Bill Clinton Stretches His Old Lying Muscles
USA Today begins to come to terms with the truth of the Clinton Foundation: . . . the foundation is a mess. With Hillary Clinton running for president twice and serving as secretary of State in between, it was bound to be viewed as a way for foreign donors to get close to the Clintons — a danger the foundation appears to have discounted. Much like the Clintons themselves, the foundation has seemed intent on playing by its own rules, and is highly defensive when confronted on its errors. Its efforts at limiting influence-seekers have been, at best, weak. Earlier this year, the foundation admitted that it had accepted $500,000 from the government of Algeria, violating an agreement struck with the Obama administration to accept gifts only from governments that had a record of giving before Clinton's tenure at the State Department. More recently, the foundation admitted errors in not listing thousands of contributions on tax forms. One came from Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who has many issues before the U.S. government and has given the foundation millions. In 2005, Giustra won a lucrative mining concession in Kazakhstan shortly after visiting there with Bill Clinton. Then, in 2013, he won approval from the U.S. government to sell his company to the Russian government, giving Vladimir Putin vast uranium resources around the world, including 20% of U.S output. The editors of USA Today then write, "There is no evidence of a quid pro quo for the Giustra contributions, or from any other source," which to me is almost deliberately obtuse. Because otherwise we would have to believe that every time Hillary Clinton's State Department reached a decision that Foundation donors wanted, it was entirely coincidental. Even in the "hundreds" of large transactions that occurred between the foundation, wealthy entities, and those hiring Bill Clinton for those lucrative speeches, Hillary's department just happened to reach the decision the donors wanted every time. In his interview with NBC News, Bill Clinton declared, "There's one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else" and actually believes he and his wife are held up to harder scrutiny and tougher rules than everyone else. Howard Kurtz: When you stripped away the visuals, and discounted the soothing words, Clinton gave no ground. He did nothing wrong, his foundation did nothing wrong, he's just trying to help the world. Hillary Clinton may be running for president, but she hasn't said a word about the mounting allegations and disclosures about her family foundation. She left that to her husband. In the "Today" show segment, the former president attempted to discredit his critics without naming names—that is, without identifying the reporting by author Peter Schweizer and the New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters and Fox News. "There has been a very deliberate attempt to take the foundation down," Clinton said. Yup, they're telling us it's all a "vast right-wing conspiracy" again -- one that allegedly involves the Times, Post, Reuters, etc. Hillary's previous answer to questions about influence-peddling: "Well, we're back into the political season, and therefore we will be subjected to all kinds of distraction and attacks. And I'm ready for that. I know that that comes unfortunately with the territory." Notice they don't answer any specifics, they just come out and attack the critics. Back to Bill Clinton: "There's almost no new fact that wasn't known the first time she ran for president." That last sentence is demonstrably untrue. We are awash in new facts about the foundation: Undisclosed donors, including situations that violated its agreement with the Obama administration. Revisiting five years' worth of tax returns. Tangled deals involving Haiti and India and Russian uranium interests. Huge speaking fees for Bill that overlapped with the foundation business he was drumming up. Questions about Hillary's role as secretary of State with some of these donors seeking to influence U.S. policy. One can argue that there is nothing untoward in any of this, but it can't be dismissed as old news . . . Will he continue giving speeches, McFadden asked, with his wife running for president? "Oh yeah. I got to pay our bills," Clinton said. This is a bit of Arkansas malarkey. The man has made more than $100 million in speaking fees since leaving the White House. He and his wife are now enormously wealthy. He doesn't need to work another day in his life. The "pay our bills" line suggests that he might struggle to put food on the table, or at least give up one of his two houses. Hillary 2016: Because she's got to pay her bills. We Have Invented Jihadist Flypaper Is it just me, or have we just invented a form of Islamist/jihadist/ISIS flypaper? They wore body armor. They carried assault rifles. And one had declared loyalty to ISIS. A day after police killed two gunmen who tried to ambush a Garland, Texas, event featuring controversial cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, details began to emerge about the shooters. One suspect, identified as Elton Simpson by a federal law enforcement source, linked himself to ISIS in a tweet posted just before the attack. Think about it. These guys had to know the event would be guarded. These guys had to know that the event is going on in Texas, meaning that a lot of attendees and passers-by would be armed. Heck it's Texas. Everybody's armed. The former governor, Rick Perry, shot a coyote while jogging.  This is Rick Perry's pre-jog stretching routine. And yet, knowing that they were attempting the equivalent of robbing a police station or attempting a carjacking outside the NRA Convention, these two idiots went ahead and did it anyway! Did I say Islamist flypaper? How about Islamist catnip? These guys just can't resist attempting to kill people if there's an announced effort to draw Muhammad! More about the perps: He also was no stranger to federal investigators. In 2011, he was convicted of making a false statement involving international and domestic terrorism. Why do we have a "watch list"? Don't we need a "do something about his guy" list? The other suspect, identified as Nadir Soofi by two federal law enforcement officials, was Simpson's roommate in a Phoenix apartment. He wasn't well-known to federal law enforcement and was not on the FBI's radar, one of the officials said. Investigators were combing through evidence retrieved from the shooters' Arizona home to help piece together a timeline of how their plot came together, the official said. Authorities are still trying to determine the suspects' motives, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said Monday. At this point, he said, one thing appears clear: A quick-thinking police officer "likely saved a number of innocent lives." Writing in the Daily Beast, James Kirchick attempts to remind liberals that saying things they dislike doesn't mean that potential terrorism victims had it coming: Geller's being an obnoxious blowhard cannot lessen her claim to the same free speech rights that more salubrious individuals enjoy. Indeed, it is vital that free speech supporters unequivocally condemn Sunday's attack precisely because Geller is an obnoxious blowhard. To understand why, it helps to remember one of America's most important First Amendment legal cases. Anyway, if jihadists really are driven to an irrational -- excuse me, even less rational than usual compulsion to attack those who think they're mocking Mohammed, won't it be pretty easy to set up traps and ambushes?  ADDENDA: Hey, you that nice fellow over at Townhall, Guy Benson? He and Mary Katharine Ham have a book coming out. Oh, and he mentioned a little detail about himself that some people may not have known. (Not that it matters much, but I had no idea.) A couple people didn't care for my response to the news and found it particularly ironic or hypocritical in light of the Texas shooting and that morning's earlier denunciation of reacting to provocative speech with violence or threats of violence. Look, Guy's kind of like a little brother to me in this business. Somebody messes with your friend, you go and you get his back. There are some folks out there who, knowing what they now know about Guy, will insist he's somehow not a conservative* or he's somehow suspect -- as if he wasn't the same Guy -- and er, the same guy -- we were reading yesterday, the day before, and years before that. ( *Admittedly, Guy was being called a "RINO" in his comments sections like clockwork before all this. But those fervent, overheated accusations of RINO-hood were policy-based!) . . . My friend Red Pickle – no, that's not her real name -- reveals that our government, honest to goodness, has a Raisin Administrative Committee. I know, I know, The Weed Agency was too tame a satire. | 
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