Hillary Clinton is a study in exactly what is wrong with the Democratic field of Presidential candidates. She leads a group of wannabes who can't quite come to terms with how they will handle what is the greatest issue facing us: combating terrorism and winning in Iraq.

The candidates are quick to say this is George W. Bush's war, and that's partially true as he did order an invasion of Iraq, but this is also a war all Americans are vested in. We were attacked by Islamists who will stop at nothing to attack again. The fact that they haven't again is a striking fact and one that says by being on the offensive, we keep groups such as al-Qaeda on the defensive.

Yesterday, the Senate, on a procedural vote, voted to defeat Russ Feingold's bill that would have effectively cut off funding for our anti-terror efforts by next spring. Clinton, as well as the other three candidates, voted for the bill and with the minority. That was purely a political vote and one that would not harm her campaign, it had no chance of passing. It's what Clinton said before and after the vote--her incessant flip-flopping--that shows she's just not ready for prime time. She is using that time-tested Clintonian technique of double-speak and evasion. The problem is that she's not as politically savvy as Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton "resents" the fact that George W. Bush said that our troops will still be in Iraq after he's out of office and calls for the president to "extricate" us from that nation:

"I think it's the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it - this was his decision to go to war, he went with an ill-conceived plan, an incompetently executed strategy, and we should expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office," the senator said this morning.

Let's examine what George W. Bush was left with when he took office from Senator Clinton's husband.

First, an emboldened Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, who saw the paper tiger that America had become. He successfully fought us in Mogadishu, Somalia; we cut and ran. He attacked sovereign U.S. territory in Dar es-Salaam and Nairobi and we responded by doing nothing. He attacked a U.S. warship, the USS Cole and killed nineteen U.S. Sailors and still we did nothing. He was offered bin Laden and chose not to take him.

Eight months after Bush took office, the Clinton failures came home to us big time.

Bush was also left a recession that by instituting tax cuts ended up being short-lived and a North Korean situation that Clinton made worse by agreeing to a ridiculous treaty.

The time is ripe for Mrs. Clinton to make her feelings known. As James Taranto (second item) writes today, she voted "with conviction" to send our troops into Iraq. Political expediency and a primary season that requires her to cowtow to the leftist base are forcing her to rescind her approval. Perhaps she'll show the real leadership she claims to possess by writing a bill that cuts off all funding for the war effort. Our troops will be forced to come home and she will have ensured that they will not be there if she wins the Oval Office. That sounds pretty simple to me.

Take all the polls, plus comments to Hillary/Bill blogs, and when you blend them together, we are looking at history in the making.

I like to believe that I can see the good and the bad in everybody, including those that support my beliefs. Those commenting on many of my articles would defend their candidate even if that candidate was caught with a million dollars in his freezer. Slim chance of that ever happening -- or is there?

A couple of days ago, I questioned the ethics of Bill Clinton giving speeches for money. Not just money but a lot of money. Now, I would vote for either Clinton for president. However, Hillary is not my first choice among the Democrats. Based on the comments I received, many thought that I was a Bush loyalist. I am not. My first loyalty is to my country, the United States of America. I am proud that in this country I can take a political position and not wind up in jail. I am proud that our Constitution protects those that do not respect the Constitution.

Regardless of party, we should all require that are candidates be ethical. The fact that the other guy steals or lies should not allow us to give our candidate a waiver on those issues. Simply following the law is not enough. Our president should be ethical.

The woman amazes me over and over again. Her husband leaves office and it appears that she had sacrificed a political career in order to help her husband succeed. Too late to start a career in politics. She decides to run for the U.S. Senate seat in New York. Give me a break. How can somebody from Arkansas get elected in New York? Rudy will kick her butt. Time passes, Hillary is Senator from New York. Next time out, she wins in a walk. Amazing!

Her husband is almost impeached for cheating on her. She absolves Bill of his sins. She allows the word to filter out that she will run for President. Suddenly, she is way ahead in the polls. Warning sign: Edwards Leads In Iowa Caucus Polls." Like I told my friends, Hillary will lose in Iowa and her status as front runner will begin to erode like the sands on the beach.

Again, I have underestimated Hillary. Yesterday, she went to Iowa and put on a show. The crowds were big and they wanted Hillary. She told them "its about time for a woman President." How does one argue that one. She accepts blame for President Bush escorting us into a war that has weakened the United States. Yes, she should have been tougher on George, but she trusted him. Yeah, right. She said "The President misused the authority the Congress gave him." Yesterday, Hillary was able to explain how she went from a supporter of the Iraq War to an opponent.

Finally, she let the crowd know that she is stronger than any guy running.

Hillary again tries to thread the needle as she once again explains, or more aptly, avoids explaining her anti-war vote (tip to CQ and Instapundit)

ABCNews' Eloise Harper reports: After fielding many questions ranging from mental health care to veteran affairs at a Town Hall Meeting in Hampton, NH, Senator Hillary Clinton received a heated question about Iraq. A woman who had traveled from New York asked Sen. Clinton if she had read the report given to her in 2002 on intelligence and the Iraq war.

Clinton said she had been briefed on the report, and the woman screamed back, "Did you read it?!" Notably uncomfortable, the Senator repeated that she had been briefed. This exchange went back and forth about three times.

The woman sat down and Clinton explained, "If I had known then what I know now, I never would have voted to give this President the authority." Clinton also said she believed she was giving the President the authority to send U.N. inspectors to Iraq.

It appears that Hillary's desire to be president has become a force of its own, destroying all efforts at even fake sincerity and logic.

Does anyone believe this? Is she attempting to say that Bush pulled a bait and switch on this bill? That Bush tricked her into signing a war authorization bill when she thought she was signing an inspection bill?

Never one to not politicize current events, Hillary Clinton used the recent vile attack on the 101-year-old New York granny, Rose Morat, as a political prop -- blaming President Bush for the attack:

The vicious mugging caught the attention of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who made it a part of her presidential campaign yesterday, blaming President Bush's cuts to community policing programs for recent spikes in crime and rising fear.

"We had a horrible mugging the other day in New York City. A 101-year-old woman in her walker was attacked," Clinton told the National League of Cities conference in Washington.

"That was on the front page of our papers. Imagine how that makes every widow living alone, every older person, everybody [feel]."

"We've got to get back to making crime reduction a No. 1 objective in our country," she said.

Very, very slick. I assume that she is talking about the the Bush administration's reduction of her (or was it Bill's?) COPS program, a grant program that pumped $10 billion dollars to the states for the hiring of 100,000 more police, in an effort to curb crime. Unfortunately (and counter to the claims of Bill and Hillary), as USA Today reported two years ago, the COPS program was a debacle:

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.

The Republican party is hoping that Hillary is the candidate they have to face:

Conversations with Republicans gathered here for the biennial Midwest Republican Leadership Conference reflect a party unenthused or just plain uncertain about their potential White House nominee. But GOP faithful also seem quite confident and even upbeat about the prospect that the senator from New York is, as Rove put it, the "prohibitive favorite to win the nomination."

That likelihood, they say, is good news for any hopes of keeping the White House and getting other Republicans on the ballot elected.

I tend to agree with that synopsis, Hillary is easily the most polarizing politician in the race. Republicans would vote for Stalin before Hillary and Democrats are mixed. Looking at the numbers, let's say that 25% of the nation is self-described Republican and 25% is Democrat, the Democratic party is split so figure Hillary gets 80% of that vote. Now, that leaves a large swath of undecideds who will dictate this election. Those middle ground people are the ones who will swing the results and I would hypothesize that the four years of George H. W. Bush, eight years of Bill Clinton and eight years of Bush 43 have left them a bit fatigued with the entire Bush/Clinton leadership paradigm.

The GOP nominee will be critical to how the election plays out. If it's Fred Thompson, all bets are off as he has not proved himself and the debates will be crucial. If it'sRudy Giuliani, I'd say he would win, just as I believe he would have beaten Hillary when she first ran for the Senate and Rudy bowed out because of cancer.

The Dems have had a chance to prove themselves and have disappointed the base greatly. Unless they can actually make things happen they promised in the campaign that brought them power, they are facing a huge schism that will tear them apart.

The primaries are playing out in an unusual fashion. The Democrats are locked in and the GOP nomination is up in the air between Thompson and Giuliani. The next several months will be very telling as to the direction of the general election.

Is Hillary Clinton's campaign playing fast and loose with donations? It sure seems that way, as the Wall Street Journal has uncovered some curious donations and they lead to one of Hillary's top fundraisers. The Paw family lives in a modest house and their income is not exorbitant. Amazingly, they've donated $45,000 to Hillary over the last two-years. It gets better:

The Paws' political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events.

...Lawrence Barcella, a Washington attorney representing Mr. Hsu, said in a separate email: "You are barking up the wrong tree. There is no factual support for this story and if Mr. Hsu's name was Smith or Jones, I don't believe it would be a story." He didn't elaborate.

Go right for the race card, hey Larry?

Anyway, this could hurt Hillary in ways that Edwards or Obama never could. This is not Whitewater or Travelgate, this is pure and simple cheating if the charges are true -- and the WSJ seems to have covered their bases well. Note the top donation people in the inset; they are all wealthy, where the Paw family is not. It warrants a serious look into the transactions to say the least. Let's watch this one.

Update (8/28/07 1836): Well don't ya know it, more irregularities with the Dems and their King Fundraiser. I. Am. Shocked!

Less than one year out from the first primaries and a new Zogby poll shows that Hillary Clinton has serious hurdles to overcome with the public:

The leading Democrat in the race can't feel much solace – nearly half (46%) said they have an aversion to voting for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. In a national Zogby telephone survey of likely Democratic primary voters in late February, she led the field of Democratic presidential candidates at 33%. It's no surprise Clinton has been written off by a vast majority of self-described conservative (70%) and very conservative (79%) voters, but even among moderate voters, 42% said they would never cast a vote to put Clinton into the White House.

42% of so-called "moderate" voters is a large number. They are not saying they would consider voting for her, they are saying they won't vote for her. Period.

While Newt ranked highest for the Republicans and Romney didn't do very well, they are second or third-tier candidates at best. Giuliani and McCain fared well and non-candidate Fred Thompson was not in the survey but I imagine he would poll very well.

On the Dem side, Obama and Edwards had good numbers, numbers that should cause Clinton to lie awake at night. Her campaign to this point has been disjointed at best, misguided at worst. She's running a typical Bill Clinton campaign; not locking herself in to any issues and speaking to both sides. That was effective in 1992 and 1996, the problem is that Hillary is no Bill Clinton and times have drastically changed. Her credibility is shot with the American people and with Barack Obama's arrival, it won't get any better unless she really takes off the gloves.

And this one was quite profitable to her and Bubba. They operated a family charity and made the faux pas of not reporting it:

The Ethics in Government Act requires members of Congress to disclose positions they hold with any outside entity, including nonprofit foundations. Hillary Clinton has served her family foundation as treasurer and secretary since it was established in December 2001, but none of her ethics reports since then have disclosed that fact.

The foundation has enabled the Clinton's to write off more than $5 million from their taxable personal income since 2001, while dispensing $1.25 million in charitable contributions over that period.

Let's reiterate that; they dispensed $1.25 million and wrote off $5 million. In other words, they paid out one quarter of what they saved. Now that's what I call charitable...to the Clinton's. Note that one of the donations was to a charity connected to the very same firm that allowed Hillary to make $100K in a cattle futures deal in which she put up $1000 (the check for the organization was "miscoded".

Note further that it's a true family affair, Chelsea Clinton is named as Director. It's nice to see them teaching Chelsea the secrets of the family business.

I guess one silver lining is that they blamed it on an oversight (repeated over five straight years) and not on an aide as is their usual modus operandi.

In the single most anti-climactic moment of recent politics, Hillary Rodham Clinton says she's a candidate:

"I'm in," she says in a statement on her new campaign Web site. "And I'm in to win."

Mrs. Clinton, 59, called for "bold but practical changes" in foreign, domestic, and national security policy and said that she would focus on finding "a right end" to the Iraq war, expanding health insurance, pursuing greater energy independence and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.

She also hit out at the Republicans by writing "I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine" -- a "machine" that was, of course, fueled by her husband lying under oath to a grand jury and the evidence of a single blue dress and a love-struck young woman who kept it.

This will be a contentious campaign for Clinton as she had two easy elections in New York state. The first against Rick Lazio was a great example of the New York media treating her with kid gloves. The national media hopefully will not be so gentle.

As David Knowles noted, Hillary showed all kinds of outrage that President Bush would commute the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby:

"Today's decision is yet another example that this Administration simply considers itself above the law. This case arose from the Administration's politicization of national security intelligence and its efforts to punish those who spoke out against its policies. Four years into the Iraq war, Americans are still living with the consequences of this White House's efforts to quell dissent. This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."

I wonder if she'll show equal outrage with these Presidential pardons:

• Interstate transportation of stolen property, 18 U.S.C. § 2314; money laundering, 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(b)(i); engaging in a monetary transaction with criminally derived property, 18 U.S.C. § 1957
• Perjury and conspiracy to commit mail fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 1623
• Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute cocaine, possession with intent to distribute cocaine, use of a telephone to facilitate cocaine conspiracy, 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(a)(1), and 843(b)

And the list goes on and on. How could the President get away with this and we heard nary a peep from Sen. Clinton? Because it was her husband--Bill Clinton-- who issued the commutations or pardons.

Look at the statement by Clinton above, it's pure red meat for the rabid left-wing base and all of it is false. What dissent has been "quelled?" Ask any liberal that and they will stand with their mouth agape unable to answer it. How exactly has the President "punished" those who opposed him? I know these are tough, maybe impossible questions to answer, but I didn't bring them up.

'When Marc Rich was pardoned (that story went away quite quickly, did it not?), was that not proof that in the Clinton administration "cronyism and ideology trump(ed) competence and justice."? He is a man that committed some serious crimes and then fled the country to avoid prosecution. His wife was a major campaign contributor and appeared with the Clintons often. Would not that make her a "crony?" Spare me the empty rhetoric and faux outrage, Hillary. Your husband let drug dealers, armed robbers and assorted other hoodlums off the hook while President Bush commuted the sentence of a man who did the exact same crime as your husband.

I'm sorry, my outrage meter didn't even tick above 0.001.

I'm still rather stunned at how early this 2008 presidential contest is starting. It's still a political lifetime until November 4th, 2008 -- but the frenzy on the Web and in the media makes it seem like the election is just a few months away.

There is no doubt that the media's rapture over Barack Obama led to Hillary declaring last weekend. But her reasons for declaring early are more financial than voter orientated. The media attention that Obama was getting brought him big money donors -- donors that Hillary thought she would get when she announced in a few months. More importantly, Hillary feels that she is (and deserves to be, gosh darn it!) the media's candidate -- and would be, if not for that pesky Barack. So her friends in the media are starting to help her.

There was a poll taken in December in Iowa that had Obama tied with John Edwards at 22%, with Iowa's own Tom Vilsack at 12% and Hillary in fourth at 10%. With Iowa still, in many people's eyes, the big dog in the early primaries, Obama took his showing as evidence that he had a national following big enough to support a run for president in 2008, leading to his declaration.

In the seedy underworld of Democrat politics, Hillary won out as highest bidder for the support of a group who Obama was in talks to put on retainer:

February 15, 2007 -- Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign reached a deal to pay a key South Carolina black leader's consulting firm more than $200,000 just days before he agreed to endorse her run for president, it was revealed yesterday.

The arrangement involves South Carolina state Sen. Darrell Jackson, a well-connected African-American leader and pastor whose support is coveted by national campaigns.

How interesting that a leading Democrat in a crucial state would not consult for the first major African-American candidate. I'm not one to say that he should support Obama strictly because he is and African-Amercan, yet it does seem a bit odd.