Happy Birthday, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!

Today marks ten years since the birth of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy." On January 27, 1998, Hillary Clinton said the following on national TV about a brewing intern-related debacle:

This is the great story here for anybody willing to find and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.

The American Thinker reminds us of what it was like with the Clintons in office:

Hillary expected serious Americans to believe that the Whitewater convictions (which put a sitting Arkansas governor in prison), the suicide of the Deputy White House Chief Counsel under mysterious circumstances, the unconscionable firing of the White House travel staff, Hillary's strange acumen in predicting the cattle futures market, an allegation of brutal rape against her husband, the perjury of Bill Clinton in a federal grand jury proceeding, his affair with a White House intern, and the countless other moral debauches of the Clintons were created by some cabal with power greater than the president, the Democratic Party and the huge phalanx of media flacks, fawning Hollywood starlets, militant activists and nihilistic academicians.

President Clinton - This Time With Pants

Nurse Ratched made a strong case for why she shouldn't be president last night in the Democratic debate. She got caught in a bind on questions about New York Governor Spitzer’s plan to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses. She said the plan “makes a lot of sense,” but then weaseled out of saying whether or not she supported it. Instead, she got angry and blamed President Bush for the failure of immigration legislation and said “what’s (Spitzer) supposed to do?” Here’s why she doesn’t know what to do: giving illegals driver’s licenses will lead to massive voter fraud that will favor Democrats (there’s no way to stop someone with a driver’s license from voting), so she supports it, as she said earlier. However, recent polling suggests 72% of New Yorkers are against it for the obvious reasons. Democrat messaging that those against amnesty are racists is not working out nationwide either. Should she win the nomination, add illegal immigration to the long list of huge problems for her campaign.

In response to challenges that she was too cozy with big business, Hillary said she had specific plans "to take $10 billion away from a lot of these industries." Is this in addition to her promises to take away the oil companies' profits?

The Shrillary camp is furious with Tim Russert for asking Hillary, since she's running on her experience, why Bill Clinton is preventing all of the records of the advice she gave to him as first lady from being shared with the public. Hillary weaseled out of this, claiming it's just that the National Archives are slow to release them. This is a lie. Bill Clinton can release them anytime he wants. For reasons we can only speculate about, none of the other candidates opted to ask what they are hiding.

Bush Does Something Right

The press is in a rage over President Bush commuting Scooter Libby's prison sentence (no word on the rumors that Bush thought he was issuing a statement offering to drive Libby to prison). I believe this is the right move. Depending on the outcome of Libby's appeal, Bush may pardon him entirely. It can't hurt his approval ratings. Everyone knows that Libby did not reveal Valerie Plame's identity to the press, that was Richard Armitage, who has no connection to the White House. Libby was technically convicted of perjury, making false statements, and obstruction of justice for recalling that Tim Russert first told him about Plame's identity when it was really Dick Cheney, but the D.C. jury just wanted someone to pay for the Plame non-scandal.

Compare this action by Bush to the President Clinton's pardons (see wikipedia). He pardoned several people in exchange for payments to relatives, but most egregiously, he commuted the sentences 16 Puerto Rican terrorists. They were members of FALN, which set off 120 bombs in New York and Chicago, killing 6 and maiming dozens. Clinton's action was condemned by a vote of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House. Why would he do this? The most plausible theory to me is that he thought it would help Hillary get the Puerto Rican vote in her New York Senate race.