‘America’s Smartest Woman’ Is Making Us Look Stupid

Hillary only stuck with Bill because it kept her close to the seat of power, and by not throwing Bill to the wolves she held power over him.  She is a power hungry enabler just like her new boss.  She’ll throw him under the bus if given the opportunity.  In the meantime, she just runs around the world making America look like fools.  That may actually be true if you look at who we have elected as our representatives and to the highest office in the land.  The liberal plan for public education has finally come to fruition.

‘America’s Smartest Woman’ Is Making Us Look Stupid

by A.W.R. Hawkins (more by this author)

Posted 04/01/2009 ET

Hillary Clinton is best remembered for blaming the accusations against her husband on a “vast right wing conspiracy” (until he was forced to admit that he was giving a different dog a bone) and blaming her 2008 Democrat primary losses on the anti-female sentiment in certain parts of our country. (No, not anti-female.  Just anti-beyotch.) But who is she going to blame for her disastrous debut as secretary of state?

Can we blame the president? No; his foreign policy experience is even less than hers. And, yes: her entire foreign policy experience was kissing the late Yasser Arafat’s wife on the lips and embarrassing her hubby on a China trip by making a plea for women’s rights to a group assembled by the Chicoms to listen politely to her. But I digress.

Now Hillary, long considered “America’s smartest woman” by people like Elton John and James Carville, is taking her blame game and her conditional loyalty to the world as our Secretary of State.

Her debut was a meeting with the Russian foreign minister, to whom she presented what was supposed to be a “reset” button, making light of Obama’s desire to make nice with the bad guys. The button, though, wasn’t labeled “reset.” Instead, due to the fine work by her staff, it had the Russian word for “overload” (like an electronic circuit) painted on it. So while it’s obvious that Hillary ain’t the Great Communicator, it gets worse.

Her recent trips to China and Mexico prove this point.

En route to China for her February 20-22 visit with Chinese leaders, Hillary wasted no time in criticizing others for problems the U.S. is facing with North Korea. She polished up the old refrain “it’s Bush’s fault” by intimating that North Korea has nukes because of the failed policies of former president George W. Bush.

Hillary believes Bush failed to keep North Korea within the parameters of an agreement they signed while Hillary’s husband was president. But gatewaypundit.com has duly noted that the “North Korean regime [has] violated the agreed framework almost from the time it was signed during the Clinton years.”

And what retribution did they face for this violation during the Clinton years? None.

Once Hillary landed in China, she went from blaming Bush to turning her back on core Democrat constituencies like Amnesty International and pro-Tibetan support groups, both of which are outraged over China’s violations of human rights. Instead of calling Chinese leaders out on their mistreatment of whole classes of humanity, Hillary said, “[E]fforts to press China on issues like Taiwan, Tibet and human rights ‘can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.’”

Hillary tried to clarify her reasoning by adding that there’s no use talking human rights with the Chinese because, “We pretty much know what they’re going to say.”

Since when is knowing what someone is “going to say” a valid reason for not doing what ought to be done?

In the German publication Spiegel, Günter Nooke, of the Christian Democratic Union Party, described the methods of America’s smartest woman as “very questionable.” He explained that the reason she really didn’t want to do anything to offend Chinese leaders was because her trip was part of a larger effort to seek “out fresh Chinese loans for the deeply-indebted American government.”

To put it succinctly, Hillary’s visit with Chinese leaders was conducted from a position of weakness. And such a mindset barred our inept secretary of state from standing up for Tibetans, the Taiwanese, or any other people group that China regularly assaults and threatens, for fear of financial loss.

Slate’s Annie Applebaum, a left leaning journalist, put it this way: “I…care quite a lot about what the new administration is going to do about human rights on the ground, and, to date, both Clinton and Obama have been utterly silent on that score.”

When Hillary traveled to Mexico last week, she further epitomized the sad state of our current administration by demonstrating that their refusal to call China on the carpet for obvious wrongs China had committed would not keep them from blaming America for wrongs that America had not committed.

Our smartest-woman-turned secretary of state told Mexico’s President Calderon that America had “a co-responsibility” for the violence currently overtaking Mexico: “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians.” (It doesn’t matter that we KNOW  that the weapons that the liberals are speaking about were given to the MEXICAN GOVERNMENT by our government and then stolen from the Mexican government by drug cartels, or given to the drug cartels by sympathizers/moles within the military.  This is just a way to build uninformed sympathy for an illegitimate gun ban in this country.)

Isn’t anyone responsible for their own actions anymore? And wouldn’t it be more accurate to point out that Mexico’s violence is the result of the fact that they’re an anti-capitalist third world country with a population largely comprised of laborers whose own government robs them of the chance to better themselves?

Yet it just keeps getting worse. From Monterrey, Mexico, America’s smartest woman told Calderon: “[The] partnership that you have created…between the public and the private sector is a model that we and others will look towards.” I guess this means we, in America, would be better off by living like citizens of the third world instead of citizens of an industrialized one?

I fear that America’s smartest woman has yet to understand that she’s not just a first lady anymore: her words mean something now that she’s become secretary of state. And not only is she setting us up to pay financial reparations by taking “co-responsibility” for the crimes of another nation, she’s actually making America look internationally impotent by lacking the backbone to demand that the Chinese uphold human rights or the clarity of thought needed to see that Mexico’s political structure eliminates any possibility for paupers to go from rags to riches.

Hillary’s trips to China and Mexico, and the words she used while in each country, confirm that we’ve no longer an administration that’s proud of this country, its values, or its accomplishments. Gone for now are the days when America deals from a position of strength.

HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins has been published on topics including the U.S. Navy, Civil War battles, Vietnam War ideology, the Reagan Presidency, and the Rebirth of Conservatism, 1968-1988. More of his articles can be found at www.awrhawkins.com.

Media shield bill a double-edged sword

Responsibility. Media responsibility. That is really what the issue here should be. There was a time when most of the media would take responsibility for what they reported by THOROUGHLY checking their sources, not reporting potentially classified material without checking it with the proper authorities, and not reporting slanderous material without multiple corroborating sources. Today objectivity and responsibility have been replace by ideology driven agenda. So what if I print a lie about someone, as long as it suits my beliefs. Responsibility. Media responsibility. Or lack thereof.

Media shield bill approved by House panel

By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press
March 26, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — Counting on Senate and White House support, lawmakers seeking limited court protection of reporters’ confidential sources renewed an effort Wednesday to win passage of legislation that failed last year.

The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee on a voice vote and should pass in the House soon. But the test will come later this year in the Senate, where the bill died last year after then-President George W. Bush threatened a veto.

The Bush administration warned the bill would encourage leaks of classified information. (It will also foster slander and character attacks, which the left is so fond of.)

Chief sponsor Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he’s confident of passage “with the addition of a substantial number of (Senate) Democrats who I believe will be supportive.” Senate supporters could only muster 51 votes last year to get past a filibuster, when 60 were needed.

President Barack Obama was a sponsor of a shield bill as an Illinois senator and presidential candidate.

The House passed a similar bill in 2007 by a 398-21 vote.

The House bill, which would protect confidentiality in most federal court cases, was rewritten this year to meet some of the objections. The revisions enhanced the federal government’s ability to obtain information that is needed to protect national security; and investigate and prevent acts of terrorism.

The bill only allows a court to compel a journalist to reveal confidential sources in these circumstances:

–To prevent an act of terrorism against the United States or its allies, prevent significant harm to national security or to identify a perpetrator of a terrorist act.

–To stop an imminent death or significant bodily harm.

–To identify someone who disclosed a trade secret, health information on individuals, or financial information that is confidential under federal laws.

–To identify, in a criminal investigation, someone who disclosed properly classified information that caused or will cause significant harm to national security.

Even if those requirements are met, the party seeking information must establish that the public interest in compelling disclosure outweighs the public interest in gathering or disseminating information.

Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have shield laws.

Boucher said the law is needed, because a reporter’s source is “only going to pick up the phone … if the reporter can promise confidentiality.”

An opponent of the bill, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said that “Protecting anonymous sources should never be more important than protecting the American people or solving crimes that can help save lives.

“Unfortunately, this bill raises serious law enforcement and national security concerns.”

Smith added that media outlets are lobbying for the bill, even though the media criticizes lobbyists who represent other special interests.

Dozens of news outlets, including The Associated Press, have supported a shield law.

Supporters of media shield legislation have pointed to news reports — based on confidentiality — on mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, clandestine CIA prisons and substandard conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller was imprisoned for 85 days in 2005 for refusing to identify the Bush administration officials who spoke with her about CIA employee Valerie Plame. The public revelation of her name led to the perjury and obstructing justice conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was chief of staff to Dick Cheney when he was vice president.