From a Newsweek portrait of Hillary Clinton by biographer Sally Bedell Smith:

Hillary oversaw the hiring of White House staffers and pressed her husband to fill half the top positions with women. In particular, she insisted he choose a woman as attorney general, which led to the derailed nominations of corporate lawyer Zoe Baird and federal Judge Kimba Wood. The president finally settled on Janet Reno, who had been recommended by Hillary's brother Hugh Rodham. "I don't think Clinton believed he had a choice," recalled Dee Dee Myers, his press secretary. "He had painted himself into a corner, and he had to appoint a woman." Hillary was equally adamant that the president appoint her friend Madeleine Albright as secretary of State.

When President Bush put other considerations ahead of merit, we got Alberto Gonzalez and (almost) Harriet Miers. When the Clintons put other considerations ahead of merit, we got the whole raft of mediocre picks, including Reno and Albright. President Bush's errors were personal; he tends to choose old personal friends for positions when he can. And of course a certain amount of cronyism is commonplace in politics at all levels. The Clintons' errors are more invidious, because discriminating against (or for) people based on their skin color or gender has larger implications than simply getting a less qualified candidate for a particular spot. Imagine the reaction if a candidate insisted that a particular position go to a man, or to a white nominee. Hillary and her left-wing feminist friends would be outraged.

We also learn that Hillary's "experience" includes opposition to one of the most successful reforms in modern American history:

In 1996 she pressed her husband to veto two Republican welfare reform bills for being too punitive. She then helped persuade him to sign a slightly modified third version when she recognized that the public overwhelmingly favored welfare reform in an election year. "It was pure politics over substance," recalled Donna Shalala, Clinton's secretary of Health and Human Services. "Hillary was not torn. She saw the political reality without the human dimension. If Hillary had opposed the bill, we would have gotten another veto."

It's useful to recall that many things the Democrats now take credit for were issues they initially fought against at the time, such as the welfare reform bill, and President Clinton arguing in 1995 that it would be irresponsible to try to balance the federal budget in 7 years, i.e. by 2002.

Hillary Clinton's years living in the White House certainly gave her some (more or less indirect) experience pertaining to the presidency that other candidates for the office don't have. Whether she learned any of the right lessons from that experience is an entirely different question.

That's the implication of the decision by New Jersey's Democrat leaders to abolish the death penalty for murderers in the state.

The AP (via Yahoo News) reports:

Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law Monday a measure that abolishes the death penalty, making New Jersey the first state in more than four decades to reject capital punishment.

The bill, approved last week by the state's Assembly and Senate, replaces the death sentence with life in prison without parole.

The move is largely a symbolic gesture:

New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982 -- six years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions -- but it hasn't executed anyone since 1963.

But the symbolism is important - in New Jersey, the Democrats who run the state have announced publicly that, no matter how many innocent people you murder, no matter how many lives you take from others, you get to keep your own.

And what will be the penalty for a convicted murderer in the state of New Jersey who murders a second time? Nothing. Zip. Nada. All murders after the first one in New Jersey are now guaranteed by law to be free of any penalty. That is what the Democrats of New Jersey have announced to the world, to the world's criminals.

On the plus side, this may play into Republican hands next election, and some might suspect another Rovian conspiracy to make soft-on-crime Democrats look soft on crime.

You can always count on the AP to show some of their liberal bias when they report on a Republican event, and their report on the debate held last night in Miami by the Univision Spanish language network is no exception.

The debate was upbeat, reaching out to the audience without (too much) pandering, touching on all kinds of issues - education, immigration, health care, national defense. It was all very pro-immigrant and pro-Hispanic.

But the AP headline reads: "GOP Hopefuls Temper Anti-Immigrant Talk"

Once again, the issue is not immigrants, it is illegal immigrants.

Tonight, the Republican candidates for president (except, thankfully, for Tancredo) will participate in a debate on the Spanish language Univision network:

Foro republicano por Univision

Luego del histórico foro presidencial demócrata realizado por Univision el pasado 9 de septiembre, el turno hoy es para los aspirantes presidenciales republicanos, quienes este domingo 9 de diciembre debatirán sobre temas de particular interés para la comunidad hispana en Estados Unidos.

El evento se realizará en la Universidad de Miami -coorganizadora del foro- y será televisado (a las 7 pm / 6 pm centro) por la cadena Univision. ...

We were supportive of the Republican candidates' decision to skip attending the convention of the National Council of La Raza in July, because that is a liberal and explicitly race-based organization. However, Univision is not. It is one of the largest television networks in the United States, watched by millions of Americans. So this provides an opportunity to avoid the perception of a blanket rejection of Hispanics.

Republicans must demonstrate that we are against illegal immigration, but not against immigrants. That we are for English, but not against Spanish or Spanish speakers. (We speak both English and Español, and favor strong enforcement of our immigration laws and making English the official language of the United States, for the record). Skipping any and all forums that involve Hispanics and/or Spanish speakers will send a very damaging message to that segment of the electorate, with damaging effects for the party and the country.

Republican candidates must not go and pander to the audience, watering down the messages of border enforcement and assimilation, but they must go. Tonight, they will rightly accept the opportunity.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has posted an English transcript of the debate. OR there's a pdf version here.

The Washington Post reports today, leading Democrats were briefed back in September 2002 about the CIA's interrogation program, including waterboarding, and raised no objections then.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. ...

This is just another in a long line of examples of the Democrats taking an important issue of national security and cynically exploiting it purely for partisan political advantage.

The Democrats keep complaining about America's reputation in the world. Maybe that reputation would be better if they'd quit undermining it with so much slanderous partisan rhetoric.

Jules Crittenden responds with some good and very appropriate mockery of the Democrats' poll-driven approach to issues of national security:

Not fair! The Dems have a political operation to run, and if they are going to govern by poll, it really isn't sporting for people to start poking around in what they did or didn't do, think and say when the polls were blowing in a different direction! Next thing you know, someone's going to say the Clinton co-presidency thought Saddam had a nuclear program and backed regime change.

More from Captain's Quarters:

That doesn't settle the question as to whether waterboarding constitutes torture, but it certainly calls into question the notion that politics has nothing to do with the debate. ... Only well after the practice had been abandoned did Congress raise objections to its use, and then never acknowledging their own acquiescence to it earlier. That lack of honesty allowed them to paint themselves as shocked, shocked! that waterboarding had been used as an interrogation technique.

In related matters, via Instapundit here is an excellent video documenting the Democrats' irresponsible duplicity on the lead-up to and justification for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Some on the left got all giddy today hearing this comment about conservative blogs from former White House communications director Dan Bartlett:

I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

The charge is so easily disproved, if the nutroots weren't so consistently a source of unhinged drivel we'd almost be surprised they'd try to glom on to such nonsense.

Anyone ever heard of Supreme Court Justice Harriet Meiers? Bloggers on the right really marched in lockstep with the president on that one, eh? Ditto "comprehensive immigration reform". The president suffered one of his biggest political defeats thanks to opposition to his immigration proposals, in large measure from conservative talk radio and blogs.

So much of what the left says today is based in dishonesty, fantasy, and projection, it is staggering sometimes.

The speech given today by Mitt Romney was pretty good and effective, though we would have left out this section:

There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

There is a proper distinction to be made with regard to the political sphere between values and theology. Most of Romney's speech discussed broadly shared American values derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The quote above answered a theological point, and so deviated from the overall theme of the speech somewhat. But he didn't dwell on it, so it wasn't a major diversion. Overall, an effective and compelling presentation.

OpinionJournal's "Best of the Web" had this line from a spam email supposedly from DNC chairman Howard Dean:

Join me and remind every Republican presidential candidate that all Americans want to be inspired by hope, not governed by fear. Tell them to listen to the intelligence community

But isn't that precisely what the Bush administration did with regard to Iraq, listen to the intelligence community? Yes, in fact it is - the consensus view from the intelligence community before the invasion was that Iraq was a national security threat, was a state sponsor of terrorism, and had and/or was developing WMD.

Democrat leaders ought to be asked by some enterprising reporter why they think the latest NIE on Iran is inarguable Gospel, as opposed to the last one in 2005, and why the president should listen to the intelligence community in 2007, but should have not listened to them in 2002.

The AP reports (via Yahoo News), the Democrats made up some nonsense about the president and his party, then argued over it, without any real examination of their assertions from the press of course:

"The seven candidates participating in the debate began by agreeing that the United States should shift its focus in dealing with Iran to diplomatic engagement."

But that's what has already been happening. The Bush administration has not taken military action against Iran, nor has the administration advocated doing so. Saying that the military option might be necessary in the future is not advocacy of an attack. The administration has relied on multi-national diplomatic efforts and pressed for UN sanctions. Whether that is the right approach or not is a separate issue. For the Democrats to deny this is either delusional or dishonest.

Agreeing with the administration while claiming to disagree with the administration, projecting, and denying reality at the same time, Barack Obama said:

"President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology," said Obama. "They should have stopped the saber rattling, should have never started it. And they need, now, to aggressively move on the diplomatic front."

Saying nothing, Joe Biden added this non sequitur:

"With all due respect with anybody who thinks that pressure brought this about, let's get this straight. In 2003, they stopped their program," Biden said.

In a group non sequitur, the Democratic candidates agreed they're against vigilantism:

The discussion of immigration was in sharp contrast to the Republican debate last week in which the GOP candidates tried to outmaneuver each other on who would be tougher on illegal immigrants. The Democratic candidates said they were not willing to encourage Americans to arrest illegal citizens. [emphasis added]

"We do not deputize the American people to do the job that the federal government is supposed to do," Obama said.

Kucinich agreed, saying, "We don't encourage vigilantism in this country."

We're not sure what an "illegal citizen" is, and the AP reporter doesn't explain. Probably just a Freudian slip on her part. Leaving that aside, neither the reporter nor the Democratic candidates bothered to explain who on the Republican side has ever called for American citizens to go out and arrest illegal aliens.

To summarize - the Bush administration has not engaged in any diplomacy with Iran, the diplomacy the administration has engaged in with Iran has not worked at all, despite the report stating the Iranians suspended their nuclear program, and the Republicans want ordinary Americans to go out and round up illegal aliens. All this from the "reality based community."

If any of these people manages to fool enough Americans to vote for them for president, we're in real trouble.

From Reuters (via Yahoo News), another example of the sort of bias and spin employed by the DeMSM as they report on the Bush administration:

"A new U.S. intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration's earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb."

But this statement, attributing the assertion that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons to the Bush administration, is contradicted by Reuters' own article, which says the current NIE "...marked a sharp contrast to an intelligence report two years ago that stated Iran was 'determined to develop nuclear weapons.'"

You see? When the intelligence community says Iran is pursuing nukes, that's a Bush administration assertion. When the same intelligence community says Iran is not pursuing nukes, that's the intelligence community contradicting the administration.

And how does Reuters know with such high confidence which of these two contradictory assessments from the same intelligence community is the correct one? They don't, they're simply assuming that the one they like is the right one.

"Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who have repeatedly accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, were briefed on the new NIE last Wednesday."

No, they have repeatedly relied on the earlier intelligence assesment, that said "Iran was 'determined to develop nuclear weapons.'" Reuters is again attributing to the administration those assessments Reuters doesn't want to hear.

Administration officials denied the new NIE had exposed a serious intelligence lapse but could not explain how agencies failed to detect for four years that Iran's nuclear weapons program had been halted.

And again, Reuters assumes the more recent NIE is the correct one. Why is the latest one right, and the one two years ago wrong? Because it fits their agenda, end of issue.

We don't know which assessment is correct, but neither does Reuters. Apparently, neither does the intelligence community -Reuters reports:

...the latest NIE concluded: "We do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."

That's a real confidence builder from our multi-million dollar intelligence apparatus.

But given the always-present uncertainty (see Iraq for example), should the benefit of the doubt be given to the crazy leaders of Iran, who routinely call for genocide against Israel and shout "Death to America"?

Others:
More spin from the NY Times
Michelle Malkin has a short roundup
Blogs on the left seem to be taking the Reuters line - this NIE is Gospel - unsurprisingly
Five Questions Concerning the Latest NIE