Today's Blogs

Hillary, Lies, and Videotape

Hillary Clinton gets caught lying about her trip to Bosnia, French president Nicolas Sarkozy flirts with boycotting the Beijing Olympics, and David Paterson fesses up, again.

Lies and videotape: Hillary Clinton apologized Tuesday for having repeatedly describing a trip to war-torn Bosnia thusly: “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” The destination in question was Tuzla, Bosnia, and the year in question was 1996. Here’s how Clinton really touched down, with nary a marksman in sight but a nice little greeting ceremony, after all.

Anchoress asks: “Does Hillary not realize that a thing called the internet has come along? Does she not realize that if she stands at a podium and tells a dramatic tale of ‘flying in under evasive action’ someone is going to look for the news stories about it?” Ed Morrissey at Hot Air writes: “Now, if she really felt like she was in danger, why would she leave her daughter out in the open on the tarmac, let alone that little girl? That’s the question Wolfson can’t answer, and why he’s probably buying Rolaids by the case this week.”

John Aravosis at liberal AMERICAblog cites Clinton’s mea culpa—”last week, you know, for the first time in 12 or so years I misspoke” —and thwacks her for it: “Last week? That’s simply a lie, and at this point Hillary knows it. She said it four times over four months. She sent out scores of aides to defend the comments—comments she said FOUR TIMES. And now expects us to believe that she only said it once a week ago, so it was a slip of the tongue (mind you, it was a minute long slip of the tongue)?”

CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow thinks: “This whole faux-military, faux-commander-in-chief Hillary charade reminds me of Sen. McCain’s GOP-debate zinger earlier in the campaign. When asked about Hillary’s ridiculous earmark for the Woodstock museum, McCain replied that he didn’t know much about it. He said he was ‘tied up at the time.’ Voters remember stuff like that. They will remember Hillary’s Bosnian delusion. They will remember Obama’s Reverend Wright controversy, too.”

And Jules Crittenden writes: “I hate to get particular about this kind of thing. It’s one thing when John Kerry makes much of the wartime command he bailed on. Reasonable people can debate whether three-scratches-and-a-sayonara commends someone for the position of commander in chief or not. It’s another thing altogether to lie about war experiences when you’ve never heard a shot fired in anger.”

Read more about Hillary’s Bosnian adventure.

Sarko the strong: Meanwhile, French president Nicolas Sarkozy is getting praise for saying that he’s not averse to boycotting the Summer Games in Beijing because of China’s awful human rights abuses.

Philip Hersh at the Chicago Tribune’s Globetrotting is pleased: “Political protests do not taint the Olympic torch or the relay, which, ironically, was an idea conceived by a German for the 1936 Nazi Olympics. They show the torch as a powerful symbol of moral authority that is tarnished by being linked to China. …. Sarkozy, a conservative, publicly suggested Tuesday that he might boycott the Beijing opening ceremony. That is the kind of statement democratic leaders need to make, especially when the IOC leadership stands mute.”

Mad Minerva 2.0 spots some dodgy media coverage: “Now observe more carefully the words in the BBC headline: ‘Sarkozy threat to Olympic opening.’ Hmmmm. SARKO is the threat? Apparently the democratically elected leader of a free European nation is the ‘threat’ when he wants to voice his opinion about a situation that has attracted the condemnation of numerous world leaders. Oh, the threat can’t possibly be an autocratic dictatorship using bloody force in a location it has seized and deliberately subjected to cultural mutilation.”

However, Joshua Keating at FP Passport is skeptical that Sarkozy is engaged in more than mere “window dressing.” He cites French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s comments that “There are a lot of good ideas that can’t be put into practice,” and replies: “Sounds like somebody got a talking to. This isn’t the first time that Kouchner’s idealism has taken a back seat to his boss’s more pragmatic priorities.”

Read more about France’s possible Olympic boycott.

Oh, and one more thing: Finally, New York Gov. David Paterson, who fessed up to extramarital affairs on his first days in office, has now copped to doing blow in his youth.

Robbie Cooper, a conservative military vet from Austin at Urban Grounds, says: “If this guy came out next week and admitted to engaging in child sex trafficking in Thailand back when he was younger, I wouldn’t bat an eye.” And at Blackline, Nonso Christian Ugbode snarks: “It is understandable that the governor is laying all his cards on the table, however one does wonder how many cards he’s got to go. I just wanted to save the governor some more time by coming forward myself before some reporter discovered our love. However I am ready with a nice tweed Chanel suit, just in case the governor needs me to stand by him at a press conference revealing our past times.”

While liberal Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft calls the admission “refreshing” and says, “I’ll take more like Paterson please.”

Read more about Paterson’s cocaine use.