Kana

Too bad his chances of being elected president are only marginally better than mine.

My husband wants to move back to the UK. Because, you know, it's so much better there...

__________________
Groovyville

Teri B.

This is going to sound like an ugly, arrogant American thing to say, but I think the world's gone to shit in large part due to Bush's policies. The US has been the world's compass for human rights to a large degree for a long time. When Bush starts seemingly imperialist wars, engages in torture and spying on his own people, throws out the Geneva Convention, ignores human rights violations around the world, let's his own people's economy be raided by corporate thieves, and gives less than lip service to horrific situations like Darfur and Tibet, he sets a terrible example for the entire world. Maybe, with the right president, we can turn this around - I hope so.

lucytalk

if history repeats itself then a black man will be able to vote be president first.

(well assuming you learned your republican lesson from the likes of nixon, reagan, bush or bush)

lucytalk

if anything ~ you taught us what not to become

and fwiw ~ we're past hoping for you but if you pull it out and become what the "good" part of the world is becoming, well great

but if not :shrugs: ~ you get what you deserve (mccain)

lol ~ i'm in a mood huh

Teri B.

I'd like to hear both sides of the story before I decide he was a shit pilot - how could I possibly know anyway. I'm sure he received preferential treatment because he was an admiral's son, just as my dad got a favor for me when I was in the military, just as Sen. Webb's son probably is treated differently. It is part of the system I'm afraid. That doesn't discount the fact that he signed up, he went, and he was a POW, living under stress and deprivation none of us can even imagine, for FIVE YEARS. He certainly could have taken Bush's path and pretended to serve in the National Guard. He did not.

So, if he wants to flash his military credentials, so what. I don't think too many people are going to vote for him soley on that basis, but attacking his service will no doubt bring ire from other veterans, and that's not even productive to our cause.

Kana

Bush's policies have had far-reaching consequences, for sure. Imperialism is costly for everyone involved, and Iraq is in many ways America's current attempt at colonialism. Such actions invite contempt. The British government should have learned this lesson by now, which in some ways makes Misters Blair and Brown bigger idiots than Bush.

This is why I feel a real change in foreign policy is vital, and neither of the major parties are offering that. I'm just so sick of the system. We have absolutely no control over what our governments do or who runs them. Democracy? I'm not even sure it makes sense to call America a republic, even.

__________________
Groovyville

lucytalk

you know what ~ the government promoted him. whatever their reason. the alleged atrocities are not his fault if true.

i don't believe his being a war hero makes him presidential material.

but it does not take away his very public and indisputable record of standing up for his men at his own expense.

not today, not tomorrow nor any day after that.

RK77

March 31, 2008

Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.

“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.

The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?

“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.

The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.

But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.

******************************************

This is not a gender issue. Changing the gender of tyranny is not an acceptable advance in my opinion. Who wants there daughter to look up to a manipulative liar?

Alwayzpeaceful

I am not trying to split hairs here but Shirley Chisholm I would consider to be the first to take it seriously she just didn't get as far.

__________________
SMILE

Alwayzpeaceful

Forget what I said. I just reread what you wrote again. Hillary is the first to have a serious chance. I read it as she was the only women that took it seriously.

__________________
SMILE