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POPSGoing After OPEC The real energy problem, in other words, isn't Big Oil; it's Big Government. As with so many other things, President Reagan got it right when, not even a week after taking office in 1981, he signed Executive Order 12287 decontrolling the price of oil and gas. He then ordered his secretary of energy to focus on encouraging U.S. companies to find and produce more. It worked like a charm, bringing oil prices down sharply and OPEC to its knees. By 1986, after a 74% drop in the price of oil, some even doubted OPEC could survive. Such would-be monopolies look invincible when demand rises and prices follow. But when supply increases, prices fall and members start cheating, they look pathetic. This pretty much describes the history of OPEC. Reagan's strategy of energy decontrol would work again today . But this time it's supplies, not prices, that need to be untethered.
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POPSHillary's Bitter Victory Is there any relief in sight? When will this thing end? The short answer to this question is no, there isn't. Watching this scene, I was struck suddenly by the genius of the Clinton campaign — and also felt myself beginning to understand why this Obama-Clinton contest may yet prove to be one of those defining cultural clashes that come along once a generation or so, like Bryan-Darrow or Ali-Frazier. what we have in Hillary Clinton: a once-in-a-generation political pugilist who, like her much smoother adversary, is amazingly capable of turning weakness into strength. Pitted against physical beauty and inspirational rhetoric, Hillary made herself the champion of everything stylistically ordinary, superficially unimpressive and ignored. And while her opponent won all the attention and admiration, all the teen-idol gushings of the beautiful people, she went for something deeper — resentment at the lack of those same things.
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POPSPrice Of Superdelegate Ybarra Vote $20M US, por favor The Democratic National Committee member doesn't parse his words when it comes to what he wants from Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton - an ironclad promise to spend that heady amount to register Mexican-American voters and get them to the polls in November. In a telephone interview Wednesday, he said he plans to remain undecided in the tight contest until "someone shows me the money." When will he settle on a candidate?
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POPS The Politics Of Freedom: David Boaz (continued) heading early Wednesday for a new round of speeches, rallies and town meetings in West Virginia, which holds its primary on May 13," The New York Times reports. "Highlighting the financial woes of her campaign, Mrs. Clinton has lent her campaign more than $6 million over the last month, according to campaign officials." "Republicans have been trying to drive libertarian voters out of their party. But so far Democrats aren't jumping on that opportunity."
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POPSSupreme Court Judges: Judge, Not Legislate But just as McCain has asked voters to check his opponents' track record, a glance at his is heartening. McCain, unlike a number of fellow GOP senators, voted in favor of Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. And as National Review Online's Jim Geraghty notes, McCain characterized as "a largely unknown quantity" George H.W. Bush's nomination of Justice David Souter — who now usually votes with the high court's liberal contingent. We know that Sens. Clinton and Obama want the federal judiciary to be a liberal quasi-legislature. McCain this week committed himself to buttressing the federal courts' integrity as what they were meant to be: nonpolitical tribunals, dedicated to upholding the Constitution.
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POPSIt's Barack, Like It Or Not
If the candidate were the screaming Howard Dean, the superdelegates could dump him with much greater ease. But with Obama, the race issue necessarily comes into play. It's hard to imagine a scenario now in which Obama doesn't capture the nomination, even if he continues to tank. If Hillary's resurgence continues, she'll have strong arguments in favor of her nomination, but they'll have to fall on deaf ears. If the pooh-bahs decide to throw Obama overboard after he has come so close to capturing the nomination, it is inconceivable to me that a large number of African-Americans -- not to mention the far left of the party -- won't believe he was robbed, in no small part because of his race. The nation can ill afford to endure such racial bitterness, but the Democratic Party may not survive with it. We all know the party depends on a statistically monolithic constituency in the African-American community, without which it couldn't even be competitive in national elections.
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POPSRezko, Wright, And Ayers If you are looking for the audio and transcripts of Pastor Wright's two sermons, they are here. In an effort to provide "context" I will try and obtain and play the entire audio of his NAACP speech from yesterday on today's program. (Michelle Malkin has a round-up on this astonishing speech.) If time permits, I'll replay the sermons as well, even though I played all the audio out there from both on Friday's program. They are the "primary documents" of the controversy, and deserve a wide audience. I suspect the pastor will make more news at the National Press Club, and I'll play that audio as well.
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POPSThe Democrats And Gun Control Mr. Obama's campaign Web site touts his belief in the Second Amendment rights to have guns "for the purposes of hunting and target shooting." Conspicuously absent is the right to have firearms to defend one's self, home and family. A presidential candidate could of course swear devotion to the First Amendment, while declaring that the amendment's purpose is to protect sports reporting and book collecting. And that candidate could still support government lawsuits against publishers, local bans on newspapers, and draconian restrictions on political commentary. Civil libertarians who supported such a candidate because of his alleged love for the First Amendment would be foolish. Civil libertarians who support Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton because of their purported fealty to the Second Amendment may be bitterly disappointed.
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POPSDemocratic Candidates Long To Renegotiate NAFTA U.S. manufacturing is not in decline. Quite the opposite is true. Output, revenues and profits in the sector all achieved records in 2006, and preliminary government data indicates that new records were set in 2007. American factories remain the world's most prolific, producing 2.5 times the value of Chinese output. ... Between 2000 and 2003 there was a pronounced manufacturing recession, during which 2.8 million jobs in the sector were eliminated. The two candidates extrapolate from that statistic to assert that 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000 on account of bad trade deals, like NAFTA, as though the trend were continuing. That's wrong. ... If trade had something to do with the loss of those 2.8 million jobs between 2000 and 2003, imports weren't the culprit. Manufactured imports did not increase at all during those three years. U.S. exports, however, dropped off by 11 percent during that precise period.
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POPSHow Obama Fell To Earth Obama's Capital Gains response last night still has to be one of the stupidest--and most revealing--answers ever given in a televised debate. Yes, he understands that Capital Gains reductions raises more revenue for the Government---but that's not the point; it is just so...."unfair" to have businesses making profits, even if it means the Government gets more money: more investments and profits means businesses can hire more workers and distribute dividends to our 401K's. It is so utterly obvious that Obama does not care about how much revenue Government does or doesn't raise: the point is to punish business and the middle class, no matter what it does to revenue; revenue is just the convenient excuse. The beauty of last night's debate is that the rest of the country knows this, and also knows that Obama has spent his entire adult life hanging out with known Communists, anarchists, terrorists, racists, and crooks. Yet the media is not supposed to ask about these associations?
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POPSPresidential Bid By Georgia Ex-Congressman Instead of siphoning votes from Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), Barr said that his support would come from “disaffected Republican voters, Ron Paul supporters and independent voters and Democratic voters who believe in a strong message of civil liberties.” To him, both the Republican McCain and Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) fail to offer “a real choice” in November, especially on his No. 1 issue, reducing the size of government. Of course, there’s the chance that Barr’s campaign won’t make much of an impact. “I can’t imagine Bob Barr or any other Libertarian candidate making any difference in this election,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report. “This is likely to be a massive-turnout election, which will wash out the impact of fringe candidates on either end of the spectrum.”
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POPSHillary Clinton Gushes Over Oregon's Green Leadership Clinton praised Portland for cutting its greenhouse emissions from 1990 levels. And she said she wants to get 25 percent of the nation's electricity from renewable energy such as solar and wind by 2025 -- which is called for in Oregon law. "Oregon is already doing it," she said. Michael Grainey, director of the state Department of Energy, said the 2005 federal law "clearly pre-empts" Oregon's authority to decide on an LNG project. But the state does have some ability under the coastal law to challenge the projects, such as the one proposed near Astoria.
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POPSCongress Is Full Of Bold-Faced Liars What’s the only thing worse than Republicans on a spending spree? Democrats on a spending spree. Or maybe Republicans on a spending spree when they know the Democrats are going to take the heat. Either way, your representatives in Washington D.C. are a bunch of dirty filthy liars. Take the time today, right now, to write to your representatives and let them know how you feel about what they are doing. They still need our votes to get elected, so what you say really does matter to them. How can the people who are supposed to be running the country on our behalf do such a crappy job and lie about it when the facts are so obvious. In 2004 the Democrats took control of congress promising to fix the earmark problem. Instead of fixing it, they are doing their best to outdo the spending of the Republican controlled congress before them. This isn’t a partisan problem, it’s a problem all Americans need to be aware of, and take action to fix.
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POPS58% Majority Of Voters View Clinton Favorably Or Neutrally…Media Refuses To Report It This is, of course, a fancy way of saying “we didn’t get the results we wanted the first time, so we went back and found some more black people who would tell us how much they hate the bitch.” With the right Wright answers finally in hand, the announced results found Mrs. Clinton with a 37% positive rating and a 48% negative rating. Obama had a 49% positive rating and a 32% negative rating. The national media spin of Obama thus continues with lame pundits convincing themselves that the country doesn’t mind the anti-White, anti-American rantings of the Democratic frontrunner’s chosen father figure and closest adviser since 1988. NBC, home of such translucent Hillary haters as Keith Blowbermann and the perpetually lipless Chris Matthews — joined with conservative mouthpiece The Wall Street Journal to produce a poll — prObama (in the case of NBC) and anti-Clinton (in the case of the WSJ).
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POPSBill To Open Refuge To Drilling If Crude Hits $125 "The goalposts of what's reasonable have moved quite a bit lately," Halff said. "One hundred and twenty-five dollars is just $15 away. It doesn't sound quite as farfetched as it did a few months ago." But environmentalists say they're confident that Murkowski and Stevens simply don't have 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster that would allow the bill to be heard. It's equally unlikely that a Democratic-led House of Representatives would even consider hearing the legislation, said Myke Bybee, a spokesman for the Sierra Club. "No amount of oil and no amount of money is worth despoiling the Arctic Refuge," Bybee said. "I don't think there's support for opening up a special place like the Arctic Refuge at any cost, at any amount of oil or at any cost of oil."
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POPS Judicial Watch: Obama ‘Intended To Leave No Paper Trail’ However, the Obama campaign said the senator’s records are available. “All of Sen. Obama’s correspondence with state agencies and records of requests Obama made to them on behalf of his constituents are available to the public and have been accessed by our opponents and members of the news media,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt. “Illinois State senators have limited staff – Obama did not have a scheduler – and so no detailed record exists of all of his daily activities in Springfield.” Fitton argues that Obama’s public accounts of what happened to his records do not mesh with information from the Illinois Office of the Secretary of State. Judicial Watch investigation “suggests” that the senator could have had his records archived in a way that would grant the public access to them. “It appears that Obama never kept records of his time in the Illinois state legislature, or he discarded them,” Fitton stated. “Either way, he clearly intended to leave no paper trail.”
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POPSGetting Poverty Wrong While they insist that strengthening labor unions or protecting homeowners from foreclosures will alleviate the hardships of the poor, the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census remind us that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, married family is a far greater contributor to poverty in America than many of the supposed shortcomings of our economy. It’s hard to imagine that America will make much more headway on reducing persistent poverty until it halts this long-term trend. The Census Bureau’s study on the living arrangements of American children appeared in mid-February. The data show that the number of children now living in two-parent families has dipped just below the 70 percent mark for the first time since the Census began collecting data on family formation nearly 130 years ago. Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to the decline of families headed by two married parents.
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POPSJudicial Watch Scrutinizing Clinton White House Pardon Fitton says the Rich pardon was particularly scandalous because of "copious" financial contributions made by Denise Rich, Marc Rich's ex-wife, to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and the Clinton Presidential Library foundation in the months leading up to the pardon. According to Fitton, the scandal is still relevant today in light of Mrs. Clinton's current run for the White House because the pardons are part of the experience which she widely touts in terms of her days at the White House. "The pardon scandal involved the entire Clinton family -- Bill, Hillary, Hillary's brothers, Bill's brother. Hillary herself was involved in the scandals, conveying pardon applications to Bill Clinton," Fitton contends.
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POPSClinton, McCain, Obama's Passport Files Snooped State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.
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POPSSamantha Power And Democratic Lies About Iraq (continued)>power in the Persian Gulf, possibly with a nuclear weapons capacity in the coming years. In an interview with the BBC program HARDtalk, Power was asked about Barack Obama's plan to remove American troops from Iraq. In her response, she described the candidate's tight withdrawal timetable as "a best case scenario," which he would "revisit" once elected. That sliced and diced answer prompted the show's host to inquire whether Obama's commitment to withdraw most soldiers within 16 months was, actually, no commitment at all. Power's reply was revealing: You can't make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009. He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan—an operational plan that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn't have daily access now, as a result of not being the president.
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POPSIs Obama Trying to Bamboozle Us We journalists merely opened it in the interest of providing voters with as much information about a candidate for president as could be found. And no journalist has put any words in Jeremiah Wright's mouth. Is Senator Obama suggesting that "we all come together" by burying the truth of his pastor's racism? This would seem to represent a rather chilling call to censorship, albeit delivered in a soothing, kind-mannered voice. When I visited Trinity United Church of Christ, I perused the titles in the church bookstore. Well, all of James H. Cone's books on black liberation theology were on prominent display, as were books by Malcolm X and black panther luminaries and Nation of Islam greats. Does Obama also expect us to believe that he never knew there were books glorifying violence and black supremacy racism in his own church's bookstore, even though he was a prominent member there for more than 20 years.
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POPSThomas Sowell ‘Non-Judgmental’ Nonsense Nor is his 20 years of going to a church whose pastor has praised Louis Farrakhan and condemned the United States in both sweeping terms and with obscene language. The Obama camp likens mentioning such things to criticizing him because of what members of his family might have said or done. But it was said, long ago, that you can pick your friends but not your relatives. Obama chose to be part of that church for 20 years. He was not born into it. His “personal” character matters, just as Eliot Spitzer's “personal” character matters -- and just as Hillary Clinton's character would matter if she had any. We cannot risk all that for the sake of the fashionable affectation of being more non-judgmental than thou.
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POPSTo Die For NAFTA Hillary won Ohio denouncing the NAFTA deal Bill Clinton cut. The lady gets it. McCain admits to knowing almost nothing about economics and is now being advised by my old friend Jack Kemp. In a Wall Street Journal essay bemoaning my views, Kemp concedes, "I'm on the advisory board of Toyota North America and now drive a hybrid Lexus." Ex-secretaries of state and Cabinet officers, ex-senators and congressmen, and ex-White House aides are getting rich working for foreigners who are carting off American jobs, American technology, American markets, American factories -- and America's future. Look at the Bush-McCain record: $4 trillion in trade deficits, $2.5 trillion in manufactures alone. One in every six manufacturing jobs, 3 million, gone. With America borrowing $2 billion a day to pay for foreign goods, we have seen a collapse of the dollar, the price of gold quadruple to $1,000 an ounce, oil soar to $107 a barrel and gas heading toward $4 a gallon.
3
POPSPlaying By Obama's Rules To observe Democrats this week, savaging one of their heroines, is to understand why the party is unready to rule. This week, after being subjected for 48 hours to accusations of divisiveness by Barack Obama, and racism by his agents and auxiliaries in the media, Ferraro resigned from Clinton's campaign. What had she said to send the Obamaites into paroxysms of rage? Obama's agents suggest that Ferraro deliberately injected race into the campaign. But this, too, is ridiculous. Her quote came in an interview with the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., not "Meet the Press." The attack on Ferraro comes out of a conscious strategy of the Obama campaign -- to seek immunity from attack by smearing any and all attackers as having racist motives. When Bill Clinton dismissed Obama's claim to have been consistently antiwar as a "fairy tale," and twinned Obama's victory in South Carolina with Jesse Jackson's, his statements were described as tinged with racism.
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POPSHillary's Unappealing Path It is not enough to be vetted. The goal is to be vetted and found clean. Though it is increasingly unlikely, Clinton may still have a path to the nomination -- and what a path it is. She merely has to puncture the balloon of Democratic idealism; sully the character of a good man; feed racial tensions within her party; then eke out a win with the support of unelected superdelegates, thwarting the hopes of millions of new voters who would see an inspiring young man defeated by backroom arm-twisting and arcane party rules. Unlikely -- but it would be a fitting contribution to the Clinton legacy of monumental selfishness.
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POPSDances With Mitt>>>How Long Will McCain Play Coy? On the other hand, the Pennsylvania primary in on April 22nd, and it seems likely that Hillary will make up some ground there, keeping the competition alive. Having a Romney underticket, with its implications for party unity would be an excellent contrast with the shambles apparent among the Democrats. Aside from the perceptual issues, fund-raising gets that much easier as well. My guess? Two to three more weeks before McCain announces Mitt as running mate.
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POPSBrokers On The NYSE Floor Break Into Applause As attorney general in 2004, Mr. Spitzer staged a press conference to announce the arrest of 18 people connected to an escort service operating in New York City that served as a front for a prostitution ring. "This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multi-tiered management structure," Mr. Spitzer, who oversaw the investigation, said in a statement at the time. "It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring, and now its owners and operators will be held accountable." While his announcement left his staff devastated, his enemies — many of whom Mr. Spitzer accumulated as attorney general when he convened high-profile conflict-of-interest investigations into Merrill Lynch, AIG, and other big-name firms — rejoiced. Footage reportedly showed brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange breaking into applause. http://www.nysun.com/article/72640?page_no=1
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POPSPrying The Nomination Away One Finger At A Time >>>Rich Lowry: Hillary Shameless Will to Power<<<< When Hillary said at the beginning of her campaign that she's in it to win it, she meant it. Hillary Clinton's shameless will to power will keep her in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to the bitter end, according to National Review Editor Rich Lowry. She's not electrifying on the stump, her campaign is dysfunctional, and truth be told shes not particularly experienced. What Hillary has is a shameless will to power, and a near lock on an old-school Democratic coalition built on working-class whites. Obama has downplayed the possibility of taking the vice presidential slot, but hasn't totally ruled it out, and until he does, doubts will remain about whether he has the stomach for what Hillary will drag him through.
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POPSCarbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must ACT NOW to address global warming." "It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves." The Earth has already warmed by 0.76 degrees Celsius (nearly 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Most scientists warn that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) could have serious consequences.
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POPSDownside Of Obama Strategy And Hillary's Advantage Even some Obama advisers see a real problem. "Ultimately, all that matters is how the nominee stacks up against John McCain," said one adviser "Right now, Barack is not connecting with the children of the Reagan Democrats. That's a real concern." Obama rejects the charge that he has failed to reach important segments of the party, noting that he has shown he can crack Clinton's coalition of working-class voters, women and Latinos with his wins in the bellwether state of Missouri, the swing state of Virginia and the Rust Belt redoubt of Wisconsin. He also showed that he can expand the battleground into the coveted Mountain West, with his convincing win in Colorado. "I don't buy into this demographic argument," Obama said. "Missouri, Wisconsin, Virginia -- in many of these states we've won the white vote and the blue-collar vote. "A lot of the states he's winning are states that we're not going to win in November. It's not a strategy that bodes well",said a Clinton supporter.
0
POPSClinton's One Plausible Path To The Nomination Barack Obama won 11 out of 11 primaries and caucuses from Super Tuesday to Feb. 19. Hillary Clinton won three out of four contests on March 4. Suddenly, the look and feel of the Democratic presidential race were different. Yet the delegate count has changed hardly at all. Three victories in four states with 370 delegates netted Clinton only about a 20-delegate edge, leaving her still about 100 delegates behind. On the night that John McCain officially clinched the Republican nomination, the course of the Democratic race seemed less clear and more fraught with peril than ever. All of this is a windfall, surely, for McCain -- unless he forgets that his party is in trouble and that he needs to make an affirmative case for himself and his policies. And loudly enough to overcome the din as Clinton and Obama pummel each other.
0
POPSBill Clinton: Hillary-Obama Ticket "Almost Unstoppable Force" Via the Page. Note the extent to which he volunteered her thinking on this. This report suggests that he offered this in an answer to a question. But Hillary floated this yesterday, and, now, Bill today -- and it's hard to imagine that both Clintons would be talking this up in tandem by accident. Separately, Newsweek's poll today finds that 69% of Dems support the idea. Late Update: Obama himself rejected the possibility that he'd serve as veep: Obama was asked by a television reporter, "Can you ever see yourself on the same ticket as Sen. Clinton?" And the freshman Illinois senator replied: "Well, you know, I think it’s premature. You won’t see me as a vice presidential candidate -- you know, I’m running for president. We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count."
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POPSClinton Branded A "Monster">Part2 Civil War Begins In response, a Clinton adviser said the attack reminded him of the witch-hunt led by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, which led to the impeachment of her husband, Bill, when he was president. Earlier, clearly rattled by the Ohio defeat, Ms Power told The Scotsman Mrs Clinton was stopping at nothing to try to seize the lead from her candidate. In recent days, the former first lady argued that Mr Obama was getting a free ride with the media and had hinted he was not ready to be commander-in-chief in a crisis. Mrs Clinton, asked about her national security qualifications, highlighted a series of events in which she played a role, including peace talks in Northern Ireland, the Kosovo refugee crisis and standing up for women's rights in China.
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