As this is written, Paris is under attack.
To borrow from the theme of the 2012 Obama campaign, General Motors may be alive, but clearly Islamic terrorism is not dead.
The other night I was on CNN with Clintonista Paul Begala, and the discussion, in part, revolved around the last GOP debate and the frequent references to Hillary Clinton. Paul observed that it was somewhat creepy, making the GOP candidates out as stalkers of a sort. Television time being what it is, response time from me was gone. But I must say I have had time to reflect - and I suspect what most probably was an off-the-cuff statement may in fact reflect a Clinton strategy upcoming. Something along the lines of “the boys are out to get me and they don’t play fair because I’m a girl.”
Hmmm.
It seems fairly clear that the increasing invoking of Secretary Clinton’s name among Republicans will be for an obvious reason- and the attack in Paris will only step up those broadsides. She is, after all, the Democratic Party’s nominee presumptive. She has a record - and a long one at that. From bimbos to Benghazi, from demanding investigations into her husband’s various personal entanglements to deliberately misleading about the nature of the Benghazi attacks - not to mention her e-mail mess - Hillary Clinton’s record has one consistent theme that somehow the liberal media can’t quite come to grips with. In the phrase of the late New York Times columnist William Safire all the way back in 1996, she is seen by many as a “congenital liar.”
But you wouldn’t know this basic truth-telling problem of Hillary’s even existed if you watched, say, CBS. The day after the last debate, Senator Marco Rubio appeared on the CBS morning show with Charlie Rose. Rose was disturbed that Rubio would have called Clinton a liar because of her Benghazi testimony. “No, no, you called Hillary Clinton a liar, Senator. You called Hillary Clinton a liar.” Rubio calmly explained:
There is no doubt about that, Charlie. I mean, there are e-mails in which she was talking to her family and she was telling them that there was an attack on that consulate that was due to a terrorist attack by Al Qaeda elements and then she was going around the country talking to the families of the victims, and to the American people and saying, no, no. This is because of some video that someone produced.
There was more to this exchange, but the point is clear. Rose simply didn’t care that Clinton lied. And neither will the larger liberal media that Rubio accurately labeled the real Hillary Super PAC.
Why was this particular Clinton untruth told? Why was she telling daughter Chelsea and government officials from Egypt and Libya the truth - that the Benghazi attack was indeed a terrorist attack? While then going out and insisting to the American public (and even worse, to the families of the murdered Americans) - that it was all driven by a video from some unknown California filmmaker? Here’s Rubio to Rose again:
It was clear from the very early moments after that attack that it was not a spontaneous uprising. It was a planned attack, well orchestrated by people that brought armaments to that attack that you would never see as part of a spontaneous uprising. And there was never, ever, any evidence that it had anything to do with a video that was produced by some guy out in California. And for them to further that narrative, and continue to do so well after it had become clear that wasn’t the case, is unacceptable. The American people deserve better, and the families of those victims in Benghazi deserve better.
When Rose reluctantly admitted that the accusation was that Clinton had done what she did to “help Barack Obama in his re-election campaign” Rubio continued:
That’s why everyone in the Administration did it. The narrative of their campaign at the time, Charlie, was that Al Qaeda was on the run and had been defeated. That was their narrative and this countered that narrative.
Now, of course, the events in Paris. As this is written CNN reports the Deputy Mayor of Paris is saying there are at least 118 dead, with the toll expected to rise. A concert hall isa scene of bloody carnage reminiscent of a “battlefield” - which, in fact, is what Islamic radicalism has made of the entire world. The President of France himself was inside a soccer stadium as three explosions went off, at least one from a suicide bomber. For the first time since World War Two, France is under siege. As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz among others are under intense criticism for insisting on building a wall along the southern border of the United States, France has instantly and summarily now sealed its own borders.
All of which turns to the question of just how the American media will ignore the inevitable bleats from liberals that Hillary is being picked on because she’s a woman. And focus instead on the fact that America has already been through one terrorist attack with Clinton in a position of authority. She lied about it, cooly and deliberately. Certainly the country doesn’t need any more of this willful lying from the Oval Office. Suffice to say, Margaret Thatcher she is not.
The Paris attack unfolds in the wake of fresh news about the FBI in to Clinton’s reckless handling of classified information as Secretary of State. Here’s Fox’s Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne on the subject. The headline:
FBI expands probe of Clinton emails, launches independent classification review
Herridge and Browne start off this way:
The FBI has expanded its probe of Hillary Clinton's emails, with agents exploring whether multiple statements violate a federal false statements statute, according to intelligence sources familiar with the ongoing case.
Fox News is told agents are looking at U.S. Code 18, Section 1001, which pertains to ‘materially false’ statements given either in writing, orally or through a third party. Violations also include pressuring a third party to conspire in a cover-up. Each felony violation is subject to five years in prison.
This phase represents an expansion of the FBI probe, which is also exploring potential violations of an Espionage Act provision relating to ‘gross negligence’ in the handling of national defense information.
"The agents involved are under a lot of pressure and are busting a—," an intelligence source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told Fox News.
The section of the criminal code being explored is known as "statements or entries generally," and can be applied when an individual makes misleading or false statements causing federal agents to expend additional resources and time. In this case, legal experts as well as a former FBI agent said, Section 1001 could apply if Clinton, her aides or attorney were not forthcoming with FBI agents about her emails, classification and whether only non-government records were destroyed. It is not publicly known who may have been interviewed.
In other words? Americans are learning that as Secretary of State, Clinton is being investigated for “gross negligence” in “the handling of national defense information.” And, of course, there is that small problem of truth-telling.
On the Hillary political front, this has already taken something of a toll. As the Weekly Standard reported here:
The most frequent words that come to mind when Americans think about Hillary Clinton are ‘liar’ and ‘dishonest.’ That's according to a new national poll from Quinnipiac that asked more than 1500 registered voters to say the ‘first word’ that comes to mind when they hear the Democratic presidential frontrunner's name.
So what do we have here? What we have is the “old news” that in fact, as demonstrated by the Hillary e-mails revealed at the Benghazi hearing, the former Secretary of State - accused decades ago by a Times columnist of being a “congenital liar” - has not changed her spots. Yet in spite of this, the liberal media, whom Marco Rubio labeled as Hillary’s real “Super PAC” is, as that Charlie Rose interview of Rubio illustrate, going to be resolutely defended.
Now comes Paris. And one of the very first “unintended consequences” will be a spotlight on the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton and her congenital inability to tell the truth even under the most dire circumstances that involved a terrorist attack.
The 2016 is going to intensify. On December 15th, CNN will sponsor the last debate of the year - a GOP debate in Las Vegas. Effectively, in short order America will shut down for the Christmas holidays, attention turning to the joys of family and faith. But make no mistake, when the 2016 campaign rolls back in to view after the New Year, there will be - there must be - a renewed examination of Clinton’s ability to act truthfully in the face of an unwavering enemy all too willing to anything and everything to win a war declared on America and the entire Western world.
In spite of protestations from the Clinton camp, it isn’t Republicans who are stalking Hillary Clinton – it’s the truth. And the slaughter of innocents in Paris on a November night is but the least of her problems - whether the liberal media wishes to acknowledge it or not.
