Among Billaryland’s inner circle, Maggie Williams is renowned as the ultimate Hillary loyalist, fierce and unwavering in her devotion for nearly 25 years.

As the First Lady’s chief of staff, her office was in the West Wing, right next to Hillary’s.

Her title gave away the extent of her clout: assistant to the President as well as Hillary’s gatekeeper and chief enforcer.

Even detractors agree with her admirers that Williams would go to the mat for Hillary.

A Kansas City native, Williams, 53, was a central player in the Clinton damage-control machine during the White House years.

In 1995, a uniformed Secret Service officer swore under oath he saw her leave White House lawyer and Hillary confidant Vince Foster’s office carrying documents after Foster committed suicide. Williams denied it.

She ran up more than $100,000 in legal bills defending Hillary in various investigations.

A former aide to Reps. Morris Udall of Arizona and Robert Torricelli (later senator) of New Jersey, Williams’ ties to Hillary date to when they both were at the Children’s Defense Fund in the 1980s.

After the Clintons left the White House, Williams was named president of Fenton Communications, a leading public relations and consulting firm.

When Bill and Hillary Clinton made remarks before the South Carolina primary that offended African-Americans, the campaign put her on the airwaves to try to quell the uproar.

"She’s never run a political campaign, but she has run a staff and isn’t afraid to crack heads," a Democratic booster said.

Source: Daily News

Hillary Clinton is running for President based in large part on her experience, especially her eight years as first lady. So it is revealing that she and her husband don’t want the media and others to have ready access to the records that might tell us a good deal more about that 1990s "experience."

We’re referring to the controversy over records at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, which opened in 2004. At the time, Mrs. Clinton promised that "everything’s going to be available." More than three years later, the library that is partly funded by taxpayers has released less than 1% of its records, and the withheld documents include two million pages covering Mrs. Clinton’s White House tenure. As usual with the Clintons, they’ve managed to make the controversy seem so complicated that everyone has lost interest.

The story isn’t all that hard to understand. The National Archives supervises Presidential documents, and in November 2002 Bill Clinton sent a letter asking the Archives to "consider for withholding" any "communications directly between the President and First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature." He requested similar limitations on documents involving investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and independent counsels.

Mr. Clinton and his surrogates insist that this letter doesn’t "block" the release of anything, and the implicit suggestion is that the Archives has discretion to release what it wants. However, a spokeswoman for the Archives in December acknowledged that it had already withheld 2,600 documents in accordance with Mr. Clinton’s directive. Adding to suspicions of stonewalling is the fact that the Clintons’ liaison with the Archives is none other than Bruce Lindsey. Readers may remember Mr. Lindsey as the longtime Clinton consigliere and keeper of the secrets going back to Arkansas.

The controversy flared briefly last year, after a Los Angeles Times editorial calling for the records to be released. Mrs. Clinton has responded by claiming she has nothing to hide and referring all questions on the records to her husband. Mr. Clinton, in turn, claims the Bush White House has slowed things down with its own review of the records. But the Administration denies this and there is no evidence it has interfered with the Archives. As for Mr. Lindsey, his explanation is that the archivists vetting the documents are moving as quickly as they can. The Archives are currently plowing through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in order of receipt.

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By Selwyn Duke
Since I think the Clintons would probably sell their souls and firstborn for another White House tenure, the idea they would play the race card raises no eyebrow here.  They are political creatures first, everything else second and statesmen last.  For this to elude one, he must have his head planted firmly in a particularly dense grade of sand. 

Man of letters Christopher Hitchens understands this; while by no means a member of the "Vast Right-wing Conspiracy," he writes eloquently about the Clintons’ long history of racial "thuggery and opportunism."  Even more significant are the pronouncements of Dick Morris, Bill’s erstwhile propaganda minister.  His thesis is that Hillary wanted the black vote in South Carolina to coalesce for Obama so that she’d lose the state big, and she wanted this electoral shift to be visible and much ballyhooed in the media.  Witnessing this, the white vote in other states would then circle the wagons around her, and, with their numerical superiority, the nomination would be hers. 
Or so the theory goes.
Although Morris’ political prognostications leave much to be desired (he specializes in stating as fact predictions that never come to pass), I believe he understands the Clintons’ character almost as well as anyone.  This is a man who knew them intimately enough to, as he relates the story, be physically tackled by an enraged Bill in the Arkansas governor’s mansion and then told by Hillary, "He only does this to people he loves."  So if he swears the Clintons were playing the race card, I take it seriously.
What I am doubtful of is that it would work. 
This strategy rests on the assumption that whites feel such a sense of racial patriotism — or such fear of black political power — that any candidate seen as a guarantor of black interests will send them running into the arms of the best great white hope.  This is the liberal view of the world.
It’s also not reality.
I ask you, how many whites do you know who fit that profile?  Sure, there are bigots in every group, but my experience with fellow whites tells me they’re the exception, not the rule.  In fact, when I think of all the people I have ever known, I remember precious few who I believe would have voted based on racial considerations.  Even more to the point, a groundswell of black support isn’t necessary to alienate such individuals from a black candidate.  His skin color is more than enough.
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New York Senator Hillary Clinton bid more aggressively for a win in the meaningless-but-maybe-meaningful Florida Democratic primary. She dispatched campaigner-in-chief Bill Clinton to the state for weeks of just-below-the-radar campaigning. On Sunday, she flew to Florida, violating the pledge all the major Democratic contenders has made to avoid campaigning in the state that scheduled its primary earlier than was allowed by the Democratic National Convention. She promised to do everything in her power — which could be considerable if she is the presumed nominee — to overturn a DNC bar on the seating of Florida delegates at this summer’s Democratic National Convention.

She even appeared in Florida on primary night to claim her victory.

It was all part of a strategy to reclaim the limelight that she lost to Illinois Senator Barack Obama when he swept last Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

But for all her trouble, Clinton could barely secure half the vote in Florida.

With almost all the votes counted, Clinton was at 50 percent. Obama was winning 33 percent. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards was at 14 percent. And Dennis Kucinich, who is out of the race, pulled 1 percent.

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Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency would be a step back to the past, turning her husband’s image of a bridge to the future against her. The former first lady decried the tenor of his comments in an interview with The Associated Press.

"I know it is tempting — after another presidency by a man named George Bush — to simply turn back the clock, and to build a bridge back to the 20th century," the Illinois senator said in Denver.

"… It’s not enough to say you’ll be ready from Day One — you have to be right from Day One," he added in unmistakable criticisms of Clinton, who often claims she’s better prepared to govern, and her husband, who pledged during his own presidency to build a bridge to the 21st century.

Within hours, Hillary Clinton pushed back in an interview with the AP — and got in her own dig.

"That certainly sounds audacious, but not hopeful," said Clinton, in a play on the title of Obama’s book, "The Audacity of Hope." "It’s not hopeful and it’s not what we should be talking about in this campaign," said Clinton, suggesting Obama was abandoning the core of his campaign.

"I would certainly, through you, hope we could get back to talking about the issues, drawing the contrasts that are based in fact that have a connection to the American people," Clinton said.

In his speech, Obama depicted Clinton as a calculating, poll-tested divisive figure who will only inspire greater partisan divisions as she sides with Republicans on issues such as trade, the role of lobbyists in politics and national security. At the same time, he elevated McCain, fresh off victory in Florida’s crucial primary, as the likely Republican nominee.

In the AP interview, Clinton vowed to take the high road and warned that voters in the mega-primaries next week expect that.

"I’m going to continue to talk to people about what we need to do in our country to try to lift people up, to keep focused on the future to be very specific about what I want to do as president because I want to be held accountable," said Clinton.

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This year, we have a black man, a white woman, a Mormon, a thrice-married Catholic, and an ordained Baptist minister all running for president.  What a country!  Yes, we have really come a long way, baby.

        Or have we?

        The day after Barack Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina Democrat primary, her husband (our first “black” president) dismissed the victory by pointing out that Jesse Jackson won the same primary in 1984 and 1988.  Following on the heels of previous attempts to inject racial politics into his wife’s fight for the Democrat presidential nomination, clearly, Bubba was doing his best to marginalize Obama’s candidacy by implying that Obama is the Jesse Jackson of 2008, a black candidate who has no chance of actually being elected.

        Bill Clinton’s mentor was U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, an Arkansas Democrat and a supporter of racial segregation.  Fulbright signed the Southern Manifesto opposing the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which declared unconstitutional the “separate but equal” doctrine for public schools.  He joined with the Dixiecrats in filibustering the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964.  And he voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

        This was Clinton’s mentor, his hero, his teacher.  Fulbright’s party had been the party of racism, slavery, and the Ku Klux Klan.  Today’s Democrats like to believe this ugly side of their party is gone.  The truth is that it is simply hidden beneath a shroud of liberal language and lofty sounding rhetoric, and Bill Clinton is Exhibit A in the ”Dems-R-Bigots Party.”

        Former Klansman Robert Byrd, who served as the Democrat’s Senate majority leader in the 1970s, still sits in the U.S. Senate.

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This year, we have a black man, a white woman, a Mormon, a thrice-married Catholic, and an ordained Baptist minister all running for president.  What a country!  Yes, we have really come a long way, baby.

        Or have we?

        The day after Barack Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina Democrat primary, her husband (our first “black” president) dismissed the victory by pointing out that Jesse Jackson won the same primary in 1984 and 1988.  Following on the heels of previous attempts to inject racial politics into his wife’s fight for the Democrat presidential nomination, clearly, Bubba was doing his best to marginalize Obama’s candidacy by implying that Obama is the Jesse Jackson of 2008, a black candidate who has no chance of actually being elected.

        Bill Clinton’s mentor was U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, an Arkansas Democrat and a supporter of racial segregation.  Fulbright signed the Southern Manifesto opposing the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which declared unconstitutional the “separate but equal” doctrine for public schools.  He joined with the Dixiecrats in filibustering the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964.  And he voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

        This was Clinton’s mentor, his hero, his teacher.  Fulbright’s party had been the party of racism, slavery, and the Ku Klux Klan.  Today’s Democrats like to believe this ugly side of their party is gone.  The truth is that it is simply hidden beneath a shroud of liberal language and lofty sounding rhetoric, and Bill Clinton is Exhibit A in the ”Dems-R-Bigots Party.”

        Former Klansman Robert Byrd, who served as the Democrat’s Senate majority leader in the 1970s, still sits in the U.S. Senate.

        When George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, the most outwardly liberal members of the Senate pulled every dirty trick imaginable to derail the nomination.  The racist tactics of the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, some members of which had trumped up false charges of sexual harassment against a good and decent man, were stunning.  More stunning, however, were Thomas’s inspired words during his testimony.

        “This is a circus,” Thomas told the committee.  “It’s a national disgrace.  And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you.  You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee rather than being hung from a tree.”

        Perhaps the only thing more dangerous than being a black man standing between a liberal Democrat senator and ideological control of the U.S. Supreme Court is being a black man standing between Bill and Hillary Clinton and their triumphant return to the White House.  The irony is that there is virtually no difference between the ideology of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, so anyone laboring under the delusion that the Clintons have ever been in politics for the sake of the cause should find another fantasy in which to believe.

        Race is more than an issue for Democrats.  It is a cottage industry.  While their scam artists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton masquerade as civil rights leaders, getting rich perpetrating a myth of racism among Republicans, white liberals like Bill and Hillary Clinton actually practice racism by marginalizing a bright, qualified competitor on the basis of race.

        I am not a fan of Barack Obama and his socialist ideology, but it truly is revolting to think that these two trailer-trash liberals could again take up residence in the White House.  The only consolation for the country is that they might bring back some of the furniture.

Source: Chron Watch

Whatever one may think about Barack Obama as a candidate or as a potential president, his candidacy has brought something new to the American political scene.

His stunning victory in the Iowa caucuses, in a state where more than 90% of the population is white, was an unmistakable signal that racism is not the invincible thing that some seem to think it is.

Unlike Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton before him, Obama has not been running as a black candidate for symbolic purposes but as a serious contender who happens to be black.

Into this upbeat national scene Bill and Hillary Clinton have brought race back as one of their many sleazy tactics to try to win in any way possible, whether clean or dirty.

First, there were the surrogates bringing up youthful peccadillos that Obama had already admitted to in his autobiography. They milked this for all it was worth.

First there was the innuendo, which got media coverage. Then came the claim that the Clintons had nothing to do with the innuendo, which got more media time.

Then came the claim from the surrogate that his statement was misinterpreted, which got still more media time.

But these cheap shots have been by no means as poisonous as Bill Clinton’s obvious attempts to reduce Obama to just a black candidate.

Even after much of the media had gotten on him for this, Bill Clinton returned to that theme after Hillary lost the South Carolina primary big time, by saying that Jesse Jackson had won South Carolina before.

It is not that the Clintons are racists. It is just that they will use whatever they want in order to get whatever they want — and the effect on the country does not bother them.

That was the hallmark of the first Clinton administration. There is no reason to doubt that this will be the hallmark of the next Clinton administration, if there is one.

If Hillary wins the White House, that will mean 16 consecutive years — and perhaps 20 — in which presidents of the United States have come from just two families. Surely the country is not that lacking in political leadership.

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Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign had not answered by press time an inquiry as to whether the New York Senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination would support a plank in the 2008 Democratic platform apologizing for the party’s extensive past support for slavery and segregation as well as blocking the immigration of Asians.

Press reports have indicated Senator Edward Kennedy endorsed the New York senator’s opponent, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in part because of his anger that former President Bill Clinton had injected race into the campaign.

The two racial issues, plus the mass immigration of Chinese and other Asians to America, played key roles in both the history of the nation and the Democratic Party.

Missed in all the startled furor over what Kennedy and many discomfited liberals are seeing as the Clinton tactic of racializing the fight against Obama, an African American, is the ease with which it happened. With his wife pressed by Obama, the first serious black presidential candidate in the party’s history, without missing a beat the former president simply slid into the rhythm of the old stand-by used by Democrats for generations — the politics of race. Unexpectedly, Bill Clinton’s conduct has now turned attention to what is in fact a very long, very deep and very intimate history between Democrats and the exploitation of racial questions — and not just relationships between whites and blacks, either. For first-time young voters considering voting for Clinton, the history may surprise.

If Senator Clinton were to introduce a plank at the Denver Convention apologizing for the party’s racial history, what specific things would she have the party apologize for?

The race question has most frequently been dealt with at conventions in party platforms, beginning with the very first Democrat Convention in 1840. A review of the platforms that the party has put forward as both settled policy for the party and prospective governing policy for the nation if elected reveals the following about the party’s official views on racial issues:

* 6 platforms, from 1840 -1860, supported the slavery of African-Americans.

* 1 platform, in 1864, called the then on-going Civil War a "failure" and demanded negotiations with the Confederacy that could have led to the retaining of slavery in certain states.

* 1 platform, in 1868, stated the party’s opposition to what it termed "negro supremacy."

* 1 platform, 1872, called for "universal amnesty" for those who fought against the Union, including slaveholders.

* 10 platforms, 1876-1900 and again in 1908, 1920 and 1924 opposed Chinese or "Asiatic" immigration, claiming Asian immigrants were "a race not sprung from the same great parent stock" and "being unaccustomed to the traditions of a progressive civilization" (1876). In 1880 the platform proclaimed Chinese immigrants as "servile races, unfitted by habits, training, religion, or kindred, for absorption into the great body of our people, or for the citizenship which our laws confer." In 1908 an entire section entitled "Asiatic Immigrants" was written, stating "we are opposed to the admission of Asiatic immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our population, or whose presence among us would raise a race issue."

* 1 platform, 1900, ignored race completely even as segregation was tightening its grip under the guidance of Democratic Party officeholders throughout the South. By contrast, the 1900 GOP Convention stated: "It was the plain purpose of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, to prevent discrimination on account of race or color in regulating the elective franchise. Devices of State governments, whether by statutory or constitutional enactment, to avoid the purpose of this amendment are revolutionary, and should be condemned."

* 1 platform, 1904, devotes a section to "Sectional and Racial Agitation," claiming the GOP’s protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to "revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country," which in turn "means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed."

* 4 platforms, 1908-1920 are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching, and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount. By contrast the GOP platforms in each of those years specifically address "Rights of the Negro" (1908), opposes lynchings (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speaks out about the dangers of making blacks "wards of the state."

* 1 platform, 1924, was the product of the Democrats’ convention known to history as the "Klanbake" in Clinton’s own New York. The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Kux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the Convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering Convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African Americans and Catholics.

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