Sunday, June 29, 2008

Defending capitalism

America Wants to Know received a polite note last week from a Missouri State University student who said he disagreed with what we had written in our November, 2007, post, "Barack Obama explains socialism." He said he wanted to engage in a blog debate, a "calm, rational, give-and-take discussion," about the merits of socialism.

If you're interested, you can watch from a safe distance at SusanShelley.com or at TehJuggernauts.blogspot.com.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The right to the death penalty

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that the people of Louisiana do not have the power under the U.S. Constitution to have a law which imposes the death penalty on child rapists.

You may or may not agree with the majority's opinion that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment makes Louisiana's law unconstitutional.

But you should know one thing.

The people of the United States never consented to have the Eighth Amendment, or the rest of the Bill of Rights, restrict the powers of the state governments at all.

The Bill of Rights never was intended or understood by lawmakers to apply to the states. This is a change in the structure of the U.S. government that was made entirely by the U.S. Supreme Court, without a constitutional amendment.

The question is not whether a child rapist can be sentenced to death. The question is who decides whether a child rapist can be sentenced to death.

The U.S. Constitution reserved the power to make that decision to the states.

In a series of rulings during the 20th century, the Supreme Court usurped the power.

When you read news stories that include sentences such as "The court struggled over how to apply standards laid out in decisions barring executions for the mentally retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed murder," bear in mind that the Constitution never gave the Supreme Court the authority to have that struggle or make those decisions.

The Constitution left the power to decide criminal penalties for state crimes in the hands of the states.

You might be interested to read the earlier posts, "What you don't know about the death penalty" and "The cat, the bag and Justice Scalia."

If you're really interested in this subject, you'll find the whole story, footnoted and bibliographied, in "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing: A History of the Incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, Why It's a Problem, and How to Fix It." Read it online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm or pick up a hard copy, it's published as an appendix to the novel, The 37th Amendment.

Copyright 2008

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Hillary's "No Refunds" policy

America Wants to Know welcomes all the donors to Hillary Clinton's general election campaign who have found our earlier posts ("Hillary Clinton and the big refund" and "Why Hillary won't go") by searching the Internet to find out when they can expect to get their money back.

Bad news, campers.

Not only is Senator Clinton not rushing to refund your general election contributions, she is still soliciting contributions for the general election on her web site.

This is what the contribution form looked like on HillaryClinton.com this evening:



Notice anything odd? Look closer:



It appears that if you go to HillaryClinton.com and give the campaign $4,600, Hillary Clinton will take it.

Over on the Frequently Asked Questions page of the web site, the campaign offers this helpful Q&A:

What is the maximum amount that I may donate?

Per federal law, an individual may contribute a maximum of $2300 to a candidate per election cycle. The primary elections and general elections are considered two separate cycles. So you may contribute a total of $4600, with the first $2300 going to the primary election and any subsequent contributions going to the general election.
We've said before and still believe Senator Clinton already spent the money she collected for the general election and has been falsely reporting that money -- $23.3 million at last count -- as cash on hand.

We could certainly be wrong about that.

After all, it would be crazy and reckless to spend the general election money on the primary. To do something so blatantly illegal, you'd have to think you could never, ever be caught at it. You'd have to think there was absolutely no way that you could lose the Democratic primary race.

Because if you lost the Democratic primary race, you'd be in real trouble.

So much trouble, in fact, that you'd probably double down during the last month of the primaries, even if it meant you were plunging deeper and deeper into debt.

To take a risk like that, you'd have to be the kind of person who has total confidence that you can get away with anything, especially if it borders on a gray area of the law.

This is an excerpt from attorney David Kendall's biography on the web site of his law firm, Williams & Connolly:
He began representing President and Mrs. Clinton in November 1993, in what was ostensibly a small savings and loan matter involving Whitewater Development Company, Inc. He went on to represent the Clintons in a variety of matters, including Independent Counsel, Senate, House of Representatives, FDIC, RTC, and bar counsel investigations, civil litigation, and the 1998-99 impeachment proceedings, and currently represents them in three civil matters.
So far, so good.

Tuesday's Washington Post reports that Senator Clinton just sent an e-mail to her supporters asking them to go to her web site and contribute money to help her pay off more than $22 million in campaign debt. "I hope you will continue to stand with me and support me by going back to HillaryClinton.com," she wrote.

Maybe the Clinton team simply forgot to update the web site to reflect the fact that Senator Clinton isn't going to be the Democratic nominee this fall and therefore can't accept contributions for the general election.

Maybe the webmaster quit when the paycheck was late and nobody else knows how to work the thing.

Maybe if you entered your credit card number and clicked the button, you would get an error message saying you can't donate more than $2,300.

We don't advise you to try it.

We don't think you'll get your money back any time soon.

But if you've got a refund coming from Senator Clinton's general election account, her web site still says you can contact the campaign at:
Hillary Clinton for President
4420 North Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22203
Headquarters: 703.469.2008
Fax: 703.962.8600
Good luck. Let us know how it goes. We'll be happy to post your stories.


Copyright 2008

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Tabloid update: "Clinton Only 1 Year To Live!"

Just because we know you're Googling to find it, and not because we think it's worth your time, we bring you this update on the Globe tabloid's cover story, "Clinton Only 1 Year to Live!"

The Globe dug up a "life span expert" by the name of David Demko, who calculates that Bill Clinton's "lifestyle factors" will send our 61-year-old former president to "an early grave."

Mr. Demko's patented "Death Calculator" takes off a few years here and there for stress, heart disease and promiscuity, leading him to predict that President Clinton will die approximately ten years ago.

President Clinton is fine. He's not sick. He's not dying. Nothing's wrong.

As any number of retired Republican politicians can tell you, reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated.


Copyright 2008

John McCain on Marilyn Monroe

The presumptive Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain, spoke to Bob Sansevere of the St. Paul Pioneer Press for Sunday's paper. It was one of those get-to-know-the-candidate on-the-lighter-side interviews.

Asked to name his favorite actress, Senator McCain said, "I think Marilyn Monroe still is one of the great actresses of our time."

Marilyn Monroe?!

Senator McCain doesn't come to us for advice, but here's some anyway:

"Meryl Streep." "Helen Mirren." "Kathy Bates."

Marilyn Monroe?!

Yes, we know, she studied with Lee Strasberg. She did some extraordinary work on film. We're not going to say anything derogatory about Marilyn Monroe.

But a Republican presidential candidate can't say publicly that his favorite actress is Marilyn Monroe. For one thing, she was an unapologetic bombshell sexpot. For another, she departed for that great Oscar party in the sky in 1962. That's forty-six years ago, for those of you who went to school in Los Angeles.

Forty-six years ago is just about when Barack Obama was born.

In one thoughtless answer, John McCain managed to make himself look old, horny, and like a JFK-wannabe.

So we would just like to ask the delegates to the GOP convention one last time:

Are you sure you don't want to nominate Ron Paul for president?



Copyright 2008

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Tabloid update: Bush! Cocaine! Clinton! Mistress!

America Wants To Know promised to keep you up-to-date on the supermarket tabloids, because if you don't do your own grocery shopping you'll miss all this entertainment, and we wouldn't want that to happen.

The Globe's June 16th cover screams "Bush on Cocaine in White House!" but inside, there's not much sustenance for the hungry scandal-hunter. The story is a lot of baseless speculation that "the use of illegal drugs" along with "boozing," "could explain" everything from the invasion of Iraq to the president's crumbling marriage.

The only substance in the story is a quote from former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. McClellan writes that he overheard Bush, back when he was governor of Texas, tell a supporter that he couldn't remember whether he had tried cocaine or not. "We had some pretty wild parties back in the day," Bush allegedly said, "and I just don't remember."

The Globe didn't call any of the people who do remember, like Asleep at the Wheel's Grammy-winning front man, Ray Benson, who once told an interviewer, "I know a lot more about the president's past than I'll talk about. He wasn't a friend of mine, but I knew the circles he ran in. I knew the people on Sixth Street he hung out with."

America Wants to Know would never doubt the word of Brother Ray Benson.

We also don't doubt the Globe's characterization of the president's marriage as "almost destroyed" by his "boozing" and his "close relationship with Condoleezza Rice." We take note that when Laura Bush took off for a surprise trip to Afghanistan, the president took Condoleezza Rice to Camp David for the weekend and they returned to Washington looking very refreshed....



We also note the first lady's pointed upstaging -- or is it bigfooting? -- of the Secretary of State in Paris Thursday at the donor conference for Afghanistan. Mrs. Bush gave the opening remarks, accompanied by a glitzy visual slideshow of photographs of herself on her Afghanistan trip.

No other speaker was given visual aids, the AP reported.

And Secretary Rice's remarks to the conference were bumped to the less-desirable post-lunch time slot.

Well, that's the way it goes when you're the other woman.

Not every woman puts up with that kind of treatment, as we see in the National Enquirer's June 23rd issue. You can't miss it, it's the one with the cover that screams, "Clinton Mistress Revealed!"

The Enquirer says it can now disclose the name of the woman with whom Bill Clinton had a long affair, starting shortly after he left the White House and continuing right up to the point when the woman realized that he wasn't going to leave his wife, he was instead going to campaign for her.

The woman is Julie Tauber McMahon, a wealthy divorcee who met Mr. Clinton in 1998 at her father's house, which President Clinton was borrowing for a little vacation.

Her father, Joel Tauber, is a major Democratic donor.

Bill Clinton was doing a donor's daughter.

You know, the Clinton Presidential Library really ought to have a wing devoted to Farmer's Daughter jokes.

But never mind about that now, the point is that Mr. Clinton allegedly began an affair with Julie Tauber McMahon sometime after he left office and moved to Chappaqua, where she lives just five miles from his house. He reportedly became something of a mentor to her three children, infuriating their father. The Enquirer says it got the story from one of Julie McMahon's family members, who passed a polygraph test.

Alas for our former president, the fabulously wealthy Ms. McMahon dumped him when she realized he was never going to leave his wife. The Enquirer says Mr. Clinton reacted by going on a "wild sex binge" and "was so out of control that even his closest pals were disgusted by his hound-dog antics."

According to the Enquirer's source, our 61-year-old former president "turned to a string of wild sexual encounters to lick his wounds."

Okay! More than we want to know!

Maybe you'd rather hear the gossip from across the pond, where Prince Charles' attractive forty-something private secretary, Elizabeth Buchanan, has resigned after second wife Camilla reportedly grew tired of seeing her at Prince Charles' side during official functions.

"Camilla simply loathed her," an old colleague told London's Daily Mail.

Perhaps Ms. Buchanan's resignation had something to do with the Globe's May 19th story of "Charles & Camilla's Secret Separation," which reported that "palace insiders" were predicting that the future king of England and his second wife would divorce by the end of the year. The couple "have been living apart for the past six weeks, following a furious final showdown over her boozing," the Globe said.

The Globe's story is full of sparkly little gems about Camilla's affection for "Gordon's gin and tonic" and her constant complaints about the "shackles of royalty."

Meanwhile, the Globe says, "Prince Charles is holed up at Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire during the royal couple's trial separation" while "Camilla has been living at her old country home, Ray Mill House, in the village of Lacock."

That's really the name of the village, don't look at us.

We're just trying to save you a trip to the supermarket.


Copyright 2008

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Saturday, June 14, 2008

The $300,000 rape joke

Today, Senator John McCain panicked and canceled a fundraiser scheduled for Monday at the home of Texas oilman Clayton Williams, a man who has already gone to the trouble of pressuring his friends and associates into donating $300,000 to John McCain's presidential campaign.

What, you may be wondering, could send a man like John McCain into a panic?

It was a couple of questions from ABC News and the Washington Post about something Clayton Williams said when he was running for Texas governor in 1990.

Mr. Williams was hosting a campaign event on his West Texas ranch and he made a joke about the weather.

"As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it," he said.

It was just a tasteless stupid sex joke.

There's no law against tasteless stupid sex jokes, and there won't be, not as long as Hollywood has two United States Senators.

He wasn't even talking about women. He certainly wasn't talking about his opponent, Ann Richards.

It was just a joke.

America Wants To Know does understand that it's obnoxious to suggest that rape can be enjoyable as long as you're in the right frame of mind.

We won't link you to the IMDB.com pages of ten thousand movies from the 1930s through early 1960s that say otherwise.

We understand, not every rapist is Clark Gable.

But you should understand that Clayton Williams is eighty-six years old.

America Wants To Know has always had a personal sexual harassment policy that grandfathered out any man born before World War II.

Anyone younger should know better, but anyone older can call us "Sweetie" and tell sexist jokes and we're not going to court over it.

John McCain was born in 1936, but he's running for president, and not everyone will cut him as much slack on these things as we will.

Feminist sensibilities are like a foreign language to a man born before World War II. Senator McCain has studied and studied and he's trying, really he is, to get the accent just right. He desperately wants the votes of the women who supported Hillary Clinton.

But he has no earthly idea what they think about anything.

So when ABC News and the Washington Post raised the question of Clayton Williams' insensitive comments -- from eighteen years ago -- John McCain panicked and pulled the plug on Monday's fundraiser.

He's not giving up the $300,000 that Clayton Williams has already raised for him. Not yet, anyway. Not until he's absolutely sure that women are upset about Mr. Williams' comments.

And he's not all that sure.

He has no idea, actually.

We're happy to give Senator McCain some free advice on this subject.

Senator, you'll never get the votes of Hillary Clinton's supporters, not even if you stand on your head and deliver a baby through your navel on national television.

Hillary Clinton was supported by every woman who has ever been hurt and insulted and chose to stay in the relationship anyway.

They love Hillary Clinton because she's smart and talented and respected and she made the same choice. She makes them feel better about themselves. She makes their self-esteem go right through the roof.

Universal health care is just window-dressing.

If John McCain wanted to win over the votes of Hillary Clinton's supporters, he shouldn't have left his long-suffering first wife for a beautiful young rodeo-queen heiress with blonde hair.

They hate that.

So here's some free advice for the Obama campaign: See if you can talk Barbara Walters into hiring John McCain's first wife to co-host The View.

And here's some free advice for Clayton Williams: Ask John McCain for your $300,000 back and tell him to get lost. Next time, back a candidate who knows how to win a damn war!


Copyright 2008

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Return of the Medicine Show

Some time ago, America Wants to Know posted the recipe for President Reagan's favorite White House eggnog, and to all the thousands of people who clicked on it, we would like to say, "You're welcome! Hope it helped."

If you remember, we prescribed President Reagan's eggnog for anyone who was enduring the holidays with an empty chair at the table.

And now, the America Wants to Know Traveling Medicine Show is back in town, just in time for Fathers Day.

Do we have a sleeping potion for you!

We've been doing a little research into Prohibition-era cocktails (really, it was research) and we discovered something called an Alabazam.

If you're having trouble sleeping, skip those heavily advertised prescription drugs and try this:

Alabazam

3 ounces brandy
2 teaspoons Cointreau (or Curacao or Triple Sec)
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Angostura bitters

Mix all ingredients, shake or stir with ice until chilled, strain and serve.
That's a double, by the way.

Sleep tight!


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Thursday, June 12, 2008

The race for First Lady

A new Rasmussen Reports poll released Wednesday says Michelle Obama is viewed unfavorably by 48 percent of white voters and Cindy McCain is viewed unfavorably by 48 percent of black voters.

The cable networks should be happy. The only thing better for ratings than a cat fight is a race war.

Fortunately for Michelle Obama, she's acquainted with somebody who has a warehouse of focus-group research that can help her.

Did you know that Oprah Winfrey's show began as a local daytime talk show in Chicago?

Did you know that her local show replaced (and obliterated) a local daytime talk show that had been hosted by a Regis-style white guy and a succession of blondes who all looked a lot like Cindy McCain?

Did you know that Oprah was so successful at winning over the daytime TV viewers of Chicago -- a city that for all its Land-of-Lincoln rhetoric is more than a little bit segregated -- that she was able to negotiate for ownership of her syndicated show, eventually making her one of the wealthiest women in the world?

Oprah Winfrey has mastered the art of convincing her audience that she's just like them, even though she's smarter, more ambitious, more determined and more focused than any of them will ever be.

It probably helps that she gives away cars.

Somebody at the Obama campaign should call the FEC and check into that.


Copyright 2008

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Ron Paul spends it

One thing you have to say for Ron Paul: he looks ahead.

If it seemed to you during the primary campaign that Ron Paul was raising a lot of money and spending HARDLY ANY OF IT on advertising to GET HIS MESSAGE OUT, it may be because he had judged the primaries unwinnable and had a different strategy for his revolution.

Today the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that Rep. Paul has booked the Williams Arena in Minneapolis on September 2, the second day of the Republican National Convention, which will be held nearby at the Xcel Energy Center.

The Williams Arena holds about 14,000 people.

That's just inside, of course.

Ron Paul's campaign spokesman, Jesse Benton, said the plan is to "send a message to the Republican Party" with the daylong event.

The message, if you haven't been following Rep. Paul's campaign too closely, is that the American people would like their freedom back.

Ron Paul believes the United States is spending too much on overseas military operations all around the world and that at least a third of that money can be better spent at home keeping programs like Social Security and Medicare solvent without raising taxes or cutting benefits.

Ron Paul believes the war in Iraq was a mistake and it's time to admit it and bring the troops home.

Ron Paul believes in small government, free trade, a humble foreign policy, and liberty. He believes we should follow the U.S. Constitution, including the part that says we don't go to war without a declaration of war by Congress.

Over at the Xcel Energy Center, the rest of the Republican party will be defending the war in Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, unlimited detention without legal process, enhanced interrogation techniques, and the probable necessity of war with Iran.

If Barack Obama wins the November election and a Democratic surge knocks Republicans out of their seats in the House and Senate, watch for Ron Paul to form the core of the new Republican party, which is really the old Republican party. Low taxes. More freedom. No military adventures.

Then all we'll have to do is amend the Constitution for privacy rights, and we'll be a free country again.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Ron Paul's good question" and "Ron Paul's tea party."

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Sunday, June 08, 2008

Barack Obama gets younger

Have we ever seen Barack Obama wear jeans in public before?



Can't recall it.

Today the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee went for a bike ride along the lake shore in Chicago with his family. Perhaps for the first time in this campaign, he allowed himself to be seen in public wearing jeans and a casual shirt.

He looks really, um, young.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Obama campaign has shifted its visual language now that 60-year-old Hillary Clinton is out of the race and 71-year-old John McCain is the opponent.

It appears that Senator Obama and his pollsters have calculated that voters would prefer a candidate who's older than 46 but younger than 71. And now that there is no candidate in the race who is older than 46 and younger than 71 (Ron Paul's still in, technically, but he's not younger than 71), they've concluded that voters are a lot more frightened of 71 than they are of 46.

So the senator was out in public today wearing jeans and riding a bicycle, recorded by cameras and sure to be seen in somebody's campaign commercials.

He's the picture of youth and fitness.

Or he's the picture of youth and inexperience.

He's the image of vigor and new ideas.

Or he's a college student home for the summer with his ideas and his laundry.

Place your bets.


Copyright 2008

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Hillary Clinton's malfunctioning wardrobe

Apparently, no one is going to say a word about Hillary Clinton's latest ping-pong fashion shift, because everyone is afraid of being called sexist and shallow.

America Wants To Know is not afraid. We're always proud to be called shallow and as for sexist, well, you'll just have to take our word for it that we have a sponsor's exemption from that charge.

And so, we would like to say a word about Hillary Clinton's malfunctioning wardrobe.

On Saturday, Senator Clinton arrived at the National Building Museum to make a concession speech and end her presidential campaign. She was dressed in a sleek black pantsuit.

Maybe you're not old enough to remember, but when Hillary Clinton ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000, she wore a sleek black pantsuit every single day. Usually she threw a pastel sweater over her shoulders and tied it in front to get a softer color next to her face.

In the Senate, Hillary Clinton typically showed up for work in a subdued, dark-colored pantsuit that called no attention to itself.

And then she ran for president.

Suddenly New York's junior senator was a walking Technicolor screen test. Some days she looked like a traffic cone. Red. Yellow. Orange. Some days she looked like an Easter egg. Turquoise. Pink. Blue.

What was that all about?

Her supporters are presbyopic, not color-blind.

Every day in America, dozens of professional women are on television looking perfectly well-dressed without crashing through your TV screen like a spilled vat of tempera paint.

And now that Hillary Clinton's race for president is over, she's back in the sleek black pantsuit. On Day One.

It is beyond our mortal powers to explain it. This is a job for Shakespeare. Or Mr. Blackwell.

We would like to call your attention, however, to a sentence from Saturday's New York Times story on the end of the Clinton campaign: "Mrs. Clinton variously tried presenting herself as the friend having conversations with the American people, then the experienced hand and tough warrior before settling on working-class heroine," Peter Baker and Jim Rutenberg wrote.

It's an eerie echo of something Hillary Rodham wrote herself in a letter to a friend during her college years: "Since Xmas vacation, I’ve gone through three and a half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me,” young Ms. Rodham wrote in April 1967, “So far, I’ve used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity.”

Crowded in there, isn't it?

Well, at least they've all got something to wear.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Hillary Clinton and the 'basic bargain'" and "Michelle Obama is good."

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Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Why Hillary won't go

Give Hillary Clinton credit.

She's not stupid.

In order to figure out what Hillary Clinton is doing right now, as supporters puzzle over what she is thinking, it's a good idea to assume that she is doing the smartest thing, and then work backwards to figure out the circumstances that would make her non-concession look like the wisest course of action.

Using this technique, America Wants to Know has deduced that Hillary Clinton raised over $22 million for the general election and spent it in secret on the primary, illegally.

This is the first year that candidates for president were permitted to raise primary funds and general election funds simultaneously, so this is the first year that an unsuccessful presidential candidate was faced with the prospect of refunding millions of dollars to donors at the conclusion of the contest.

Unsuccessful candidates typically wrap up their campaigns with a fair amount of debt.

Hillary Clinton's campaign debt has been reported to be as high as $40 million, including more than $11 million that she loaned to herself from her personal funds.

Under federal election law, she has until the conclusion of the Democratic national convention in August to pay herself back. Otherwise she has to write off all but $250,000 of the money she loaned her campaign.

Ouch.

Still, the Clintons have made a lot of money over the last eight years, more than $109 million according to the tax returns they released during the campaign.

Let's assume for the moment that the money she loaned her campaign is not the problem.

Last night, thirty minutes after Barack Obama locked up the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton stood at a lectern in a basement room and made the case that she is the strongest candidate in November. She pleaded with TV viewers to go to her web site and donate to her campaign.

This was just hours after she told New York's congressional delegation that she would accept the nomination for vice president on Barack Obama's ticket.

Today she told her supporters that she is not yet ready to concede defeat and release them to endorse Barack Obama.

"It makes no sense," Rep. Charlie Rangel told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell this morning.

Doesn't it?

If Hillary Clinton secretly spent the $22 million she raised for the general election, then filed false reports with the Federal Election Commission showing that the general election money was segregated and untouched in a separate account, she has committed a crime.

Let's assume for the moment that this is true.

On the day she gets out of the Democratic primary race, she owes that $22 million to the donors who gave it to her for the general election.

That means she has to come up with that money between now and then.

Let's assume she doesn't have $22 million lying around the house. It's not just what you earn, it's also what you spend that determines your financial health.

Now let's look again at Hillary Clinton's allegedly senseless arguments yesterday:

-- She went before the TV cameras, acted as if the primaries were just beginning, and asked TV viewers to donate money to her campaign.

-- She smiled as the crowd chanted "Denver! Denver!" around her, and she congratulated Barack Obama on "the race he has run," without admitting that he won the race and the primary campaign is now over.

-- She said she would accept the nod for vice president, which would mean she would be running in November, which would allow her lawyers to argue that she can legally spend the funds she raised for the general election.

It all makes sense now, doesn't it?

Surely you don't believe the first viable female presidential candidate is so emotional that she needs time to sort out her feelings because this has been such an overwhelming experience.

Give her a little credit.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Hillary Clinton and the big refund."