Hillary Clinton thought she had driven a stake through it, but it turns out to be the issue that will not die: She voted to authorize the Iraq war, she refuses to say it was a mistake, and she refuses to apologize for it.

And Barack Obama continues to whack her for it.

Obama opposed the war early and was lucky enough to not yet be a senator when it first came up for a vote.

Again and again, he pressed this advantage Thursday night at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles in the first one-on-one debate between Obama and Clinton.

Obama exploits the issue in two ways: First, he says Clinton’s vote in favor of the war shows bad judgment.

“I was opposed to Iraq from the start,” Obama said, “and I say that not just to look backwards, but also to look forwards, because I think what the next president has to show is the kind of judgment that will ensure that we are using our military power wisely.”

Second, Obama says that his opposition to the war is something he can use against the Republicans in the fall.

“I think I will be the Democrat who will be most effective in going up against a John McCain, or any other Republican,” Obama said, “because they all want basically a continuation of George Bush’s policies, [and] because I will offer a clear contrast as somebody who never supported this war, thought it was a bad idea.”

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The Chicago news media has begun to notice that Hillary Clinton has no standards when it comes to raising campaign money. She’ll take it from those accused of serial sexual harassment and defrauding small business owners across the nation and individuals implicated in the indictment of Tony Rezko.

Chris Fusco from the Chicago Sun-Times points out she not only takes money from Democratic lawyer/fundraiser Myron “Mike” Cherry, “Individual H” in the Rezko indictment, she put him on the host committee of a big fundraiser tonight here. And she takes it from a suburban Chicago company Cherry represents that is being sued by the federal government in a massive sexual harassment case, is under fraud investigation by the Illinois Attorney General’s office, and whose founder is a convicted criminal.

I’ve written extensively about the International Profit Associates (IPA) saga. Those posts can be found here.

Here is how the federal government describes the sexual harassment allegations against IPA founder John Burgess, a convicted criminal, and top company officials.

IPA’s management, led by John Burgess, created a culture at IPA where sexual harassment flourished. IPA’s senior managers harassed women with impunity, sending a signal to lower-level managers and employees that they could do the same. Given the tone set by IPA’s senior management, it is not surprising that sexual harassment at IPA was rampant in all departments and at all levels of the company. Women at IPA routinely had to endure a gauntlet of abuse, ranging from sexual solicitations and physical harassment, to sexual comments and offensive sexual materials.

Cherry has acknowledged in other published accounts that he helped raise IPA money for politicians, but was cagey when questioned by the Sun-Times.

When asked whether he solicited donations from IPA founder John Burgess and his employees, Cherry replied, “I am aware generally, including from press stories, that employees of IPA have contributed to candidates in Illinois and elsewhere, but I don’t keep specific records on such matters.”

Barack Obama has returned $500 in contributions from Cherry and more from others implicated in the Rezko indictment. He previously returned $2,000 in IPA money. Will the news media draw the contrast between Clinton and Obama on this matter?

Source: Reverse Spin - visit him daily!

During the last Democrat debate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got into a tussle over, on the one hand Hillary having worked in the Wal-Mart board of directors, and on the other hand, Obama’s 17-year relationship to Tony Rezko. Rezko is about to stand trial for fraud. Well, a photo of Hillary and Bill Clinton with Rezko has surfaced. Matt Lauer confronted Hillary Clinton with the photo this morning.

She says she hasn’t had any relationship with Rezko…but Bill infamously claimed not to have had sexual relations with that woman. There’s no reason anyone should take the Clintons at their word. One photo is not a big deal; presidents end up posing for photo ops with all sorts of people with whom they don’t have any actual relationship. But if it turns out that the Clintons have accepted campaign cash from Rezko in the current campaign or have had any relationship with him in the past, it will be a big deal.

Source: Hot Air

A photograph of a smiling Bill and Hillary Clinton standing beside Tony Rezko surfaced on the Internet as well as on network and cable television Friday morning. NBC’s "Today" show was the first to ask Sen. Clinton about photo.

In a Democratic debate last week, Sen. Clinton blasted Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for doing legal work for Rezko — "your contributor…in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

Rezko has contributed to Obama’s campaign, which later sent about $84,000 of Rezko’s tainted donations to charity. The disgraced real estate developer is scheduled to go on trial on public corruption and fraud charges Feb. 25.

Asked about the photo on NBC’s "Today" show Friday, Sen. Clinton said she doesn’t know Rezko — "I wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door."

Clinton said she did not remember meeting Rezko, either. "You know, I probably have taken hundreds of thousands of pictures," Clinton told Matt Lauer.

It’s not clear where the Clintons were photographed with Tony Rezko, but the photo appears to have been taken during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

On the "Today" show, Sen. Clinton also tried to clarify that she was "defending" herself when she made the "slum landlord" comment to Obama last week.

She accused Obama of making a "direct attack" on her at the debate. "I tried not to attack first, but I have to defend myself and I do have to counterpunch," Clinton explained. She also said she does not have a "17-year-relationship" with Rezko — implying that Obama does.

The remark that prompted Hillary to "counter-punch" last week came when Obama accused Clinton of twisting his words on "Republican ideas." Obama said he did not endorse Republican ideas — and he said his record reflected that: "While I was working on those streets, watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart," Obama said.

Source: CNS News

Barack Obama missed a golden oppor tunity during the Democratic debate the other night.

Hillary Clinton archly accused him of having represented a Chicago slumlord while practicing law - and Obama immediately went on the defensive.

The Illiniois senator blathered on about a church group that had partnered with the landlord and the number of billable hours he’d submitted, blah, blah, blah.

Pretty weak tea.

What he should have said was something like: YOU want to talk about questionable business connections? I’ve got two words for you - Ron Burkle.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that Bill Clinton stands to reap a $20 million bonanza by finally severing his long-mysterious ties to Burkle, the billionaire financier, supermarket macher and connoisseur of comely young ladies who has long served as Team Clinton’s patron.

Back in 2002, the ex-president signed on as a "senior adviser" to Burkle’s Yucaipa investment funds, performing tasks that never were publicly explained, in return for a hefty profit - at almost no risk - if Yucaipa’s average returns reached 9 percent.

The Journal, quoting documents and sources familiar with the matter, reports that Clinton’s payout could reach as high as $20 million.

Bill Clinton also is a partner, this time investing his own money, in a Yucaipa fund that invests in foreign companies.

And, together with Burkle and an entity connected to the ruler of Dubai - whose US portfolio Yucaipa manages - the former president is a co-owner of the global fund’s general partner.

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Barack Obama may have distilled his biggest problem in eight words he blurted out almost in exasperation.

"I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes,” he told Hillary Clinton at Monday night’s acrimonious Democratic presidential nomination debate in Myrtle Beach.

That appears to be just the way Hillary and Bill Clinton want it and despite some obvious discomfort in senior Democratic ranks about a former president as attack dog, it also appears to be working.

Obama seems off balance as he heads for a vote in South Carolina which he must win – and win convincingly – if he can head off a potential victory-clinching performance by Hillary Clinton on Feb. 5 when 22 states vote.

The Clintons have knocked him off his high road of campaigning and Bill Clinton appeared to get under his skin in the run up to last week’s Nevada caucuses.

The Clintons not only tag-team the Illinois senator, but they swap roles, one taking on the role of good cop, the other the bad cop, then switching the next morning: yesterday’s good cop firing off a haymaker, yesterday’s bad cop suddenly smiling and shrugging.

With Obama facing two adversaries, Hillary Clinton can leave South Carolina and campaign in Feb. 5 primary states. And her campaign, which has already successfully lowered expectations here, can put out a former president in the state who still draws extensive media attention.

When she was challenged by Obama on her husband’s bare knuckles politicking, Hillary Clinton responded that both she and Obama had "supportive spouses,” as if equating a former president with Michelle Obama.

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By Eric Zorn 

(Barack) Obama stopped just short of calling (Hillary) Clinton and her husband liars… from the Swamp’s live blog of last night’s Democratic debate.

Hmm. I see no reason to stop short. Bill and Hillary Clinton have lied brazenly about Obama’s recent statement about Ronald Reagan.

Let’s look at the transcripts (emphasis added):

Hillary Clinton, Jan 18:

    My leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last 10 to 15 years.

Bill Clinton, Jan 18:

    (My wife’s) principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas….I’m not making this up, folks.

Well, yes he is.  The key, inflammatory words in the Clintons’ quotes are better and good, and I invite you, reader, to find it in these  transcripts of what Obama has actually said:

    I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure.  I think part of what’s different are the times.  I do think that for example the 1980’s were  different.

    I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

    I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.  I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

    I think Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times.

    I think we’re in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren’t working. We’re bogged down in the same arguments that we’ve been having, and they’re not useful.

    And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out.

    I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

Read it all again if you want, you won’t find "better" or "good" in there, or synonyms or implications along those lines.

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Barack Obama made good on his promise to challenge Mr. and Mrs. Clinton over their statements about his record in the South Carolina Democratic debate Tuesday evening.

Obama also prompted a few nasty retorts from Sen. Clinton at the Myrtle Beach event hosted by CNN and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute in preparation for the Palmetto State primary on January 26.

In a televised interview that aired Monday morning on ABC Obama said he would “directly confront Bill Clinton when he’s not making statements that are factually accurate” and expressed frustration with the way the Clinton campaign was behaving.

A long argument over fiscal responsibility, the war in Iraq, legal work and even Ronald Reagan began in Myrtle Beach when Clinton accused Obama of not “paying” for the programs he would like to enact. Obama leveraged the charge into a larger conversation about they way the Clintons have characterized his record.

“This is one of the things that has happened in the course of this campaign. There are a set of assertions made by Sen. Clinton as well as her husband that are not factually accurate," Obama said.

In recent weeks, Former President Bill Clinton has openly criticized Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war, calling it a “fairy tale” that national media would not press him as hard as they did his wife for voting to fund it in the past. Hillary Clinton also caused controversy when she questioned Obama’s decision to invoke Martin Luther King on the campaign trail

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Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton called truce over the “race card” and the “gender card,” but the new “fear card” was introduced last night at the Las Vegas Democratic presidential debate.

Obama said, “We’ve been dominated by a politics of fear since 9/11… But I have to say that when Senator Clinton uses the specter of a terrorist attack…during a campaign, I think that is part and parcel with what we’ve seen the use of the fear of terrorism in scoring political points.”

The Illinois senator’s remarks were prompted by a question that NBC moderator Tim Russert, asked Clinton. Russert reminded Clinton that “in 2006, you railed against Karl Rove and the Republicans for playing what you called the fear card.” Russert then noted Clinton has “on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, you said this: ‘I don’t think it was by accident that al Qaeda decided to test the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, immediately. They watch our elections as closely as we do, maybe more than some of our fellow citizens do. They play our, you know, allies. They do everything they can to undermine security in the world. So let’s not forget you’re hiring a president, not just to do what a candidate says he or she wants to do in an election.’”

Clinton said “there’s a difference between what President Bush had done, which has, frankly, used fear as a political weapon and a recognition, in a very calm and deliberative way, that, yes, we have real enemies and we’d better be prepared and we’d better be ready to meet them on day one.”

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