Is the Military Our Last, Best Hope for Averting War with Iran?

Chris Hedges, Truthdig

ForeignPolicy: When military command is the voice of reason in a debate about a new war, you know our democracy is in trouble.

Is the Military Our Last, Best Hope for Averting War with Iran?

Chris Hedges, Truthdig

ForeignPolicy: When military command is the voice of reason in a debate about a new war, you know our democracy is in trouble.

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Fox News Freaks Out After Video Highlighting Their Indecency Becomes a Major Hit [VIDEO]
Video: Robert Greenwald and Keith Olbermann discuss the impact and intent of the latest Fox Attacks video, and why it seems to have gotten under Bill O'Reilly's skin. More »

Judge slaps White House with restraining order
By Rebecca Carr | Monday, November 12, 2007, 03:32 PM



U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. issued a temporary restraining order today against the White House, ordering its executive office to preserve all records and back-up copies of millions of missing e-mails.

“Defendants shall preserve media, no matter how described, presently in their possession or under their custody or control, that were created with the intention of preserving data in the event of its inadvertent destruction,” wrote Kennedy in a Nov. 12 opinion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The order was sought by the National Security Archive, a public interest library at George Washington University, and the Washington-based watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The groups alleged in separate, but now combined, complaints, that the preservation of more than 5 million missing e-mails is vital to the preservation of history as they reveal the inner thinking of President Bush’s top aides between 2002 and 2007.

“The judge’s order shows that the loss of the e-mail records is a serious problem,” said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel at the archive.

The time span of the missing e-mails covers major events such as the war in Iraq; Hurricane Katrina; the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys and the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

“A lot of times, the government says “trust us, we will do the right thing,’” Fuchs said. “Judge Kennedey’s order shows he won’t just take their word for it. He will direct them to do the right thing.”

Anne Weismann, general counsel at CREW, said a temporary restraining order is necessary because the White House has repeatedly failed to assure the public that it would preserve back-up copies of the missing emails.

The administration tried to argue that a restraining order is not necessary.

Blair C. Jones, a White House spokesperson, said Monday the White House’s office of administration has been taking steps to preserve and maintain the back-up tapes for the administration’s e-mail system and will study the court’s order.

“We have provided assurances to the plaintiffs and to the court that these steps were being taken,” Jones said. “We will continue preserving the tapes in compliance with the court’s order.”

The White House has admitted that the e-mails in question may not have been archived as they should have been.

“I think that the fact that the judge didn’t agree with that is pretty remarkable,” Weismann said. “Who knows how many of the missing e-mails are accessible or if they are gone?”

“I think that the fact that the judge didn’t agree with that is pretty remarkable,” Weismann said. “Who knows how many of the missing emails are accessible or if they are gone.”

Kennedy said he based his ruling on the recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola, who recommended a restraining order last month.

“Without such an order, destruction of the backup media would be without consequence,” Facciola wrote in a six-page recommendation.

<a href="http://www.coxwashington.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/washington/secrecy/entries/2007/11/12/judge_slaps_white_house_with_r.html">Permalink

Who Said Politics Was Fair? By E.J. Dionne — Democrats in Congress are discovering what it’s like to live in the worst of all possible worlds. They are condemned for selling out to President Bush, and for failing to make compromises aimed at getting things done.

Paying More and Dying Sooner By Eugene Robinson — It turns out that Rudy Giuliani knows even less about health care than I thought. Not only are his figures about prostate cancer survival rates in the United States and Britain wildly misleading, but he’s also wrong on his general point: that a single-payer system, of the kind that Republicans call “socialized” medicine, inevitably would deliver inferior care.

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid By Marie Cocco — Sometime before the average price of gas topped the $3-a-gallon mark, just as Wall Street was getting jumpy about its year-end bonuses—the cache is expected to dip by 10 percent this year, down from last year’s record haul of $23.9 billion—an inevitable moment arrived. The economy beat Iraq as the issue of most concern to Americans, according to a Newsweek poll.

Kucinich: We’re Losing Our Democracy This week, Rep. Dennis Kucinich drummed up support within the House to introduce articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. Here, he discusses his motivations on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” TV/radio show.

Thompson to Push for Expanding Military
Republican Fred Thompson is taking his call for expanding the military, spending more money on defense and taking better care of current and former service members before a receptive audience at a military college... More

[b]The Five: Best Ron Paul Youtube Vids[/b]

The Race to Be the Un-Hillary
TIME -
In the racing world it's called drafting — staying right behind the leader until she wears out and then vaulting past her right near the end. ...
Is Obama making his move?
Boston Globe, United States
Fired up after a decidedly good couple weeks, Barack Obama's campaign today put out one of those state-of-the-campaign memos from campaign manager David ...
For Clinton, the "Question" Won't Go Away
Washington Post, United States
Last week, a Grinnell College student disclosed to her campus newspaper that a Clinton campaign aide had urged her to ask the senator about global warming ...
Obama and Edwards: Are Two Reformists in the Race Worse than One?
Mother Jones, CA
Washington Dispatch: Barack Obama and John Edwards are touring Iowa with similar campaign pitches. One may have to see his presidential hopes die for their ...
Obama Challenges Clinton on Trade Deals
The Associated Press
DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton's doubts about big foreign trade deals came only in the heat of the presidential campaign, Democratic rival ...

Which Clinton is really running here?
Los Angeles Times, CA
It's getting hard these days to keep track of which Clinton is running for president. They both seem to be popping up everywhere. Whatever happened to the ...

John Dean Challenges America: Fix This Broken Government The bottom line is going to be removing Republicans from the Executive Branch. They have embedded so many people, contrary to the Civil Service laws, that it's going to take not just 2008, but 2012, 2016, and possibly 2020 and 2024 to clear this problem up. If the public ever becomes aware of this, it's going to be a long time before they ever let another Republican back in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Sherwood Ross: Bush To Be Pursued Legally After Leaving White House
If President Bush thinks his woes will end when he quits the White House, he hasn't learned what Michael Ratner and Center for Constitutional Rights has in store for him.

The Best Conspiracy Theories (Lizard-People Are Running the World!)
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/mag...e/15-11/st_best

The New Global "Power"
Robert J. Samuelson | Oil at $100 a barrel suggests a new geopolitical paradigm: energy as a weapon.

• Harold Meyerson: The Writers' Strike Matters
• Juan Williams: Black America, Divided
• Michael Gerson: Is Upward Mobility Dead?

GOP Primary Casts Its Villain Sen. Hillary Clinton has become the one thing the Republican candidates for president can agree on.

Michael D. Shear

Spitzer Dropping His License Plan
By DANNY HAKIM Gov. Eliot Spitzer said that opposition is just too overwhelming to move forward.

Polls Find Voters Weighing Issues vs. Electability
By ADAM NAGOURNEY Twin New York Times/CBS News polls suggest that the outcome for the presidential nominating battle is far from settled in either Iowa or New Hampshire, which will begin voting in less than two months.

Bush strategist looks back in sadness By Mark Z. Barabak Matthew Dowd helped win the White House. Now he views the administration with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

License to Demagogue
by Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Amy Traub, The Nation
A plan to offer New York's undocumented immigrants driver's licenses should not have died.

Bush Stands By His Dictator
by Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Why not some war-on-terror obfuscation to bail out a president-dictator buddy in Pakistan?

Social Security: Relax
by Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet
Despite the facts, the right-wing myth of a pending Social Security crisis endures.

THE BEAR'S LAIR
America's disappearing
middle class
One of the great US election issues of 2008 will be the relative impoverishment of a large voting bloc, the American middle class. Reversing the trend requires new thinking about tight money, tight immigration controls, and greater job stability that comes with a respectable degree of bargaining power. But such thinking is beyond the ambit of both Democrats and Republicans, and anathema to Wall Street. - Martin Hutchinson

Geopolitics at $100 a Barrel - Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda on Energy Policy - Thomas Friedman, NY Times
A Crucial 50 Days for the Dem Candidates - Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
Powder Room Politics - Kathleen Parker, RealClearPolitics
Queen Hillary's Disruptive Court - Camille Paglia, Salon
Rudy in Trouble Without Iowa Win - Dick Morris, The Hill
What Makes John Edwards Run? - Noam Scheiber, The New Republic
The Insanity of Bush Hatred - Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal
Musharraf's Electoral Farce - Benazir Bhutto, Washington Post
My Aunt Is Not Pakistan's Saviour - Fatima Bhutto, Los Angeles Times
No Easy Answers to al-Qaeda Threat - Mary Jo White, USA Today
GOP Finds Solid Ground on Iraq War - J. Bresnahan & M. Kady, The Politico
Veterans Day 2007: Victory in Iraq? - Tony Blankley, Washington Times
We Took Our Eye Off the Real Threat - Sen. Russ Feingold, Huffington Post
Send the State Department to War - Max Boot, New York Times
Unholster the 2nd Amendment - Robert Levy, Los Angeles Times
Don't Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet - John Stossel, RCP

Jim Hightower: The Bush Administration Attacks Our Freedom to Protest [VIDEO]

Post by Jim Hightower
Video: George W likes to claim that global terrorists are out to attack America because "They hate our freedoms." But we're learning that it's really the Bushites themselves who hate America's freedoms. More »

• Full Post

Why Are They So
Afraid of Ron Paul?
Neocons and sectarian leftists unite to smear the antiwar Republican by Justin Raimondo As I predicted last month, the only consistently antiwar candidate on the Republican side of the aisle is breaking through – but in a spectacular manner that I certainly did not foresee. Suddenly, Paul is everywhere, from the Sunday morning talk shows to the length and breadth of the blogosphere. His amazing $4.2 million-in-one-day fundraising feat has entered the annals of presidential politics as the long-promised fulfillment of Internet-based political fundraising. And the myth that it's all online and not translatable into real people is belied by his recent 5,000-strong Philadelphia rally and similar events in Iowa and elsewhere. Paul has become the equivalent of a rock star among the young, and his appeal goes way beyond the usual libertarian crowd: liberals and conservatives, all races and cultural types, from home-schooling Christians to San Francisco pagans and everything in between. On the Internet, and in the streets, the Ron Paul Revolution, as his followers have dubbed their movement, is taking off.

The conventional wisdom, prior to this breakthrough, was that the Paul campaign was political vaporware, existing exclusively online and not in the material world. Yet that meme is quickly falling by the wayside as his polling numbers are rocketing upwards, from New Hampshire to Nevada. The money windfall – a result that the official campaign had nothing to do with, and which was generated entirely by Paul's independent supporters acting entirely on their own initiative – has made an advertising blitz possible, with at least two television ads and several radio ads running in early primary states.

All this buzz, however, has generated a counter-buzz, a sinister stream of smears and jeers coming from both Right and Left. What's instructive is how similar these attacks are in their viciousness, and, in the case of the "serious" mainstream critics, their juvenility. Whether coming from the liberal and ostensibly antiwar Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly and Matt Yglesias of The Atlantic, or from some neocon hack over at the Weekly Standard, the "Ron-is-crazy" meme is being furiously pushed upstream against the raging current of the Paul phenomenon – so far, to little avail. He's a "fruitcake," sniffs Drum, and the beat is taken up by Yglesias, who chimes in with charges of "extremism." The Weekly Standard takes it a bit further, and, with its characteristic snark, dubs Ron the "don't tase me, bro!" candidate, complete with an illustration of Paul being hustled off the stage by uniformed thugs – which is what they'd like to do to all of their political opponents.

David Weigel was absolutely right when he predicted it months ago, although the trepidation in his tone was, I think, unwarranted. Yes, the smears are getting really ugly, but precisely because of that the Smear Bund is generating a pro-Paul backlash, particularly among those who consider themselves liberals of the old school. Glenn Greenwald, whose popular "Unclaimed Territory" blog was claimed by Salon a while back, has risen as Ron's champion on the Left: Paul's is "a campaign that defies and despises conventional and deeply entrenched Beltway assumptions about our political discourse and about what kind of country this is supposed to be," he writes. Greenwald "gets it," in a way that shows his own awareness of the change liberalism is undergoing, as it faces the all-out assault of the neocons and the War Party on every front.

A tireless critic of the surveillance state and an informed, fierce opponent of the neoconservatives in the foreign policy realm, Greenwald has watched the rise of Ron Paul in the context of Hillary's apparent inevitability. Indeed, his spirited defense of Paul is rooted in his contempt for the pro-war and distinctly neoconservative foreign policy stance at the core of her oily evasions. The contrast with Paul's forthright and principled opposition not only to the Iraq war, but also to the underlying premise and assumptions that govern our foreign policy of global interventionism, can't be evaded by intelligent liberals, of which Greenwald is one. This is also what seems to be generating Andrew Sullivan's enthusiasm, among the more intelligent (albeit flighty) of the conservative intellectuals who write about public policy on the Internet. Coming from different directions, and moving toward libertarianism, Sullivan and Greenwald are representative of the many thousands of thoughtful and politically active Americans, on both the Right and the Left, who, brought together under a single antiwar, pro-civil liberties banner, see Ron Paul as a kind of symbol – a hope that real change is possible.

Greenwald clearly sees the Paul campaign as a kind of turning point for American liberals:

"Moreover, circumstances often dictate political priorities. Individuals who historically may not have been attracted to 'limited-government' rhetoric and all of the specifics it traditionally entails may find that ideal necessary now after six years of endless expansions of intrusive federal government power."

Faced with a "choice" between liberal hawks and outright neocons, the anti-interventionist Greenwald has nowhere to turn. Confronted with a Clinton restoration armed with the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and a well-earned reputation for vindictiveness, it's no wonder the civil libertarian Greenwald is hardly jumping for joy.

As always, the war question is key to understanding how a new generation of liberals is coming to a libertarian understanding of the interplay of foreign and domestic politics. As Greenwald puts it:

"By itself, the ability of Paul's campaign to compel a desperately needed debate over the devastation which America's imperial rule wreaks on every level – economic, moral, security, liberty – makes his success worth applauding."

Two generations of liberals have come to the freedom movement on account of the war issue. Check out my little essay on John T. Flynn, whose critique of U.S. foreign policy in the run-up to World War II and the wholesale violation of civil liberties by FDR's wartime administration got him kicked out as a columnist for The New Republic and given a place of honor at the Chicago Tribune, the Midwestern redoubt of "isolationist" (i.e., antiwar) sentiment. Flynn, a leader of the antiwar America First Committee, became a leading figure in the postwar conservative-libertarian movement.

The second generation of liberals-come-to-libertarianism came in during the Vietnam War era: it was opposition to that war, and to what seemed to be an emerging police state, that birthed the infant libertarian movement. Recruiting, in turn, from Left and Right was a self-conscious strategy that the movement's intellectual leader at the time, Murray N. Rothbard, pursued in hopes of building an independent third force that was neither "Right" nor "Left," but solidly pro-liberty. This effort was embodied in the journal Left & Right, which was devoted to introducing such Old Right anti-interventionists and anti-statists as Garet Garrett to the antiwar New Leftists in search of a comprehensive, coherent analysis of the tumult around them.

These second-generation cadre formed the Libertarian Party and, more importantly, made possible the growth of libertarianism as an intellectual movement, culminating in the boom of the mid-Seventies to mid-Eighties. Paul ran as the party's candidate in 1988, but by then the LP's political momentum had peaked prematurely, on account of a debilitating split at the party's 1983 national convention, when half the activists walked out.

The challenges of the Bush era, when not only our foreign policy of perpetual war but also what Lew Rockwell calls "red-state fascism" is rearing its increasingly ugly head, is inspiring a third generation of liberals to make the transition to a recognizably libertarian stance. On the Right, a similar reaction to Bushism is causing a growing number of conservatives, such as Bob Barr, to join the libertarian ranks, while many others, such as Tucker Carlson, are clearly sympathetic.

The wave of support and publicity for Paul has the neocons enraged, and they are busy trying to discredit him with a campaign of unsurpassed villainy. What they have done is actually kind of funny, if you take your humor black: they've simply transferred their usual blather on the foreign policy front to the domestic battlefield. Instead of claiming that Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler and we're facing another Munich, they're saying Ron Paul is Hitler and we're facing another Kristallnacht.

This lunatic ploy, which manages to be at once sinister and ridiculous, is what we might call the Paul-is-a-closet-Nazi meme. It was launched at the ultra-neocon Hot Air – what a perfect name for a site associated with Michelle Malkin! – and migrated, like AIDS on the tip of a used condom, into the liberal precincts of The New Republic's blog via one Jamie Kirchick, an aspiring leader in the League of Junior Neocons. (The same libel was echoed, with elaboration, on the Web site Jewcy.com, which I've written for [and was pleased to do so], in a diatribe written by some "libertarian socialist" guy who surprisingly works for the respectable Jewish Telegraphic Agency. His story of being snubbed by the Paul campaign on account of his being Jewish is debunked here, and by his own editor.)

The Hot Air "scoop" was that some obscure racist who hardly anyone has heard of gave $500 to the Paul campaign. And that is it. That is Paul's great "sin." Hillary Clinton is getting millions from the military-industrial-imperial complex; the foreign lobbyists and the special interests buy and sell our leaders like cattle at a county fair – but what really matters is that Ron Paul received a contribution from someone whose opinions the candidate doesn't endorse and cannot be responsible for. Of course, anyone could be motivated – or persuaded – to contribute to a political campaign for all kinds of reasons. Who's to say who did the persuading, or actually put up the money? "Dirty tricks" and politics are practically synonymous. However, even taking the source of the contribution at face value, going after Paul over $500 from some unknown wacko with dubious motives is really a stretch. It is, I think, very off-putting to liberals of Greenwald's sort, who are beginning to understand why this strained yet energetic effort is being made to discredit an honest, principled, and decent man.

To stanch the incipient pro-Paul rebellions at both ends of the political spectrum, the anti-Paul brigades have called out two disparate, albeit strangely congruent, figures to start slinging some real dirt in Paul's direction. Despite the ideological divide that separates Glenn Beck, who recently did a segment on his show accusing Paul of being a "terrorist" along the lines of Timothy McVeigh, and David Neiwert, a self-proclaimed "professional journalist" and resident left-blogosphere "expert" in right-wingology, both have come out with very similar assaults on the Paul campaign. Neiwert, whose recent series of blog posts attacking Ron Paul takes the same line as Paul's neoconservative critics, gives the Paul-is-Hitler meme a "leftist" patina. Both explicitly invoke the name of McVeigh, a violent and dangerous extremist, as emblematic of the Paul campaign. That Beck hauled out the ineffably repulsive David Horowitz to pull off his drive-by smearing indicates just how broad this anti-Paul "popular front" is, stretching all the way from the ex-communists of the 1960s turned warmongering neoconservatives to the present-day lefties of Neiwert's ilk. The Right and Left faces of the Smear Bunds are singing slightly different tunes, but in unison. To Beck, who never mentions that the Paul fundraiser he rails about was based on a movie, and not Guy Fawkes the historical personage, Paul is a supporter of terrorism. To Neiwert, on the other hand, who has run a long list of legislation introduced by Paul that – gasp! Horror of horrors! – demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that Paul opposes a lot of federal programs and doesn't believe government is the be-all and end-all solution to our problems, he's worse than a mere terrorist: he's an authentic conservative! The Republican Establishment must be thrilled.






While the neocons' methods are outrageous and not at all persuasive – after all, how subtle or convincing could Horowitz possibly manage to be? – Neiwert adds his own peculiar spin, which makes even Horowitz's witch-hunting methods seem reasonable by comparison. Neiwert goes way beyond guilt-by-association, as he admits:

"[T]his isn't 'guilt by association' – first, the argument isn't that Paul is a racist per se, but that he is an extremist who shares a belief system held not just by racists but other anti-government zealots as well. Paul is identified with their causes not simply because he speaks to them, but because he elucidates ideas and positions – especially regarding the IRS, the UN, the gold standard, and education – identical to theirs. This is why he has their rabid support. There is an underlying reason, after all, that Paul attracts backers like David Duke and the Stormfront gang: he talks like them."

Neiwert is right: this isn't guilt-by-association, it's worse. It's mass smearing on a scale never before attempted. Neiwert presumes to act as a gatekeeper to authoritatively delegitimize any and all ideas held to be "extremist" or "radical Rightist." If you question the value of public education, you're an "extremist." Hate the IRS? Watch out, or you'll fall prey to "radical Rightists." He writes his books, articles, and blogposts – and bases his entire literary reputation – on the supposed existence of a radical Right threat, which he and his fellow "experts" have "studied," albeit with none of the cold-eyed objectivity of the scientist but rather with a clear agenda in mind: extreme political correctness of the leftist variety.

Neiwert's is a literary tradition that stretches back to the sociological gobbledygook churned out by Theodore Adorno and his followers, who "diagnosed" all opposition to the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as clear evidence of an "authoritarian personality": if you opposed the New Deal (and the war) this was evidence, in Adorno's view, of incipient "fascist" tendencies. John Roy Carlson, Harry Overstreet, the tag team of Arnold Foster and Benjamin Epstein, and a bibliography a mile long are testaments to the growth of this mini-industry, which has existed in this country since the 1930s and experienced an upsurge in the postwar period. The neocons brought out their own rather over-intellectualized version of this smear literature in the early 1960s, in response to the rising Goldwater phenomenon: The Radical Right, edited by Daniel Bell and Seymour Martin Lipset. Their argument was this: anyone who opposed the postwar liberal welfare state was not only a dangerous extremist, but also no doubt suffered from "status anxiety," i.e., they were crazy. This same Smear Bund brought out a "psychological analysis" by a group of psychiatrists that diagnosed Barry Goldwater as being mentally unstable as well as an "extremist." A more spurious and disgusting libel was never invented – at least, not until the Smear Bund put Paul in their sights.

Neiwert is a fool who once attacked both Lew Rockwell and myself for not having the "correct" interpretation of what fascism is and how it develops. According to him, my own interpretation of what American fascism might come to look like shows "no understanding" of the reality, which resembles, in his mind, the "patriot" militia groups that burgeoned during the Clinton years. That many of these same people support Paul's opposition to the IRS and inveigh against the "New World Order" (i.e., American imperialism) is, for Neiwert, proof positive that it isn't the Bush administration's militarism and authoritarianism that poses a fascist danger – oh, no, certainly not! In his book, it's Ron Paul who heralds the rise of fascism.

You can't make this stuff up.

Yet they are making it up, and they will continue to make it up: anything to divert attention away from the vital issues of war and peace, over which a world – and a way of life – hangs in the balance.

The appearance of an antiwar candidate in the Republican primary, one who is furthermore making substantial gains and a fair amount of noise, stands as a testament to the failure of any of the Democrats to take advantage of what is, after all, the antiwar majority in this country. Even as our soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq, and the administration paves the way – with Hillary Clinton's help – for a war with Iran, the American people overwhelmingly reject our foreign policy of relentless aggression and serial "regime change." The majority is effectively disenfranchised. That's why the Paul campaign has captured the imagination of young people and all those looking for an alternative to the increasingly intolerable status quo. The neocons and the Neiwerts, separately or together, can't do much about it, as they'll soon learn to their sorrow: their obviously dishonest and ill-motivated attacks will drive honest liberals and conservatives into Paul's camp, not away from it.

Why are they so afraid of Ron Paul? In the face of both Fox News and the hard Left hurling anathemas at him, that's what honest liberals and conservatives are beginning to ask – and I don't think the Smear Bund is going to like their answer.

Glenn Greenwald
Monday November 12, 2007 14:31 EST
Ron Paul distortions and smears
(updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)

I'm not trying to be Ron Paul's advocate but, still, outright distortions and smears are distortions and smears. In an otherwise informative and legitimate (and widely-cited) post today about Paul's record in Congress, Dave Neiwert claims:

Even though he claims to be a "libertarian", he opposes people's freedom to burn or destroy their own copies of the design of the U.S. flag.

He then links to two bills which Paul introduced in Congress which would, in essence, amend the Constitution in order to allow prohibitions on flag burning. But Neiwert's claim here is, in one respect, completely misleading and, in another respect, outright false (in both cases, I assume the error is unintentional). Unlike Hillary Clinton -- the Democratic Party front-runner who, "along with Sen. Robert Bennett, a Utah Republican, introduced a bill that would make flag burning illegal" -- Ron Paul was and is vehemently against any and all laws to criminalize flag burning, including the constitutional amendment he introduced. He introduced that amendment solely to make a point -- one he makes frequently -- that the legislation being offered to criminalize flag burning was plainly unconstitutional, and that the only legitimate way to ban flag burning was to amend the First Amendment.

Indeed, he only introduced those flag-burning amendments in order to dare his colleagues who wanted to pass a law banning flag burning to do it that way -- i.e., the constitutional way. When introducing his amendments, he delivered an eloquent and impassioned speech on the floor of the House explaining why he considered anti-flag-burning measures to be "very unnecessary and very dangerous." And he urged his colleagues to vote against them, including the ones he introduced:

As for my viewpoint, I see the amendment as very unnecessary and very dangerous. I want to make a few points along those lines. It has been inferred too often by those who promote this amendment that those who oppose it are less patriotic, and I think that is unfair. . . .

It has also been said that if one does not support this amendment to the flag that they are disloyal to the military, and that cannot possibly be true. I have served 5 years in the military, and I do not feel less respectful of the military because I have a different interpretation on how we should handle the flag. But nevertheless, I think what we are doing here is very serious business because it deals with more than just the flag.

First off, I think what we are trying to achieve through an amendment to the Constitution is to impose values on people -- that is, teach people patriotism with our definition of what patriotism is. But we cannot force values on people; we cannot say there will be a law that a person will do such and such because it is disrespectful if they do not, and therefore, we are going to make sure that people have these values that we want to teach.

Values in a free society are accepted voluntarily, not through coercion, and certainly not by law, because the law implies that there are guns, and that means the federal government and others will have to enforce these laws.

Rep. Paul did exactly the same thing with the invasion of Iraq, which he opposed. He argued (accurately) that the only constitutional method for Congress to authorize the President to invade another country was to declare war on that country. The Constitution does not allow the Congress to "authorize" military force without a war declaration. Rep. Paul thus introduced a Declaration of War in the House on the ground that such a Declaration was constitutionally required to invade Iraq -- and he then proceeded to vote against the AUMF (because, unlike Hillary Clinton, he actually opposed the invasion). Thus, saying that Paul wants to outlaw flag burning (as Neiwert's post does) -- or that he supported the war in Iraq -- is just false. * * * * *

This raises a broader point. It has become fashionable among certain commentators to hurl insults at Ron Paul such as "huge weirdo," "fruitcake," and the like. Interestingly, the same thing was done to another anti-war medical doctor/politician, Howard Dean, back in 2003, as Charles Krauthammer infamously pronounced with regard to Dean that "it's time to check on thorazine supplies." Krauthammer subsequently said that "t looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again."

For a long time now, I've heard a lot of people ask: "where are the principled conservatives?" -- meaning those on the Right who are willing to oppose the constitutional transgressions and abuses of the Bush administration without regard to party loyalty. A "principled conservative" isn't someone who agrees with liberals on most issues; that would make them a "principled liberal." A "principled conservative" is someone who aggressively objects to the radicalism of the neocons and the Bush/Cheney assault on our constitution and embraces a conservative political ideology. That's what Ron Paul is, and it's hardly a surprise that he holds many views anathema to most liberals. That hardly makes him a "fruitcake."

Hillary Clinton supported the invasion of a sovereign country that had not attacked us and could not attack us -- as did some of the commentators now aggressively questioning Ron Paul's mental health or, at least, his "seriousness." She supported the occupation of that country for years -- until it became politically unpalatable. That war has killed hundreds of thousands of people at least and wreaked untold havoc on our country. Are those who supported that war extremist, or big weirdos, or fruitcakes?

Or how about her recent support for Joe Lieberman's Iran warmongering amendment, or her desire to criminalize flag burning, or her vow to strongly consider an attack on Iran if they obtain nuclear weapons? Is all of that sane, normal, and serious?

And I read every day that corporations and their lobbyists are the bane of our country, responsible for most of its ills. What does it say about her that her campaign is fueled in large part by support from exactly those factions? Are she and all of her supporters nonetheless squarely within the realm of the sane and normal? And none of this is to say anything of the Giulianis and Podhoretzs and Romneys and Krauthammers and Kristols with ideas so extreme and dangerous, yet still deemed "serious."

That isn't to say that nobody can ever be deemed extremist or even crazy. But I've heard Ron Paul speak many times now. There are a lot of views he espouses that I don't share. But he is a medical doctor and it shows; whatever else is true about him, he advocates his policies in a rational, substantive, and coherent way -- at least as thoughtful and critical as any other political figure on the national scene, if not more so. As the anti-Paul [i]New York Sun noted today, Paul has been downright prescient for a long time in warning about the severe devaluation of the dollar.

And -- as the above-cited efforts to compel Congress to actually adhere to the Constitution demonstrate -- few people have been as vigorous in defense of Constitutional principles as those principles have been mangled and trampled upon by this administration while most of our establishment stood by meekly. That's just true.

Paul's efforts in that regard may be "odd" in the sense that virtually nobody else seemed to care all that much about systematic unconstitutional actions, but that hardly makes him a "weirdo." Sometimes -- as the debate over the Iraq War should have demonstrated once and for all -- the actual "fruitcake" positions are the ones that are held by the people who are welcome in our most respectable institutions and magazines, both conservative and liberal.

* * * * * *

This whole concept of singling out and labelling as "weirdos" and "fruitcakes" political figures because they espouse views that are held only by a small number of people is nothing more than an attempt to discredit someone without having to do the work to engage their arguments. It's actually a tactic right out of the seventh grade cafeteria. It's just a slothful mechanism for enforcing norms.

Under the right circumstances, enforcement of norms might have some utility. Where things are going relatively well, and the country has a healthy political dialogue, perhaps there isn't much of a need to expand the scope of ideas that we consider "normal." Having all the people whose views fit comfortably in the mainstream stigmatize as "fruitcakes" all those whose views are outside of the mainstream might, under those happy circumstances, bear little cost.

But our country isn't doing all that well right now. Our political dialogue isn't really vibrant or healthy. It seems rather self-evident that it is preferable to enlarge the scope of ideas that we consider and to expand the debates that we engage. The "norms" that have prevailed over the last six years have led the country quite astray and are in need of fundamental re-examination, at the very least. That a political figure (or pundit) clings loyally to prevailing norms isn't exactly evidence of their worth, let alone their mental health. The contrary proposition might actually be more plausible.

There is something disorienting about watching the same people who cheered much of this on, or who will enthusiastically support for President a candidate who enabled and cheered much of it on, trying to constrict debate by labeling as "weirdos" and "fruitcakes" those who have most aggressively opposed it all. As the debates of 2002 should have proved rather conclusively, the arguments that are deemed to be the province of the weirdos and losers may actually be the ideas that are right. They at least deserve an honest airing, especially in a presidential campaign with as much at stake as this one.

* * * * * *

For anyone with any questions about what this post means and, more importantly, what it does not mean, please see here (Update II).

UPDATE: Bruce Fein is an example of a conservative who -- by virtue of his outspoken opposition to Bush lawbreaking -- has generated substantial respect among Bush critics, including many liberals. Yet Fein hasn't changed his views at all. He is, for instance, emphatically pro-life, and rather recently urged that "President George W. Bush should pack the United States Supreme Court with philosophical clones of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and defeated nominee Judge Robert H. Bork." Fein is still a hard-core conservative, but a principled one. At least in that regard, I would compare Fein to Paul.

On another note, I wrote in my prior post concerning Paul that I found the efforts (by Neiwert and others) to smear him by linking him to some of his extremist and hate-mongering supporters to be unfair (for reasons I explained here). Neiwert responded and compiled what he thinks is the best evidence to justify this linkage here.

For reasons I'll detail at another time, I found virtually all of that to be unpersuasive, relying almost entirely on lame guilt-by-association arguments that could sink most if not all candidates (the only arguably disturbing evidence in this regard is this 1996 Houston Chronicle article, which Neiwert didn't mention, and the pro-Paul response is here). Everyone can review the evidence -- all of which is quite old and very little of which relies on any of Paul's own statements -- and make up their own minds.

UPDATE II: Interesting, and otherwise passed on without comment (h/t selise):



UPDATE III: For a sense of how consistently Paul applies his principles regarding the proper role of the federal government, consider his emphatic opposition to a Congressional Gold Medal to be awarded to Ronald and Nancy Reagan, on the ground that "appropriating $30,000 of taxpayer money is neither constitutional nor, in the spirit of Ronald Reagan's notion of the proper, limited role for the federal government" (on the other hand, his recent vote in favor of the Congressional resolution to condemn MoveOn.org, which he'd presumably justify on the ground that it is non-binding, certainly seems in tension with his underlying view of federal power).

There is certainly ample ground to dispute Paul's view of the proper, constitutional role of the federal versus the state government in various matters. That is probably a worthwhile debate to have. But the claim that Paul's federalism is just an unprincipled ruse to promote some sort of neo-Nazi or racist agenda is plainly belied by such acts, and is exactly the type of dishonest smear designed to discredit his views without bothering to do the work to engage and refute them.

UPDATE IV: The aforementioned Bruce Fein is legal counsel to the Ron Paul campaign. Liberal pro-choice feminist Naomi Wolf recently sang Paul's praises, hailing him as "the outsider Republican presidential candidate who has long upheld these [constitutional] values and who was an early voice warning of the grave danger to all of us of these abuses."

Have Bruce Fein and Naomi Wolf been concealing a neo-Nazi agenda which they are finally able to express through the Ron Paul campaign, or are they simply impressed by the obvious convictions and intense (though rare) passion he brings to issues which they seem to think are of vital importance -- restoration of our constitutional framework and the rule of law, along with principled opposition to America's imperialistic and militarized role in the world?

UPDATE V: There are many hysterical reactions to this post around, attributing to me all sorts of things I didn't say. But this comment at Orcinus -- explaining part of the appeal of some of Ron Paul's positions while disagreeing with much of what I wrote -- is quite insightful, though I don't concur with all of it.

UPDATE VI: On all of these topics, HTML Mencken adds some important insights.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...paul/index.html

Pentagon Keeping Iraq Strategy From Democrat Lawmakers

Sen. Reid Threatens Iraq War Fund Cutoff

US Catholic Bishops Calls for Iraq Withdrawal

POLITICS | DECEMBER 2007

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush
The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. Joseph E. Stiglitz sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.

POLITICS | DECEMBER 2007

When Washington Was Fun
Washington society used to be about bipartisan friendship—and a damn good time. Maureen Orth learns how the party died.

<h3 class="title"> Ron Paul Quote of the Day </h3> Posted by Nick Bradley at 08:21 PM From today's Rolling Stone interview with Dr. Paul:

Tim Dickinson: Giuliani seems to be the warmonger in chief — leading the drumbeat for war with Iran. What would a Giuliani presidency mean for our national security? Dr. Paul: If someone is unhappy with the Bush policy, they would find Giuliani's would be even more extreme. But since Giuliani is so anxious to go to war, somebody ought to ask him why he didn't go when he was called up instead of ducking it like some of those other chicken hawks — he took, what, four deferrals? The kids today are expected to go because Giuliani likes this stuff. But whether it's Cheney or Giuliani, these guys think it's quite proper to go to war when they feel like it. But they never had to expose themselves.

TomP: Edwards: Don't Offshore Our Jobs; Rebuild the Middle Class Today, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report concuding that between 25 to 30 million jobs will be offshored over the next decade. Presidential candidate John Edwards has something to say about that.

Two Icebergs Ahead For the Democrats - David Broder, Washington Post
1968: The Long Goodbye - Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal
The Relaunch: Can Obama Catch Clinton? - Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker
A Vegas Bout Worth Viewing - Margaret Carlson, Bloomberg
Front-Runners Who Can Still Be Tackled - George Will, Washington Post
Lou Dobbs: Man of the People - Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix
House Democrats Renew Antiwar Push - Noam Levey, Los Angeles Times
When Good News is No News - Victor Davis Hanson, RealClearPolitics
Not Good at Nation Building - Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times
Bush Must Threaten Aid Cutoff in Pakistan - Mort Kondracke, Roll Call
Actions Speak Loudest to Terrorists - Michael Burleigh, Daily Telegraph
Spitzer Doomed by His Contempt - Adam Brodsky, New York Post
Why Illegal Immigration Doesn't Matter - Steven Malanga, Wash Post
Hugo Chavez is His Own Worst Enemy - Ian Bremmer, RealClearPolitics
Energy Independence, Past and Future - Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune
Justice for Sale - Sandra Day O'Connor, Wall Street Journal
Imus is Back! But w/a 21-Second Delay - Felix Gillette, New York Observer

Hillary's Achilles' Heel
- Howard Fineman, Newsweek
The Insanity of Bush Hatred
- Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal
Rudy in Trouble Without Iowa Win
- Dick Morris, The Hill
Queen Hillary's Disruptive Court
- Camille Paglia, Salon

Iraq-Afghanistan War Measure Faces Bush Veto
Voice of America - 6 hours ago
By Dan Robinson The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives has approved a measure to provide $50 billion in short-term funding for US military ...
House Democrats renew antiwar push Los Angeles Times
House Puts Strings on Military Funding New York Times
Wall Street Journal - CNN International - NPR - Bloomberg
all 1,619 news articles »
Comment by Robert Greenstein, Exec Director,Center on Budget & Policy Priorities
STATEMENT BY ROBERT GREENSTEIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES, IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT BUSH'S VETO OF THE LABOR-HHS-EDUCATION APPROPRIATIONS BILL - 18 hours ago
We find it stunning for the President to reject a $5 billion increase for education, medical research and other priorities as unaffordable, while insisting that Congress finance the $51 billion cost of AMT relief through higher deficits instead of by closing tax loopholes exploited by multi-millionaires. The President's action speaks volumes - not about fiscal discipline, but about his misplaced values.

With this veto, the President is saying that this nation can't afford even to maintain current service levels in education, medical research, "meals on wheels" for the elderly, and other areas. In fact, he has proposed cutting funding for programs in the vetoed bill by $7 billion below the current levels, adjusted for inflation. Congress, by contrast, would boost funding by $5 billion. (The difference between the President's budget request and the vetoed bill is $10 billion, not counting a $2 billion increase in advance appropriations that Congress provided for certain education and job training programs. Counting these funds, the difference is slightly under $12 billion.) To reach the President's funding levels, Congress would have to cut from the vetoed bill $1.4 billion for medical research, $1.3 billion for K-12 education, and $254 million for Head Start, among other items.

At the same time, the Administration has denounced good-faith efforts in Congress to pay for AMT relief by closing several tax loopholes exploited by some of the wealthiest people in the country. The Administration and its backers are intent on protecting an unjustified tax break that millionaire hedge-fund managers use to shelter large sums in foreign tax havens and a dubious tax break that wealthy equity-fund managers exploit to pay taxes at lower rates than many middle-class families.

This veto is not about fiscal discipline. It is about priorities - whether multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for a tiny number of very affluent individuals matter more than the needs of much of the public.

The Center's policy analyses on this issue are available through:
http://www.cbpp.org/pubs/fedbud.htm.

The Seeds of Corruption

Hillary Clinton in Arkansas
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Second in a three-part series.

In 1990, the National Law Journal ran profiles of "the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in the United States". Hillary Clinton was on the list, and for years she would publicly boast that the Journal had named her one of "the nation's 100 top lawyers". Finally, the editor of the National Law Journal, Patrick Oster, wrote to Arkansas' first lady--as she still was in 1991--testily pointing out that the word "influential" is not synonymous with "top" or "best"--the latter two words used by Mrs. Clinton interchangeably.

By "influential" the Journal's profile writer, Peggy Fisk, had meant a lawyer plentifully endowed with corporate and political connections, which Mrs. Clinton certainly enjoyed in Arkansas where she had become a partner of the Rose Law Firm in 1977, amid the dawn of her husband's political career as he began his terms as governor of the state. By the late 1980s, Hillary Clinton was sitting on the board of Wal-Mart, with the rest of Arkansas' business elite crowding her Rolodex. Hillary ignored Oster's letter of correction, instructing her staff to continue to use the word "best" in invoking the Journal's profile. She continued to do so for years. Oster was still writing her a decade later about her misuse--including an editorial column in the Journal in 2000, when she was running for the U.S. Senate.

In fact, Mrs. Clinton was not a particularly good lawyer and would have had trouble making any honest list of the 100 best lawyers in Little Rock. In their political biography, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. tell the story about the National Law Journal and also probe her lawyerly skills when she was at Rose Law. She only tried five cases and confided to Vince Foster--another Rose Law partner--that she was terrified of juries. So Foster had to accompany her to court. Because of her lack of prowess in the courtroom, she had to make her way at Rose Law by working her connections as the State's first lady to bring in clients, and even then her annual partner's share was mostly below $100,000--the lowest in the firm and very small potatoes for one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America.

The Clintons' joint income--at least the visible portion--was not substantial: the state paid Bill $20,000 a year, no doubt under the assumption he'd even up the score with kickbacks. So money was on Mrs. Clinton's mind. Her search for extra income led her into associations that were later to cause endless trouble.

First came the ties with Jim McDougall that were to flower into the Whitewater property speculation and later a huge federal investigation into that deal, unprofitable to the Clintons who had hoped--like many Americans--to make a big score in real estate and solve their money problems at a single stroke.

When things were looking bleak for the Clintons after the Arkansas voters threw Bill out in 1980 after his first term as governor (Arkansas had two-year gubernatorial terms until 1986), she fanned her friendship with James Blair, general counsel of Tyson Foods. Bill Clinton's Little Rock chief of staff, Betsey Wright, recalled that Hillary "loved Jim Blair. Blair was her money man". It was Blair who set up an account for Hillary Clinton with Refco, a small brokerage firm run by Robert "Red" Bone, Don Tyson's former bodyguard and a professional poker player. "Red" Bone got her into cattle future trades. She put up $1,000 and left the trading to Mr. Bone who's often assumed to have arranged the trades with Blair, to Mrs. Clinton's advantage. Nine months later, the $1,000 had swollen with miraculous speed into a profit for Mrs. Clinton of $99,000.

When Bill Clinton ran for the presidency in 1992, reporters noted a mysterious spike in the couple's net worth in the early 1980s and quizzed Mrs. Clinton about it. Her first untruthful explanation was that there had been a windfall in the form of an unexpected gift of cash from her parents. But, aware that the questions wouldn't stop, she issued ferocious order to her staff about any leakage of her tax records. She told them that if they released the tax records showing the commodity trades, they'd "never work in Democratic politics again".

The records were stored in the Clinton Campaign headquarters in Little Rock, in a locked room for which only Hillary, Bill and Betsey Wright had keys. Also in "the Box Room" under lock and key were details of Bill's sexual capers and Hillary's dealings at Rose Law. An internal '92 campaign memo, quoted by Gerth and Van Natta, cited 75 "problem files" in the materials in the Box Room, two-thirds of which related to them as a couple or to Hillary alone. When David Ifshin, the campaign's legal counsel, asked for the key to the room to assess the likely problems, Bill Clinton told him: "We can't open our closet, we'll get crushed by the skeletons".

But two reporters in particular kept pressing: Gerth of the New York Times and James Stewart of the Wall Street Journal. Gerth finally got evidence of the $99,000 profit on a $1,000 trade and confronted Mrs. Clinton. Shorn of the family gift story, Mrs. Clinton avowed that she'd spent her days poring over cattle prices in the Wall Street Journal, that the $99,000 was the fruit of these studies and that she'd quit commodity trading in 1980, after she'd got pregnant with Chelsea, because the trading "was too nerve-wracking". Unfortunately for this story, details later surfaced amid prosecutor Kenneth Starr's investigation during the Clinton presidency, showing that in 1981 Hillary had made a trade netting her $6,500 and she hadn't reported the profit to the IRS.

Amid the Starr probe, the Clintons encouraged the Wall Street Journal's Stewart to do a book on what they saw as their unfair persecution on the Whitewater deal. As he researched this work, published as Blood Sport, Stewart took a hard look at the commodity trades and pressed Mrs. Clinton for an explanation for all the contradictory stories. Hillary blamed everything on her staff and told Stewart that her own statements should simply be "accepted at face value".

In the mid-1990s, federal special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's investigative team in Little Rock was headed by a veteran of the courtroom, Hickman Ewing Jr. Grilled by Ewing before a grand jury on July 22, l995, Mrs. Clinton used the words "I can't recall" in answer to 50 questions. Later, Ewing told Starr that he rated Mrs. Clinton's testimony as deserving an F Minus, and he wanted to indict the nation's first lady. He was contemplating a number of counts, headed by two major lines of enquiry. First came her handling of the commodity trades and her failure to report her profits to the IRS. Second came her conduct amid the collapse of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, owned by Jim McDougal. Relevant to this affair were Hillary Clinton's billings as a legal counsel to Madison Guaranty. These were germane to the question of whether Hillary was being truthful in denying she'd done any legal work for the bank. After many adventures, the records finally came into the hands of Starr's team and showed that Hillary Clinton had billed Madison Guaranty at the rate of $150 an hour, with a total of 60 hours of supposed work on the Castle Grande deal. The prosecutors had the billings but were never able to look at Hillary's time sheets. Her secretary removed them from the Rose Law Firm in 1992, and it's generally assumed the first lady destroyed them.

Webb Hubbell, a partner at Rose Law and one of Hillary's closest friends, fell from his eminence as deputy attorney general in Clinton's first term and was convicted and imprisoned on charges of padding by $394,000 his legal billings at Rose Law. Ewing was convinced that Hillary had been doing the same thing. He prepared an indictment. It was the most serious brush with disaster that Hillary ever faced. Paradoxically, she was saved by the indiscretions of her faithless mate. Even as Ewing was urging Hillary's indictment, Starr was delightedly fingering what he conceived to be the object that would doom Bill Clinton, the semen-stained dress retrieved from Monica Lewinsky's closet by Starr's team. The only thing the prurient Starr cared about was nailing Clinton for sexual misconduct, and so he told the disappointed Ewing that there would be no indictment of Hillary.

Even as Hillary Clinton was making trouble for herself and Bill in her legal and business dealings, she was reinventing Bill as a politician. Defeat in 1980 after his first two-year gubernatorial term was a cataclysmic event. Bill called it a "near death experience". According to Gerth and Van Natta, it was "the only time anyone has seen Hillary Clinton cry in public". Bill was inclined to throw in the political towel and go back to being a law professor in Fayetteville, where he would doubtless be roosting in tenured bliss to this day, plump and pony-tailed, fragrant with marijuana and still working his way through an endless roster of coeds. But in 1980, over a funereal breakfast of instant grits, Vernon Jordan brokered a deal: Bill Clinton would give up being a southern populist in the mold of Orval Faubus, six-term governor of Arkansas. Southern populism involved offending powerful corporations. Bill lost in 1980 because not only had he taken the un-populist course of hiking the rate on car registration, he'd angered Weyerhaeuser and Tyson Foods. So, for his comeback he would remake himself as a neoliberal. Hillary Rodham would give up insisting on keeping her maiden name and become Hillary Clinton. The man charged with supervising the Clintons' makeover was selected by Hillary: Dick Morris, a political consultant known for his work for Southern racists like Jesse Helms. Morris ultimately guided President Bill Clinton into the politics of triangulation, outflanking the Republicans from the right on race, crime, morals posturing and deference to corporations. As Hillary said in 1980, "If you want to be in this business, this is the type of person you have to deal with".

Bill Clinton duly pushed aside the Playboy centerfolds and pored over Dick Morris' polling data, trimming his positions to suit. He recaptured the governorship in 1982 and as a reward appointed his wife to head a special task force charged with reforming Arkansas' education system, at that time widely regarded as the worst in the country. The plan Mrs. Clinton came up with showcased teacher testing and funding the schools through a sales tax increase, an astoundingly regressive proposal since it imposed new costs on the poor in a very poor state while sparing any levies on big corporations. The plan went through. Arkansas' educational ranking remained abysmal, but Hillary won national attention as a "realistic Democrat" who could make "hard" choices, like taxing welfare mothers.

While enjoying this limelight, Mrs. Clinton was invited onto the board of Wal-Mart as the first woman director, the only Rose Law partner at that time to have accepted an outside position. She was also asked by Robert Mac Crate, the president of the American Bar Association, to head up a commission on how to implement a resolution by the ABA to increase the profile of women and minorities in the legal profession. Mac Crate told Gerth and Van Natta that Mrs. Clinton declined, saying that she didn't want gender equity to be linked with race. She prevailed. Two years later, she agreed to head an ABA commission examining the status in the legal profession. Issues of race were not to be scrutinized.

By 1987, Hillary was wearying of life as first lady of Arkansas and began to press her husband on the 20-year plan they had made long before, whose consummation would be a successful run by Bill for the U.S. presidency. Dick Morris was assigned the task of running polls on Bill's chances. Betsey Wright was charged with sizing up the "problems". Morris' news was grim. The Democratic Party was not sold on the prospect of the governor of Arkansas as their nominee in l988. Betsey Wright sat down with Bill and Hillary and read out to both of them a list of dozens of women Wright believed Bill had had some kind of fling with during his gubernatorial years. Bill's head sank into his hands, and he mumbled, "I'm not going to run for president and I don't want to run for re-election as governor either". As Wright recalled later, Hillary stood up and cried, "If you're not gonna run for re-election, I'm gonna run". "Okay", said Bill, he'd run again. It was Hillary's call.

The next four years were spent gearing up for the White House run and trying to bury Bill's past. Amid these efforts Hillary made two huge mistakes, which haunted the Clintons throughout the 1992 campaign and their White House years. Clinton's opponent in the 1990 governor's race was Sheffield Nelson, a Little Rock lawyer. Nelson had accumulated a dirt file on Bill, detailing his sexual escapades and the couple's Whitewater real estate transactions. But he never used this material in the campaign. Nonetheless, in 1990 Hillary Clinton publicly excoriated Nelson, calling him "a vindictive and very bitter man". The reason for Hillary's assault was that Nelson, in the climactic weeks of the race, had saturated the airwaves with a series of campaign ads charging Clinton with being a tax-and-spend Democrat. The ads had some effect, and the Clintons had to borrow $100,000 from the Jackson Stephens-controlled Worthen Bank to mount a counteroffensive ad campaign of their own. Nelson, seething at Hillary's onslaught, duly became bitter and vindictive and, as Clinton's presidential campaign got under way, he began to leak ripe details from the file he had kept closed in l990.

Her second mistake also came in 1990, when Jim McDougal was facing trial over the collapse of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. In his hour of need, he asked Bill to testify as a character witness in his trial. Though Bill was willing to do so, Hillary was adamant that he should avoid any association with McDougal. She successfully persuaded Bill to decline. McDougal was acquitted, but he never forgave the Clintons for their disloyalty. He too began to leak damaging stories about Whitewater to Gerth and other reporters from his rusting trailer in Arkadelphia. Thus, even as she kindled her husband's presidential bid, Hillary helped spark the fires of financial and sexual scandal that almost destroyed his presidency.

Tomorrow: Hillary in the White House: What We Can Expect If She Returns.

Click here for Part One: The Making of Hillary Clinton.

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's latest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

Why No American President Will Stand Up to Israel

The Lobby
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Experts in the West and ordinary people in Arab lands have understood for many years that the United States does not have an independent policy toward the Middle East. President Jimmy Carter, a man of good will, tried to use American influence to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the source of dangerous instability in the Middle East. However, Israel was able to block Carter's attempt, while blaming Yasser Arafat. Carter's plan would have given rise to a Palestinian state. Israel did not want any such state, because obvious military aggression is necessary in order to steal the territory of an official state with defined borders. It is much easier to steal land from a non-state.

By preventing the rise of a Palestinian state, Israel has been able to continue with its theft of the West Bank. Palestinians who have not been driven out have been forced into ghettos, cut off from schools, hospitals, water, and their olive groves and farmlands. In a recent book, President Carter called the existing situation "apartheid." Carter was demonized by the Israel Lobby for his use of this word, but some experts consider Carter's choice of words to be an euphemism for the continuation of what I. Pappe and N. G. Finkelstein call "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine."

That the vast majority of Americans know nothing of this is testimony to the power of the Israel Lobby.

A number of writers have exposed Israel's misbehavior and the power of the Lobby, but until now, the Lobby has been able to marginalize its critics by smearing them as "anti-semites," "nazis," and "Jew-haters." In a new book, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt have broken the Israel Lobby's power to suppress truth by demonizing and intimidating all who would criticize Israel.
Mearsheimer and Walt are scholars holding distinguished appointments at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, two of America's pre-eminent universities. Their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, published by the highly regarded American publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is a masterpiece of scholarship and documentation. Footnotes comprise 23 per cent of the book's pages.

Mearsheimer and Walt easily succeed in making their case that neither strategic nor moral grounds can explain U.S. support for Israel. Only the power of the Israel Lobby can explain the juxtaposition of a dwindling moral and strategic case with ever-increasing U.S. backing for Israel, even to the disadvantage of U.S. national and strategic interests. Indeed, both executive and legislative branches are so completely compromised by the Lobby that the different elements of U.S. Middle East policy "have been designed in whole or part to benefit Israel vis-a-vis its various rivals."

Chapter by chapter, Mearsheimer and Walt demonstrate the deleterious effects the Lobby has had on U.S. relations with Palestinians, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. The two scholars conclude:

"The lobby's influence helped lead the United States into a disastrous war in Iraq and has hamstrung efforts to deal with Syria and Iran. It also encouraged the United States to back Israel's ill-conceived assault on Lebanon, a campaign that strengthened Hezbollah, drove Syria and Iran closer together, and further tarnished America's global image. The lobby bears considerable, though not complete, responsibility for each of these developments, and none of them was good for the United States. The bottom line is hard to escape, although America's problems i