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Andrew Malcolm posts on the Clintons’ hard choices.

… Ever the gallant husband, Bill Clinton was defending Hillary’s oopsey-do claims on her book tour that the couple was “dead broke” in 2001, struggling just like ordinary Americans to get mortgages on their two mansions and finance Chelsea’s private school. It wasn’t easy, Hillary said in that flawed interview with ABC News.

Like hell it wasn’t.

They walked out of the White House into multi-million dollar book contracts and fees for a single speech that exceeded several years’ earnings for most Americans. Terry McAuliffe, their political money man who’s now Virginia governor, put up more than a million as bridge loan for one house down-payment.

Hillary and Bill both boast of having millions in debts when entering private life. Which is true. But where did those debts come from? Well, uh, mountainous attorney fees for numerous actual and alleged wrongdoings while occupying the Oval Office and other rooms.

One of the more humorous evergreen characteristics of Democrats in politics is their genetic need to claim humble beginnings and to apologize for being rich beyond the wildest dreams of the little people they claim to so devotedly defend. …

Hillary Clinton’s defense of a child rapist in 1975 gets the Continetti treatment. And you can listen to newly unearthed tapes with Hillary laughing about her defense strategy.

The facts are these. In 1975, before she married Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham defended a child rapist in Arkansas court. She was not a public defender. No one ordered her to take the case. An ambitious young lawyer, she was asked by a friend if she would represent the accused, and she agreed. And her defense was successful. Attacking the credibility of the 12-year-old victim on the one hand, and questioning the chain of evidence on another, Clinton got a plea-bargain for her client. He served ten months in prison, and died in 1992. The victim, now 52, has had her life irrevocably altered—for the worse.

Sometime in the mid-1980s, for an Esquire profile of rising political stars, Hillary Clinton and her husband agreed to a series of interviews with the Arkansas journalist Roy Reed. Reed and Hillary Clinton discussed at some length her defense of the child rapist, and in the course of that discussion she bragged and laughed about the case, implied she had known her client was guilty, and said her “faith in polygraphs” was forever destroyed when she saw that her client had taken one and passed. Reed’s article was never published. His tapes of the interviews were later donated to the University of Arkansas. Where they remained, gathering dust. …

Jennifer Rubin says Hillary was part and parcel of the administration’s Iraq policy.

As I have written, the Obama/Hillary Clinton cover story that Iraq wouldn’t let troops stay behind (or even more outlandishly that the George W. Bush administration put Bush’s successor in a position where the United States “had” to get out) is at odds with reality.

A reader points out the Obama/Clinton cover story was recently blown up by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Graham, along with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), had gone to Iraq on behalf of the administration trying to secure a stay-behind force. Take three minutes to listen to Graham’s blow-by-blow account. Three things are clear:

The principal Iraq leaders all agreed to a stay-behind force and warned the administration not to bring the issue up with its parliament.

When Graham asked Gen. [Martin] Dempsey in the discussion how many forces we would have, he had no clear answer.

The number of troops was reduced not by Iraq, but by the White House.

Obama then insisted he had to go to parliament and without its approval (which wasn’t forthcoming) it was impossible to leave troops –  any number — behind. In all of this, Graham points out that the administration “got the answer they wanted.” Remember this was a campaign promise — to get all the troops out. Obama was to run for reelection as the guy who ended wars and had decimated al-Qaeda. (Recently Obama decided — with his policy in shambles — that parliament didn’t need to vote on an immunity deal for our 300 advisers.) …

Peggy Noonan writes on Hillary and her book.

… Mrs. Clinton seems to have a peculiar and unattractive relationship with money. She wants it and she doesn’t want you to know. She also appears to think she’s entitled to it, as a public servant who operated at high levels. But public servants now are less like servants than bosses.

When an interviewer compared her to Mitt Romney in terms of wealth, she got a stony look. That is a “false equivalency,” she said. You could see she feels she should not be compared to a wealthy Republican because she’s liberal and therefore stands for the little guy. So she can be rich and should not be criticized, while rich people who have the wrong policies—that would be Republicans—are “the rich” and can be scorned and shamed. This is seen by some as hypocrisy but is more like smugness. …

… As for the book, it is actually the first I have encountered that was written so a politician could say, “I wrote about this at length in my book.” It exists to offer a template for various narratives and allow her to suggest she’s already well covered the issue at hand, which the interviewer would know if he were better informed.

It is written in the style of the current Ladies’ Home Journal in that it patronizes even as it panders. It is an extended attempt to speak “their language,” the language of a huge imagined audience of women. There are silver linings of defeat. She brims with ideas, advocates, gets to yes, chooses her own team. There are clear-eyed assessments and daunting challenges. The State Department neighborhood is known as “Foggy Bottom.” She proudly quotes a speech she gave in 2008. “You will always find me on the front lines of democracy—fighting for the future.”

Ladies and gentleman, that is the authentic sound of 2016. Shoot me now.

Why do Democratic politicians talk like this about themselves, putting themselves and their drama at the ego-filled center, instead of policy ideas, larger meanings, the actual state of the country? In this she is just like Barack Obama.

Free Beacon reports UNLV students incensed over Hillary Clinton’s speaker’s fee.

The University of Nevada-Las Vegas is set to host Hillary Clinton on October 13 as their speaker for their UNLV Annual Foundation Dinner. Clinton will be paid $225,000 to address attendees at the fundraiser. Her sky-high speaking fee has raised eyebrows and caused a stir on the UNLV campus.

UNLV student government leaders expressed their outrage at the university’s decision to pay the former Secretary of State such a hefty fee. “We really appreciate anybody who would come to raise money for the university, but anybody who is being paid $225,000 to come speak- we think that’s a little bit outrageous. And we would like Secretary Clinton, respectfully, to gracefully return the money back to the university or to the foundation,” Daniel Waqar, Public Relations Director for the UNLV Student Government, told Jon Ralston on Ralston Reports.

UNLV Student Body President Elias Benjelloun agreed and weighed in on Clinton’s controversial speaking fee. “We’re excited that Hillary Clinton would come to the university to fundraise on behalf of our university. We’re excited anyone wants to come to UNLV and fundraise on our behalf. When we heard $225,000, we weren’t so thrilled…We’d hope that Hillary Clinton…returns part or whole of the amount she receives for speaking,” he said.

Carl Cannon posts on the 15 most annoying political phrases.

… 2. “AT THE END OF THE DAY” When Bill and Hillary Clinton arrived on the national scene, they brought pizazz to politics. They also popularized this unfortunate phrase. “At the end of the day” is simultaneously addictive and grating. Its first usage can be traced to 1826, although it really caught on in the 1990s. In Britain, it so offended BBC host Vanessa Feltz that she issued a fatwa against the phrase, which she rescinded when no guest was able to speak aloud without using it. In this country, it quickly spread beyond the Clinton circle. Everyone says it now: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, baseball players, football coaches, prosecutors, bartenders, movie stars. In 2004, an organization called The Plain English Campaign surveyed its members in 70 countries and pronounced it “the most irritating phrase in the English language.”

1. “FOLKS” U.S. presidents love this word, which they find, well, folksy. It’s been invoked by our chief executives some 4,400 times since Herbert Hoover occupied the Oval Office. Bill Clinton loved “folks” so much he used it publicly eight times during his last month in office. But it’s proliferating. George W. Bush used it 21 times in his first month as president. Then he started misusing it. His most discordant example was his reference to “al-Qaeda, the very same folks that attacked us on September the 11th.” There must be something in the White House water supply because Obama matched Bush’s January-February 2001 record by saying “folks” 21 times in only two debates with Mitt Romney. The first time he used it in the Oct. 22, 2012, debate was the most jarring. Discussing military intervention in Syria, Obama said he wanted to make sure “we’re not putting arms in the hands of folks who eventually could turn them against us or allies in the region.” At least he didn’t say, “Look, frankly, at the end of the day—as Ronald Reagan knew—Syria is a no-brainer.”

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Glenn Reynolds posted on the two Watergate-era heroes who died last week;

…Howard Baker, who famously asked “what did the President know and when did he know it?” and Johnnie Walters, the IRS Commissioner who refused to go along with Nixon’s efforts to target his enemies. Both were Republicans who stood up for the rule of law.

Where are the Democrats willing to stand up for it under this Administration?

More on Johnnie Walters from Jim Taranto.

In the scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS commissioner refused to play along with a corrupt administration, the New York Times reports. A White House aide handed him a list of 200 political “enemies” the president wanted investigated. In response, the commissioner asked: “Do you realize what you’re doing?” Then, he answered his own rhetorical question: “If I did what you asked, it’d make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic.”

The White House aide’s reply was “emphatic,” according to the Times: “”The man I work for doesn’t like somebody to say ‘no.’ ”

The commissioner went to his boss, the Treasury secretary, “showed him the list and recommended that the I.R.S. do nothing.” The secretary “told him to lock the list in his safe.” Later, he retrieved the list and turned it over to congressional investigators.

It’s enough to restore your trust in the government–except that it happened more than 40 years ago. The corrupt order was delivered by John Dean in September 1972. The commissioner, Johnnie Walters, eventually “testified to various committees investigating alleged Nixon misdeeds,” the Times reports. “He left office in April 1973.” He died Tuesday; the Times article we’ve been quoting is his obituary. …

… Four decades ago, during a Republican administration that was brought down by corruption, the IRS turned out to be a bulwark of government integrity. Today the possibility remains that the IRS itself is the source of the corruption. As we’ve repeatedly argued, that would be even worse than an IRS that follows corrupt orders from the president. A corrupt administration can be replaced, as Nixon’s was. It’s harder to see what can be done if a vital and permanent institution of the administrative state has been corrupted.

Even the liberals on the Supreme Court cannot countenance presidential power plays. John Fund posts on the 12th and 13th unanimous ruling in the last two and a half years.  

Did you know the Obama administration’s position has been defeated in at least 13 – thirteen — cases before the Supreme Court since January 2012 that were unanimous decisions? It continued its abysmal record before the Supreme Court today with the announcement of two unanimous opinions against arguments the administration had supported. First, the Court rejected the administration’s power grab on recess appointments by making clear it could not decide when the Senate was in recess. Then it unanimously tossed out a law establishing abortion-clinic “buffer zones” against pro-life protests that the Obama administration argued on behalf of before the Court (though the case was led by Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley).

The tenure of both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder has been marked by a dangerous push to legitimize a vast expansion of the power of the federal government that endangers the liberty and freedom of Americans. They have taken such extreme position on key issues that the Court has uncharacteristically slapped them down time and time again. Historically, the Justice Department has won about 70 percent of its cases before the high court. But in each of the last three terms, the Court has ruled against the administration a majority of the time. …

Kimberley Strassel writes on the president’s enablers.

… In the history of this country, there was one thing on which Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, could regularly agree: Nobody messes with Congress’s powers. Political parties were happy to rally votes for a president’s agenda, to slam his opponents, to excuse his failings. But should that president step on Congress’s size 12 toes, all partisan bets were off. …

 

… Name a prominent Democrat—name any Democrat—who has said boo about the president’s 23 unilateral rewrites of ObamaCare. Or of immigration law. Name any who today are defending constituents in their districts against the abuses of the Obama IRS. A few congressional Democrats got their backs up with the White House over possible Syria action, but they are dwarfed by the majority who’ve gone silent over Mr. Obama’s national-security policies—which they once berated George W. Bush for pursuing as an “imperial” president.

The main culprits here are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Ms. Pelosi, who’ve put themselves and their caucuses at the disposal of the White House. Winning political battles—sticking it to the GOP—is their priority, not constitutional balance. Mr. Reid has made himself White House gatekeeper, sitting on thorny votes, earning Congress public scorn for dysfunction. His members are meanwhile happy for Mr. Obama to pervert the law, since it saves them taking tough votes.

It hasn’t helped that much of the institutional memory of the Democratic Party has retired or died this past decade. Nearly half of today’s Democratic Senate was elected with or since Mr. Obama and has never known institutional leadership. …

Philip Klein explains how the recess appointments ruling bolsters Boehner’s suit for presidential usurpation.

A unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court on Thursday invalidating three of President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board bolsters House Speaker John Boehner’s effort to sue Obama over his abuse of executive power.

Liberals have consistently dismissed as political posturing any charges by Republicans that Obama has violated the U.S. Constitution by frequently bypassing Congress. But the decision in the NLRB v. Noel Canning case shows that there’s more to the GOP’s claims than liberals care to acknowledge.

The case goes back to January 2012 when Obama, frustrated by his inability to get his pro-union nominees to the NLRB confirmed, made three appointments to the board tasked with adjudicating labor disputes – even though the U.S. Senate said it was still in session.

In a 9-0 decision authored by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, the court held that, “the Senate is in session when it says it is” and thus, Obama “lacked the power to make the recess appointments here at issue.” …

WSJ reports we’ve been voting for butter.

Changing views of nutrition are turning butter into one of the great comeback stories in U.S. food history.

Americans this year are expected to eat an average of 5.6 pounds of butter, according to U.S. government data—nearly 22.5 sticks for every man, woman and child. That translates to 892,000 total tons of butter consumed nationwide, an amount not seen since World War II.

Americans in 2013 for the third straight year bought more butter than margarine, spending $2 billion on products from Land O’Lakes Inc., OrganicValley and others, compared with $1.8 billion on spreads and margarines, according to IRI, a market-research firm.

The revival flows in part from new legions of home gourmets inspired by celebrity chefs and cooking shows with butter-rich recipes. Butter makers have encouraged the trend, using food channels and websites to promote what they say is their products’ natural simplicity. …