frame of reference, Dick's column in today's New York Post was par for the course (I'd provide a link, but I don't want to give Rupert the hits). Having danced on Hillary's grave at some other time and place, he has tuned his attention now to Barack Obama.

And what was his casus belli?

Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, as we have seen, borders on being delusionary, as Hillary and her campaign advisors continuously attempt to project an image of Hillary as having foreign and domestic policy experiences that, upon close examination, vanish into the ether.

However, from her days at the Rose Law firm to her eight years of being a kitchen cabinet member of her husband's administration and of being a part of his campaigns, there is no question that she does have political (as opposed to policy) experienced. She also has political/financial ties that - "vast right wing conspiracy" aside - require close scrutiny.

Here, then, are some questions about these ties that team Clinton ought to be asked.

...and yet we're still talking about Rezko, apparently the only person ever tangentially connected to Obama (not counting his occasionally over-the-top preacher) being charged with corruption?  Really??

Yes, I know Obama wants to run a positive campaign, but at some point, if Clinton and/or her MSM buddies bring up Rezko again (in the next debate, if there is one?), can Obama please take the proverbial gloves off and simply list a couple dozen names of indicted and/or imprisioned ultra-corrupt Clinton donors?  

Every now and then, when I get completely depressed about the world as it is today, I take the time to imagine another world.  A world the should have been.  A world with President Al Gore, no Iraq war, no September 11, an amazing Government response to a storm which might not have done as much damage to New Orleans, and a Constitution treated as something more than just an old piece of paper.

And then I think about all of the different reasons why the world is not as it should be.

Bill Clinton's role in this was most pathetic.  

According to USA Today, the Clintons are blocking release of documents related to their pardons of fugitive Marc Rich (his ex-wife donated $2,000 to Hillary's Senate campaign, $5,000 to her PAC, and $450,000 to the Clinton library...A COMPLETE COINCIDENCE!) and the pardons of a drug convict and a mail fraud convict (who paid Hugh Rodham $200,000...A COMPLETE COINCIDENCE!)

From USA Today:

Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

The archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

USA Today is reporting that archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of documents showing details of pardons approved by  Bill Clinton, including Marc Rich. Obama's camp needs to hit this hard today.

Hey Hillary -

Guess what? I have all my past tax returns.  As far as I can tell, if anyone wanted to see them, all I need to do is go to a xerox machine and make a few copies.  I think it would probably take me about 1 hour at most to cover 15 years.  So why aren't you releasing yours again?  You could always have one of your staff members do it - I hear Patti Solis-Doyle isn't too busy these days trying to get the knife out of her back.

"Four years into the Iraq war, Americans are still living with the consequences of this White House's efforts to quell dissent. This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."

Statement of Senator Hillary Clinton on President Bush's commutation of the prison term for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The Scooter Libby commutation is a microcosm of the Culture of Corruption, a key issue in the Democratic party's takeover of Congress in 2006.  It shows the disregard for judicial norms, the corruption, and the abuse of office that have come to characterize the Bush Era.

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton is not a credible critic of this Culture of Corruption, and certainly not of this episode.#  

In 2008, we need someone with credibility on the issue of corruption and abuse of office if we are to take on St. John McCain, whose reputation for ethical behavior is overstated, but whose track record still outshines that of the Clintons.

The full vetting below the fold.

I'm sick of the corruption and the lying and the sleaze currently in the White House.  Lobbyists making policy, the lies, the sleazy political operatives.  But here's the thing- I don't like corruption of ANY kind.  I don't like Democratic crooks.  We can all agree that there are A LOT more Republican crooks than Democratic crooks, but, I think someone once told me that Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right.  I am as disgusted by a Democrat selling favors as I am by a crooked Republican.

Bill Clinton sold pardons.  Hillary's brothers received hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby for pardons.  She says "Oh, I knew nothing about that."  Who here is dumb enough to believe her?

Time is running out for Democrats and Independents who are malleable or undecided on how to cast their vote in the upcoming presidential primary.  After the primary process is complete, our Democratic candidates for President (and Vice President) will be subjected to intense scrutiny and we should expect this contest to be one of the most vitriolic in our history.   Republicans are teetering on the edge of political disaster and will pull out all the stops to discredit whomever we select as our candidates.

I'm hopeful we select someone who won't have to deflect intense criticism and discussion of their past before the debate can be engaged about the issues of current and future importance.

This is not a proper diary - just a heads up that C-SPAN3 is running some old 2001 testimony from congressional investigations into the Clinton pardons. Of particular interest for anyone who would like to know exactly who would defend the Clinton pardon of Marc Rich, the number one question in the minds of the scooter rooters. Of course, the answer is Scooter Libby.

Watch Libby's March 2001 appearance tonight at 8:35 PM EST on C-SPAN3, replaying tommorrow at 5:09AM.

***Unexpected double feature***
See what a White House staffer looks like infront of a congressional committee - UNDER OATH. I kid you not!

Frontpagers!!! Get the word out over there <<----</p>

1. "Tax Relief" = "Legalized Tax Evasion"

Thanks in part to what seems to have been a pretty serious misstep by the Clinton campaign, right-wingers have seized upon the Marc Rich pardon as a counterpoint to the Scooter Libby commutation, with some success.  But if not for the knee-jerk Clinton-blaming that has substituted for 95% of Republican public policy discourse since 2001, tax evader Rich would be an odd choice as the GOP's poster child for unpardonable felons.  All Rich did was give himself "tax relief," keep "his own money," and assert his "property rights," while doing more than his fair share of "starving the beast."

It's a small, small world for pardons, after all.

President Bush's commutation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence highlights some interesting connections between Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, a former fugitive from justice, an ex-president and two leading 2008 White House hopefuls.

Before entering government, Libby was a private attorney who represented billionaire international commodities trader Marc Rich. Rich was indicted in 1983 by then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani on charges of tax evasion and illegal dealing with Iran during the American hostage crisis.

Thinking about Libby and all the crap behind it -- I'm growing more convinced that the press has been a co-conspirator with those bastards for some time.

Yesterday's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence has rocked Washington and the rest of the nation. Everybody's got something to bitch about. Democrats are incensed that the President exhibits such contempt for law and order. Republicans are inconsolable that Libby didn't get a full pardon.

One name keeps coming up as justification for Bush's action. A name that, not surprisingly, seeks to refocus blame on the GOP's favorite boogey man, Bill Clinton. It was Clinton that pardoned financier Marc Rich in a move that generated much controversy at the time. Republicans have jumped on that pardon in order to sanitize the President's obvious special treatment of Libby.

But guess what? Scooter Libby was Marc Rich's lawyer!

Brought to you by...
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The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.

As many of you know this is not the first Bush to pardon someone who may have been able to finger him in a lineup (and I'll ignore all Jeff Guckert jokes that rise from that image).

To quote from Lawrence Walsh's Iran Contra report:

"On December 24, 1992, twelve days before former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger was to go to trial, Bush pardoned him.1 In issuing pardons to Weinberger and five other Iran/contra defendants, President Bush charged that Independent Counsel's prosecutions represented the ``criminalization of policy differences.''"

The coverage was significant even though it happened over the holdays.

Here is an example:

As we all know, Dubya has a solid history of punishing convicted felons to the fullest extent of the law.  In a little blast from the past, here's Dubya in an interview with Tucker Carlson mocking a woman named Karla Faye Tucker on death row begging for clemency. Mocking a woman on death row?  Seriously?  What the heck kind of chemical imbalance causes a man who has been given so many second chances in his life to be so unforgiving?

Remember also that Dubya pardoned fewer people on death row than anyone since the 1940s, and presided over the largest number of executions in the history of the United States.

more on the flip about Dubya's history with clemency and pardons and other incidentals.