United Liberty

POLITICO published two pieces focused on President Obama and prospective 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s relationships with the press.

In “The White House Beat, Uncovered,” POLITCO asked members of the White House press corps to describe their experience dealing with the Obama Administration and charted their responses on a massive infographic. My description here won’t do the image justice, so I encourage you to check it out.

Highlights:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) dropped a bombshell during yesterday’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing by entering another new post-Benghazi email into the record.

The email, references discussions between the State Department and Libyan ambassador to the United States. The email was previously referenced by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), but Chaffetz read it for the committee and subsequently entered it into the record.

“The subject line is ‘Libya update’ from Beth Jones. The date is September 12, 2012 at 12:46 pm. There’s a paragraph in here that I think is pertinent to our discussions today,” said Chaffetz. “It’s referencing the Libyan ambassador: ‘When he said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told [the Libyan ambassador] that the group that conducted the attacks — Ansar al-Sharia — is affiliated with Islamic extremists.’”

If former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) doesn’t run and Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) hasn’t recovered enough politically, Wall Street Republicans are ready to rally behind Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, according to a report this morning from Politico:

The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.

“If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that and either outcome would be fine,” one top Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer said over lunch in midtown Manhattan last week. “We could live with either one. Jeb versus Joe Biden would also be fine. It’s Rand Paul or Ted Cruz versus someone like Elizabeth Warren that would be everybody’s worst nightmare.”
[…]
Instead, the donors, financial executives and Washington representatives offered a consistent refrain: If we can’t nominate someone like Bush or Christie from the pro-business wing of the party, and if the GOP nominee is from the far right, then we will hold our noses and tolerate Clinton.

“Most people in the industry find her approachable and have a track record with her,” one Republican financial services executive said. “They wouldn’t align with her on every policy, but they won’t view her as hostile to the sector. If it turns out to be Hillary walking away with it, there would not be any panic.”

Up until now, Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and likely 2016 presidential contender, had been pretty quiet about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programs, despite the issue constantly staying in the news cycle.

But, nearly a year after revelations, Clinton has finally shed some light on where she stands on the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs. You’ll be entirely unsurprised to learn she’s much more interested in shooting the messenger, Edward Snowden, than appalled by the fact the federal government is spying on its citizens:

“People were desperate to avoid another attack, and I saw enough intelligence as a senator from New York, and then certainly as secretary [of State], that this is a constant—there are people right this minute trying to figure out how to do harm to Americans and to other innocent people,” Clinton said. “So it was a debate that needs to happen, so that we make sure that we’re not infringing on Americans’ privacy, which is a valued, cherished personal belief that we have. But we also had to figure out how to get the right amount of security.”

As for Snowden’s role in exposing the NSA programs, Clinton insinuated that she found his motives suspicious.

Today in Liberty is a daily roundup of recent political news and other interesting stories presented with liberty-minded commentary. We frequently keep tabs on liberty-minded politicians and candidates in these updates. We also inject some humor on occasion. Click here to receive Today in Liberty every weekday morning via email.

— Harry Reid is the new hotness: The Senate majority leader is the villain in this year’s mid-term election, in case you haven’t already noticed, and he’s one that can be used in both House and Senate races. “A GOP strategist said Pelosi is still No. 2 on the list of liberal villains that scare conservative donors into action, after President Obama. But others say Reid has become a more compelling bogeyman,” The Hill explains. “The main reason? Pelosi no longer runs the House after the GOP reclaimed the lower chamber in 2010. Republicans have been unable to strip Reid of his majority leader title, but they think this will be the year they do that.”

— Al Gore is still around: And he’s stull super serial about climate change. After three  pretentious opening paragraphs, Politico Magazine catches us up on what former Vice President Al Gore is doing these days and his frustrations with the lack of action on climate change. Basically, big money and the Koch brothers are blamed. Oh, and when asked if he’ll run for president again, Gore said this: “I am a recovering politician. And the longer I avoid a relapse the more confidence that I will not succumb to the temptation to run yet again. But I’m a recovering politician. I’ll just leave it at that.”

A reporter asked a State Department spokeswoman early this week to name some accomplishments that come out of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR).

“Off the top of your head, can you just identify one tangible achievement that the last QDDR resulted in?” Matt Lee asked.

“Well, Matt, obviously it’s an extensive, expansive topic…,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki replied before being cut off. The two went back and forth for a moment before the frustrated, skeptical reporter said that he “won’t hold [his] breath” for an answer to his question.

While this is just one video, it is the latest in a series of similar responses to a similar question: “What exactly are Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments?” It’s like that scene out of Office Space in which the “Bobs” quiz Peter, the protagonist of the movie, on the ins and outs of his job at Initech.

When she’s not avoiding questions about the 2012 attack on the American outpost in Benghazi, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is dodging shoes, apparently. Or at least that’s what the ex-diplomat did yesterday during a speech in Las Vegas:

The woman who threw the shoe rushed past security to get into the conference and was arrested. Clinton managed to get out of the way. This is at least the second time she has had to avoid projectiles. During a 2011 trip to Egypt, protesters threw tomatoes and other objects at Clinton’s motorcade.

“There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.” — Margaret Thatcher

— February jobs numbers above expectations: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 175,000 jobs were added in February, which is above expectations. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 6.7%. The labor force participation rate remained steady an anemic 63%. The December and January numbers were revised upward by a total of 25,000 jobs.

CBS News notes that documents show that the Clinton administration was warned not to promise Americans that they would be able to keep their doctors under Hillary Clinton’s healthcare reform proposal. “That would have been good advice for the Obama administration 20 years later,” says CBS News, “before the President repeatedly made this promise.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) wasn’t impressed by National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s defense of the narrative that the White House tried to create immediately after the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.

In the days after the attack, the White House and other senior administration officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-U.N. Ambassador Rice, tried to spin the attack as a spontaneous protest to an anti-Muslim YouTube video that went awry. But that narrative was false.

Gowdy, who has been a critic of the administration’s handling of Benghazi, leveled Rice during an appearance on Fox News on Monday, telling host Greta Van Susteren that the National Security Advisor’s comments this weekend on Meet the Press were “stunningly arrogant.”

“There was no evidence to support that false narrative of a video, not a scintilla of evidence. All of the evidence pointed exactly to what she claimed it wasn’t, a pre-planned, coordinated attack,” Gowdy told Van Susteren. “She was fabulously wrong when she said it the first time, and stunningly arrogant in her refusal to express any regret for lying to our fellow citizens.”

Gowdy said that he “would love the chance to ask follow-up questions” to Rice, adding that Meet the Press host David Gregory “apparently did not avail himself of that opportunity.”

“Greta, I just listened to the clip,” Gowdy said, “I get tougher questions in the Bojangles drive-through than he asked her.”