The papers in the UK are going nuts over the revelation that Diana was not only under U.S. electronic surveillance the night she died, but also bugged prior. Speculation is that she was to visit the U.S. and stay with the very rich Republican Teddy Forstmann.

Mickey Kaus has dug up a 2006 piece in the New York Daily News in which it was revealed that Diana wanted to marry a U.S. politician and live in the White House. Imagine, Diana, a woman who captivated Americans nearly as much as the Brits, marrying a Republican who was said to be planning a run against Hillary in 2000 for Senate. He would have been an instant front-runner for the presidency.

Kaus asks the right question:

What was the grave high-level concern about Forstmann, a big-deal investor, Republican, and education activist? ... What, were they worried Diana might endorse school choice?*** ... And did they have a warrant? ... Plus, of course: What did the Clintons know, etc.?...

More importantly, why did Clinton choose to allow surveillance on Diana who we knew was not a threat yet failed to approve the proper surveillance on bin Laden who had shown that he was. At the time Diana died, al-Qaida had already made their intentions known and indeed were planning the attacks on the American embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi.

Also, as AJ Strata alludes to: how will the Democrats explain that it was allowable to spy on Diana and not al-Qaida and Osam bin Laden? What about FISA? The NSA is kinda, sorta working on a denial.

With the high profile aspects of this case and the dogged nature of the British press, this one can not be swept under the carpet by the NY Times and WaPo.

Former President Bill Clinton is getting paid extremely well for speaking. (Try to remember that there were some who would have paid him to stop speaking at some Democratic events when he was president.) Last week, Rudy Giuliani decided to stop receiving payment for speaking because he was officially announcing for president. Rudy was making $100,000 for his speeches but he asked the Federal Election Commission for a ruling on a payment that was still due him since he was not an official candidate.

"Presidential candidates who are not federal officeholders are allowed to take money for speeches, as long as they are not raising campaign money at the event, distributing campaign material or delivering an overtly political speech."

Now, back to Bill Clinton. He is receiving up to $650,000 per speech. Pretty nice. Why would he ever want to hold a federal office again? However, I do have a problem: Hillary Clinton is an officeholder. And a presidential hopeful.

As I listened to talk shows and read the paper, it is clear that Hillary Clinton has an excellent chance to get the presidential nomination. I am not one of those believers. However, I am hearing that Bill Clinton could be a problem for her. In fact, one conservative talk show host agreed with a caller who suggested that Hillary might select Bill as the vice president. Problem with that line of thinking is that the Constitution prevents it. A vice president is subject to the same qualifications and restrictions that the president is. In other words, since Bill has served two terms, he cannot run for president or vice president.

Many conservatives think they can scare the voters by bringing up the name of Clinton and associating him with Hillary. I believe that he is her strength. Al Gore never saw that. He distanced himself from Bill Clinton and took opposition positions. Was he right? He lost. I don't care how close he came, he lost.

In 1982, the Republicans took on an old, fat guy and made him the whipping boy. It was a mistake. People loved Tip O'Neil and the Democrats prevailed in that election. They are mistaken if they take on Bill Clinton. He is supported by the vocal majority.

It's clear now that Bill will go the distance to put his wife in the White House:

Bill Clinton's connections, and his endless supply of chits, only begin to capture his singular role in his wife's presidential candidacy, advisers and friends of the couple say. He is the master strategist behind the scenes; the consigliere to the head of "the family," as some Clinton aides refer to her operation; and a fund-raising machine who is steadily pulling in $100,000 or more at receptions.

So far, his roles have unfolded in private as he provides ideas to his wife and makes sure she paces herself, and as he acts as something of a field general with donors, instructing them on how to talk up Mrs. Clinton. Eventually, though, he will go public in a big way: Clinton advisers can already imagine a point in 2008 when Mr. Clinton has his own campaign plane, press corps and schedule of events in crucial states while Mrs. Clinton is barnstorming in others.

The interesting question is whether Bill Clinton would have won in 2000 had he been able to run for a third time. Those who say "yes" think it was a mistake for Al Gore to sideline him. Those who say "no" think Al Gore was right to sideline him but went too far in supporting him during the impeachment scandal and fatally wounded himself.
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His name sends shudders through the spine of every Democrat. He is the Rasputin behind the most diabolical President since Richard Nixon. He is more evil than Newt Gingrich, Ken Starr, and Ann Coulter put together. So, the question is, how can the Democrats come up with someone like Karl Rove?

Maybe they already have.

Before Rove helped George W. Bush reclaim red-state America, Bill Clinton was shocking conservatives by doing something no Democrat had achieved since 1976: Win elections. Clinton betrayed his party on welfare and gays in the military, and his image seemed less "Don't Stop" and more "Your Cheatin' Heart," but he picked up Southern states en route to two electoral victories.

The man knows politics, and it's sad his successors don't. Bob Shrum is 0-for-8 running presidential campaigns. Al Gore thought it was a good idea to put Naomi Wolf on his campaign payroll. John Kerry flip-flopped his way to defeat.

Good advising goes a long way, and perhaps Bill will be able to work the same wonders as Hillary Clinton's campaign guru that Karl was able to do with Bush.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the sentiment behind the bold campaign pledge. Stir emotion, think big, utilize the "bully-pulpit." But so often these grand pronouncements turn into little more than hollow, "read my lips" assurances. Today's bluster comes from Hillary Clinton.

"We're going to have universal health care when I'm president--there's no doubt about that. We're going to get it done," the New York Senator and front-runner for the 2008 nomination said.

Of course, Mrs. Clinton assures us that she's smarter now than she was in '93 when the insurance industry easily squashed her first attempt to reform health care. Well, here's hoping that she has some sort of secret strategy, because it will take a good one. While John Edwards has laid out a very detailed plan, which boldly includes raising taxes, Mrs. Clinton continues to downplay the specifics.

The reason she hasn't "set out a plan and said here's exactly what I will do," Clinton said, is that she wants to hear from voters what kind of plan they would favor.

Yikes. The listening tour continues. Does it trouble anyone else that she's promised universal care without having come up with a stated blueprint for how to achieve it?

It has long been rumored that Hillary doesn't take too kindly to anyone crossing her, and when they do it's usually not a pretty sight. That rumor has come to fruition with this story from the reliable Politico site, in which Hillary forced GQ magazine to spike a story discussing dissension in the Hillary camp:

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president learned that the men's magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton's aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

There was once a time that a magazine had editors and journalists with backbone who would run the story regardless of what they were threatened with. If the story was sourced well, then there was no fear of any legal retribution. That died when Michael Isikoff's piece on Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was witheld by Newsweek and Drudge ran with it launching him into the stratosphere. The liberal media became the personal mouthpiece of successful Democrats and it helped give rise to blogs such as the one you are currently reading. People wanted new forms of inforantion and the MSM's reluctance to report the good and bad about people like Clintoncontributed greatly.

Hillary will indeed be the nominee and eventually will have to answer straight-forward questions while trying to lurch back to the middle from the far-left position she has staked in the primaries. It will be interesting to see if any of the leading liberal media outlets have the guts to challenge her or if it will be left to traditionally centrist or conservative outlets. My guess is the latter.

Hillary Clinton should be thanking her lucky stars that Larry Craig's Bathroom Abuse landed on the frontpages of the nation this week, of all weeks. If not for Craig, the ongoing unfolding revelations about Norman Hsu would be above the fold. The latest is that he has turned himself in to authorities in California, for an outstanding warrant from 15 years ago.

Hsu, who a judge ordered handcuffed, faces a grand theft charge. He is being held on $2 million bond. A bail hearing is scheduled for Sept. 5th, where a judge may consider reducing his bail to $1 million.

Hsu signed on to be a Clinton "HillRaiser," a group of individuals who pledged to raise at least $100,000 for the New York senator's presidential run. He has helped raise or donate money for many Democrats, including Clinton (during her presidential run), Obama (during his 2004 U.S. Senate run) and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Former President Bill Clinton delighted his Harvard audience on Class Day Wednesday in Cambridge. Clinton addressed the graduating seniors of the Harvard Class of 2007, a day before the university held its commencement. And he alluded to his wife Hillary's presidential campaign.

"And I think women should run everything," Clinton told the crowd.

Harvard has chosen Drew Gilpin Faust as its first female president. Will U.S. voters choose Clinton's wife as the nation's first female president in 2008?

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The "anyone but Hillary" wing of the Democratic party needs to find a new candidate. Fast. Barack Obambi Obama is just not going to cut it. He's got the charm, he's got the poise, he thinks fast on is feet. That's carried him far, but do the Democrats really want to put him up against a Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson.

The debate Tuesday Barack Obama gave Hillary Clinton a nice opening and she took it:

The question that sparked the controversy at Monday's debate seemed simple enough: Would the candidates for president be willing to meet, within their first year in office, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?

Obama said yes, while Clinton said no, arguing that the president should only meet with world leaders who are hostile to the United States after lower-level diplomatic contacts are conducted. In an interview today with the Quad City Times, Clinton more directly criticized Obama's answer.

"I thought that was irresponsible and frankly naive," Clinton said, according to a story posted on the newspaper's Web site.

There are several interesting things about this. One is that the campaign is going negative, they're going negative on foreign policy and experience, and that Hillary is the one here carrying the knife. That has not been their pattern to date, but this opening was probably just too good to pass up.

There a great column over at OpinionJournal.com by Peggy Noonan that sums up Hillary and the tactics and strategy that she unveiled this week. Noonan notes that the slash-and-burn politics that was devised by Paul Begala, James Carville, and Syd Blumenthal during Bill Clinton's national political career is being perfected by the Hillary campaign. And its first target is Barack Obama.

It started with Hollywood mogul David Geffen, a former Friend of Bill to the tune of $18 million and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. Geffen had the temerity of calling the Clintons what they are: crooked and ruthless. Hillary's main hitman, Howard Wolfson, struck back not at Geffen, but at Obama, whom Geffen is supporting. Wolfson's retort was classic Clinton -- Obama should apologize, return Geffen's money, etc. But that Hillary (and nothing happens in her campaign without Hillary approving it) should respond so quickly and viciously to Geffen's comments is telling.

First, as Noonan posits, it shows that Hillary is afraid of Obama. It's why she entered the race several months early -- she couldn't stand having Obama get all that good press coverage, which she thought was her birthright.

ABC's The Note is always an interesting read, and this morning it is no different. Rick Klein starts today's edition with the following:

Everyone hear that? That was the $32.5 million sound of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's inevitability melting away in the summer heat. Clinton aides can talk about polls, endorsements, and even trot out (as they are today) the single most popular Democrat on the planet, but that ignores the inconvenient fact that no actual human being has technically voted yet. As for some other measurements -- energy, enthusiasm, and (of course) financing, the edge at this mid-year moment belongs to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

ABC's political reporting comes from a consistently left-of center angle, so I feel comfortable that the Democratic intelligentsia is overwhelmingly looking at this moment as being a "Bill rides to the rescue of Hillary" moment. The point of the piece is to set up Bill Clinton's return to the presidential campaign stage for his wife this evening at 8:30pm at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Ostensibly, one of Bill's duties this evening will be to help stop the Obama Juggernaut before it starts to effect Hillary's poll positions.

"Privatization is off the table." So were the words of Hillary Clinton in a clear rebuke of President Bush's failed Social Security plan as she spoke to the AARP this week. Since the overhaul of Social Security has been on the minds of some of the American public in light of the possibility of the program going bankrupt in the near future, it should come as no surprise the Clinton would weave social security into a campaign issue, but it would seem that her position is little more than maintaining the status quo.

As the AP reported, Clinton pledged not only to not privatize any parts of social security, but also not to cut any benefits nor to increase the retirement age. Clinton has stated her answer to the woes of social security system is to provide better fiscal management. How she plans to do this was not explained.

President Bush made plans for an overhaul of security failed, but his plans and ideas never made it into law because there were 11 million senior citizens ready to vote against the GOP if they perceived that they would be losing their promised benefits. It would seem that Clinton is positioning herself with this voting block of those who would prefer the status quo to continue. How this will save the potentially bankrupt Social Security system is never addressed.

Despite the negativity in the air on the campaign trail there is mercifully still some room for levity and the humor has centered on the first true, major question of the 21st century...If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, what will everyone call Bill? Will he be the First Man? The First Spouse? The First Laddie, as Mr. Clinton previously joked?

The topic of Mr. Clinton's role in the White House pops up now and then and this week Fred Thompson jokingly mentioned that NRA convention that his wife would make a better "First Lady" than Bill Clinton. Mitt Romney has said that in terms of First Ladies, his wife would be much prettier than Bill Clinton. In a recent interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, said that he would "slit his own throat" at the prospect of being called the "First Husband." (Ouch).

The campaign trail has heated up recently in terms of inflammatory rhetoric as the controversy over the Move On advertisement has led to a great deal of animosity on both sides that has resulted in a lot of terse exchanges. Because of this, the campaign trail has taken on a somewhat grave tone. Thankfully, there exists some room for levity and it is appreciated.

Hillary is feeling her oats and believes she is the front-runner. That's arguable as most candidates are in the midst of fleshing out their platforms and Barack Obama is shoring up some serious support.

Of course Hillary, being Hillary, believes she is the one who can slay the evil Republican ogres:

"I know what Gingrich tells people privately, I know what DeLay tells people privately, I know what Karl Rove tells people privately," she said. "I'm the one person they are most afraid of. Bill and I have beaten them before, and we will again."

Let's parse that, shall we? Gingrich led a Republican revolution that rose to power in Congress in 1994. It was a massive show of emotion from the electorate and illuminated exactly what Americans thought about Bill Clinton's first two years. Gingrich was later to leave as a result of Republican pressure, but was not "beaten" by the Clinton's. Tom DeLay was also not "beaten" by the Clinton's, he left under a cloud of scandal but it had nothing to do with Hillary or Bill.

Finally, Karl Rove. Rove was the architect of a strategy that beat Al Gore in 2000. Gore should've beaten Bush soundly, yet the taint of the Clintons forced him to eschew them on the campaign trail. Bush then beat Kerry in 2004 even though Bill Clinton appeared at fundraisers for him.

So, to sum up, Hillary Clinton is attempting to show that she can beat the Republicans and thus should be the candidate. You'd think she would've come up with people she actually defeated to crow about.