Thinking Out Loud - Hillary Clinton

You know what amazes me about the American people? Not only are we strong, independent, rugged and innovative, but we also tend to have short term memories. Or maybe its just our collective use of selective amnesia.

Here we are in 2008, in the midst of a Presidential campaign, finding ourselves in a brouhaha concerning whether or not Hillary Clinton is an honest person. There are polls galore asking if they find the candidates honest. In one such poll during the North Carolina / Indiana Democratic Primaries, 54% of people questioned Hillary's honesty. All because of a comment she made about a sniper incident in Bosnia in 1996. It was explained by her campaign and supporters as her simply "misremembering" the event. And if this wasn't enough, she reported on a young woman who died because she didn't have health insurance; which was later discovered to be erroneous. But she explained this away as well by saying someone had told her the story wrong.

Now, for our part as Americans with selective memory. This isn't the first time this woman has been caught in a lie or exaggeration or a "misremembering." She has been doing it for well over a decade.

TravelGate, the first scandal to hit the Bill Clinton administration. Hillary played a central role in the firings and then made false statements about her involvement. Independent counsel Robert Ray concluded that she had made factually false statements, but there wasn't enough to prosecute.

Whitewater. Remember that little scandal back in the early days of the Clinton Presidency? Documents that were willed to the Library of Congress by Sam Dash (ethics counsel for Kenneth Starr), who passed away in 2004, show that Hillary had lied about her involvement as legal counsel for the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association; as well as the money she made doing so. Prosecutors also determined that she had lied, under oath, about her legal involvement in another real estate venture (Castle Grande).