Subject: Correct The Record Wednesday July 9, 2014 Afternoon Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2014 13:39:08 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

**

*Correct The Record Wednesday July 9, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:*

*Tweets:*

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton worked to expand the
State Children's Health Insurance Program, covering more kids #HRC365
http://1.usa.gov/1fEDOXf <http://t.co/P5Fm81Upqr>[7/8/14, 8:03 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/486661826696843264>]

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: "After 45 years in the public eye
Hillary can still be the candidate of the future"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-d-rosenstein/the-media-obsession-with_b_5564233.html
…
<http://t.co/HmPg6qyMaJ> [7/8/14, 5:55 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/486629567042310144>]

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: Republicans seek $3M for Benghazi
committee after 8 other committees held hearings.
http://correctrecord.org/new-benghazi-house-select-committee-will-cost-taxpayers-3-million/
…
<http://t.co/UTIZNzPjpz> [7/8/14, 3:07 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/486587302882197504>]

*Headlines:*

*Salon: “Pat Buchanan: I don’t see a single GOP candidate who could beat
Hillary”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/07/09/pat_buchanan_i_think_hillary_will_win_in_2016/>*

[Subtitle:] “A populist conservative might beat Hillary, he tells Salon --
while taking on MSNBC, McCain, the Tea Party and more”

*Washington Examiner: “What the Hawaii Senate race tells us about the
Democratic Party”
<http://washingtonexaminer.com/what-the-hawaii-senate-race-tells-us-about-the-democratic-party/article/2550653>*

“Hanabusa endorsed Clinton in 2008 in Hawaii's Democratic primary, and she
did so again — and heartily — when the topic was raised during the debate
Monday.”

*The Day of New London (Conn.): “Clinton supporters wait in line for
tickets to upcoming Madison book-signing”
<http://www.theday.com/article/20140709/NWS01/140709689/1047>*

“R.J. Julia Booksellers sold hundreds of copies of Hillary Clinton’s ‘Hard
Choices’ — or actually tickets to the potential Democratic presidential
candidate’s July 19 book-signing here — over a three-hour span this
morning.”

*The Day of New London (Conn.): “Madison bookstore to host Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.theday.com/article/20140708/NWS01/140709708/1047>*

“Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will appear at a
book-signing here July 19, R.J. Julia, the independent bookstore, announced
in an email Tuesday evening.”

*Associated Press: “Hillary Clinton Plans St. Paul Stop On Book Tour”
<http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/07/08/hillary-clinton-plans-st-paul-stop-on-book-tour/>*

“Clinton is due to appear July 20 at Common Good Books, a store launched by
another prominent Democrat — Garrison Keillor.”

*ABC News: “Hillary Clinton Offers No Documents to Rebut Criticism of Hefty
Speaker Fees”
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/hillary-clinton-offers-no-documents-to-rebut-criticism-of-hefty-speaker-fees/>*

“Hillary Clinton insists that she donates fees for giving speeches at
colleges and universities but still has not released documents to back up
her claims.”

*Democracy Now!: “WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Responds to Hillary Clinton:
Fair U.S. Trial for Snowden ‘Not Possible’”
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/9/wikileaks_julian_assange_responds_to_hillary>*

“Assange responds to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent
comments that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should
return home to face trial.”

*Vanity Fair: VF Daily: Sally Kohn: “The One Thing Republicans Must Do to
Have a Credible Shot at Defeating Hillary”
<http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/07/hillary-clinton-republican-women>*

“Ayotte and Martinez in particular should be rolling off the tongues of the
Republican chattering class as they name top contenders for the
presidential ticket. But they aren’t.”

*Politico: Morning Money: “Does Hillary want a tax cut? — Citi close to $7B
settlement — Ex-Im could ride on CR” [PARTIAL]
<http://www.politico.com/morningmoney/>*

“… It seems like Hillary Clinton is not too happy with the higher rate on
income and lower rate on capital gains and other investment income…”

*Articles:*

*Salon: “Pat Buchanan: I don’t see a single GOP candidate who could beat
Hillary”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/07/09/pat_buchanan_i_think_hillary_will_win_in_2016/>*

By Scott Porch

July 9, 2014, 8:30 a.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] A populist conservative might beat Hillary, he tells Salon --
while taking on MSNBC, McCain, the Tea Party and more

After losing the presidential election in 1960 and the California
governor’s race in 1962, Nixon famously told reporters: “You won’t have
Nixon to kick around anymore.” Soon after, he set up a law practice in New
York, where he largely stayed out of the spotlight.

A few years later, Patrick J. Buchanan, a young editorial writer in St.
Louis, told Nixon at a local Republican gathering that he wanted to work on
what he felt certain would be Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. When
Buchanan joined Richard Nixon in early 1966, he wasn’t so much joining
Nixon’s staff as he was Nixon’s staff.

Nixon’s improbable rise from the has-been heap to the White House is the
subject of Buchanan’s new memoir, “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon
Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.” Buchanan talked to Salon
about the Republican Party’s turnaround in the late 1960s, Hillary
Clinton’s presidential prospects in 2016, and what Eric Cantor’s recent
primary loss means for immigration policy.

-----

*When you started working for Nixon in 1966, you were not as lined up with
him ideologically as you might have been. Were you conscious of that, or
were you looking more for a winner than an ideological match?*

I was a very strong conservative in journalism school and at the St. Louis
Globe-Democrat and a very strong Goldwater supporter [in 1964]. I was glad
he won the nomination. I was elated when he won the California primary over
Rockefeller. My feeling at that time was that Goldwater was our candidate.
Nixon had lost twice and I liked Nixon — always had, I had caddied for him.
But I just thought that was over, so I was for Goldwater.

When Goldwater lost, I looked at the field and said I’d like to get
involved in politics. There were only two credible candidates: I didn’t
think Rockefeller could get nominated, and the most credible candidate and
the one who had been out there strongest fighting for Goldwater and the one
who I agreed with most on foreign policy was Richard Nixon.

Were we in 100 percent agreement? No, not at all. I was known as the
conservative in the Nixon camp.

*Was Barry Goldwater too conservative to get elected president in 1964, or
do you think there were other reasons why he lost that election?*

I think there are several. First, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and
the rise of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was not like Kennedy and was sort of an
ideal opponent for Barry Goldwater. I don’t think Barry Goldwater,
incidentally, would have beaten John F. Kennedy, but I don’t think it would
have been that tremendous loss that occurred. With Kennedy’s assassination,
the country didn’t really want to change presidents three times in one
year. Second, Johnson was bombing North Vietnam in 1964, taking a very hard
line, and taking a very hard line on law and order. Goldwater was not as
dramatic a contrast. Third, the senator made a lot of mistakes. Fourth, the
Republican Party was split and torn apart in that ’64 convention at the Cow
Palace [in San Francisco].

I think all of those reasons contributed, and I do agree with this: The
country was not ready for Barry Goldwater conservatism in 1964.

*Did you think a winning Republican in ’68 would either have to be less
conservative or a conservative wolf in sheep’s clothing?*

[Laughs.] What I felt was we couldn’t nominate and elect a man as visibly
conservative as Barry Goldwater, and we had to go with the next best thing,
which was Richard Nixon. I thought Nixon undeniably was more experienced
and able and competent a campaigner and executive than Sen. Goldwater, and
I thought looking at 1968, if you looked at the entire field, Richard Nixon
was far and away the most conservative of the candidates.

*I never really thought about 1968 as a less conservative field than ’64.*

In 1968, Ronald Reagan was enormously attractive. He was attractive even
before he was elected because of that 1964 speech [at the Republican
Convention]. And then he won California [as governor in 1966] by a million
votes, and a lot of conservatives I knew would have moved to him. I was far
more fearful of a Reagan challenge than the Romney-Rockefeller wing of the
party.

*When you joined Nixon in 1966, did you think he would probably run for
president?*

When I went and talked to him, I said, “If you’re going to run for
president in ’68, I would like to get aboard early.” That’s in December of
1965. And he said, “Before any decisions are made about ’68, we’re going to
have to rebuild the base of this party in 1966 or the nomination isn’t
going to be worth anything.” He only hired me for one year to work on his
columns, handle his mail in his office, and the duties — as you find out in
the book — expanded dramatically.

He had a tremendously successful year in 1966, and I think he was primarily
responsible, if any individual was, for the tremendous showing of the
Republican Party, and he put everything out there on the line. It’s one
thing I admired about Nixon. Whatever you say about him, he was a fighter
and he was a loyalist and he went out for every Republican running in 1966
except for members of the John Birch Society.

Your book has a bibliography, and you quote a number of great books. I feel
like we don’t see this approach enough in political memoir.

I talked to Jules Witcover the other night. He wrote “The Resurrection of
Richard Nixon.” I had contributed to that in interviews with him over the
’66 to ’69 period and afterwards. I got a lot out of his book and other
books, and I figure you ought to credit the people who have refreshed your
memory.

*Have you heard or read much of the most recent batch of Nixon tapes?*

If you know the history of it, you know that I recommended that Nixon
destroy the tapes. After [Alexander] Butterfield testified that there were
tapes, I wrote a memo to Nixon saying you have to maintain the tapes that
[John] Dean described and you have to maintain the foreign policy tapes
that are critical, but as for the rest, I would destroy them.

*Historian Douglas Brinkley has said that the main reason Nixon made the
tapes was for his foreign policy legacy. Do you see it that way?*

I think that’s one thing. But let me tell you one other that has not been
reported very much or hardly at all. When we started the administration,
[William] Safire, [Ray] Price and Buchanan — the senior speechwriters —
were assigned to various meetings to come in as a reporter would. Mine was
congressional leadership. What we were instructed to do was write down
anecdotes and stories and decisions just as a reporter would. We would
write all those down; some of mine were 10 pages single-spaced. I just
smoked through the typewriter, had them retyped, and then I’d edit them.
And I would send them across to [H.R.] Haldeman for the files.

My assumption was that they were for two purposes: one, if there was a
dispute over what somebody said, they could go to those files, and two,
that [Nixon] would have the record when it came time to write his memoirs.
At some point, we were called and told to stop covering the meetings.

*Because they were then being taped?*

That is my conclusion, that at that point the tapes were put in, and they
were voice-activated so everything said was being recorded.

Former presidents typically go through several seasons of historical
assessment — memoirs by White House aides, then National Archives records,
then seeing how their policies turn out. What do you think the arc of the
history of the Nixon administration has been? Obviously, it started at a
low point.

That’s a very interesting question. When I was very young, my father was
interested in politics. He was hard-line anti-FDR and anti-Truman, and I
remember when Truman departed, he was below Nixon in approval. His
presidency was considered a disaster, he had lost both houses of Congress
in ’52 and the presidency to Eisenhower. He was considered in his second
term very much a failed president.

Truman has been resurrected to where many historians say he’s in the top 10
and a near-great president. Ronald Reagan because of what followed with the
collapse of the Soviet Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
economy had been booming under Reagan, so he has really risen to the point
where — of course, conservatives put him among the greats, but even
liberals are not objecting to near-great.

*What about Nixon?*

With Nixon, there’s only two things people think about: China and
Watergate. My period working with him was almost nine years, and Watergate
did not occur until almost the seventh year of that. I think there’s going
to be a dramatic reassessment of Nixon. In his first term, I think it’s
fair to call him a near-great president.

There was the historic opening to China, the greatest arms control
agreement since the Washington Naval Agreement of 1921-22 with the
Russians, the first president to go behind the Iron Curtain to countries
there. In October ’73, he saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and he
brought Egypt out of the Soviet orbit and into the Western orbit. He ended
the War in Vietnam, as he promised to do, with all provincial capitals in
Saigon’s hands. He brought the POWs home. He ended the draft. He enacted
the 18-year-old vote. He created the EPA, whichwhen it started was a good
agency with conservatives agreeing with much of what it was doing. He
created the Cancer Institute. He created OSHA. He was the president who was
there when we put men on the moon.

I saw in a review of my book by the Economist magazine, which said that if
Nixon had not run for a second term, he would be a hugely successful
president. I remember Hugh Sidey wrote in 1972, which was before Watergate
broke, that Nixon had presided over the cooling of America after the
horrendous decade since Kennedy was assassinated and the riots and the
disorder and assassinations, and the social/cultural/moral revolution, the
upheaval on campuses, and a violent, divisive war. And I think that was
right. But then came Watergate, and I think that blots out in the public
mind — because of the focus on it — almost everything that happened in the
first term but China.

*Are you planning to write a second book about the Nixon years?*

I sat down to write and started going through my files. There were all
these interesting things that had happened and that nobody knew about and
nobody has written about. And I thought this was a book in and of itself:
how Nixon came back and what he accomplished after his own crushing defeats
in ’60 and ’62 and the [Republican] Party’s crushing defeat in ’64. When
everybody is talking about the Republican Party going off the cliff and
being dead for a generation, and he pulled it all back together.

He pulled the Rockefeller-Scranton-Romney wing back in under the tent,
brought in the Goldwater wing and the Reagan wing, put it all together and
sought to split off the Southern Protestants and Northern Catholics [from
the Democrats]. While he succeed with that in ’68, he did succeed by ’72.
It’s an incredible achievement.

You could be accused of cherry-picking the good part of the Nixon story,
but I don’t hear you saying that’s why you stopped where you did.

It’s the 40th anniversary [of Nixon's resignation]. People have asked me to
go on TV to talk about the pardon and other things. I did it as sort of a
natural breakpoint. It is a separate, unique story after two crushing
defeats and giving up politics and moving to New York and then the crushing
defeat of the Republican Party [in 1964] to the point where the Republicans
were outnumbered more than 2-to-1 in the House, more than 2-to-1 in the
Senate, more than 2-to-1 among the governorships, and 2-to-1 in the state
legislatures. Nixon pulled the pieces together to bring himself to the
presidency of the United States in that turbulent decade. That is a story
itself.

*MSNBC ended a long relationship with you in 2012. Have you been invited on
MSNBC to talk about the book?*

I have not been invited by MNSBC yet, but we have some things scheduled on
CNN and Fox and Fox Business.

*Do you feel like you’re getting a rough treatment?*

I don’t know. I’m sure that our people will be talking to them, and there
are some shows that I think might be interested, although they have a
different point of view clearly than Fox and others, especially about Nixon.

*If you were building a Republican challenger from scratch to take on
Hillary Clinton in 2016, what would that person look like?*

I thought she ran a great campaign [in 2008]. I don’t think her record as
secretary of state or the Obama record is something she can run on. I think
she’s had a very bad book tour; it’s not a scintillating book, it’s not
done her much good, and all the comments about the money and how poor they
were have approached the ridiculous and been damaging.

However, I think as of today she would probably win the nomination, and as
of today I think she would win the presidential election. Do I see a single
candidate who has many of the things I would like to see in a Republican
presidential candidate who could really rally the country and win the
election? No, I don’t.

*What kind of GOP candidate could beat her?*

I would say a populist conservative who is going to bring jobs back home to
the United States, who is going to seal and secure the border, who is not
going to grant amnesty, and who is going to get the United States out of
all these wars and all these commitments to protect everybody on earth
against any and all attacks. It would be a very dramatic break of the
policies of both national parties.

I believe a lot of the ideas I ran on [for president] in the ’90s like
nonintervention in foreign wars that are none of our business, securing the
borders, which I argued for 25 years ago, and stopping the export of U.S.
manufacturing jobs to China and Asia. All these things are now current and
much stronger than they were then. I think you need a fighting, populist,
conservative campaign aimed at the working and middle class where you tell
some of the Fortune 500 folks that you guys are going to have to spend a
little time in the back row.

By most accounts, Hillary Clinton was an aggressive proponent of military
intervention as secretary of state.

Look, if she wants to go fight wars around the world I would say, “No,
we’re not going to do that anymore.” We did it under Bush and look what
happened.

*Does Rand Paul look as much like an ideal challenger as anyone?*

I think his reluctance to send troops to intervene in places like Syria and
Ukraine and Georgia and where else the John McCain-Lindsey Graham coalition
wants to send them — I think he’s right on the mark there.

Eric Cantor’s loss in light of some data points in the weeks since appears
to be a fluke. Is that your assessment?

No, I don’t think so. My assessment is that Eric Cantor got hurt badly by
the perception that he was for amnesty on the immigration issue. The Tea
Party may have lost in Mississippi [in the Senate race], but the impact of
these races is on policy in the House; immigration is off the table. I
think that’s [David] Brat’s success.

*“Amnesty” is a loaded word. Shouldn’t we have an immigration policy that
deals with the people who are here in a way that reflects the fact that
they are here?*

The first thing you do is secure the border. You enforce e-verify with
businesses who are breaking the law as much as any illegal immigrant is
breaking the law. When that is done, then you take a look at these other
matters. Until that is done, I would have no amnesty. People say they are
living in the shadows. They broke into the country; they’re living outside
the law. That’s what they chose to do.

*You haven’t slowed down. Are you happy to continue working and writing and
doing what you’re doing for the indefinite future?*

[Laughs heartily.] I don’t know how long the indefinite future is going to
be! I enjoy writing. I enjoy communicating in interviews and on TV. I’m not
seeking a permanent TV slot where I have to go in every day. Doing what I’m
doing right now, doing this book tour — I enjoy these things. I always have.

*Washington Examiner: “What the Hawaii Senate race tells us about the
Democratic Party”
<http://washingtonexaminer.com/what-the-hawaii-senate-race-tells-us-about-the-democratic-party/article/2550653>*

By Rebecca Berg

July 9, 2014, 12:24 p.m. EDT

Unlike Republicans, Democrats have had few opportunities this year to see
any ideological splits among their candidates first-hand.

The exception is Hawaii.

Incumbent Sen. Brian Schatz has faced a rigorous challenge from Rep.
Colleen Hanabusa in the Democratic primary. When the candidates met for a
debate Monday, their discussion laid bare the divisions -- and areas of
agreement -- between progressives and centrists in the party.

Here's what we learned:

*The party is ready for Hillary*

Or, if it isn't, Democrats aren't ready to say otherwise.

Hanabusa endorsed Clinton in 2008 in Hawaii's Democratic primary, and she
did so again — and heartily — when the topic was raised during the debate
Monday.

"I felt then that she would be a great president, and I feel now that she
would be a great president," Hanabusa said. "I think that Hillary Clinton
has paid her dues like no one else."

Schatz was positive, saying he hopes Clinton will run, but he nevertheless
stopped short of any endorsement.

"I’m not going to get ahead of myself," he said. "The only election I’m
thinking about is on Aug. 9."

Schatz added that his son said he hoped a woman would run for president --
but there are other Democratic women, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who
are thought to be potential contenders for the presidency. Warren has
endorsed Schatz over Hanabusa.

*President Obama's popularity is even flagging in Hawaii*

With his approval rating in the low 40s, President Obama has so far this
election been ducked by vulnerable Democratic candidates and only tacitly
acknowledged by relatively strong ones. But, in Hawaii, the hometown hero
still enjoys robust popularity -- for the most part.

When asked to rate the president's performance, Schatz, who led Obama's
Hawaii campaign during the Democratic primary in 2008, called him a "very
strong president."

"I'm proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with him," Schatz said. "I'm proud
to have his endorsement. I'm proud to be one of his staunchest allies in
the Senate."

But Hanabusa was less effusive in her praise, calling into question how
Obama has handled crises abroad.

"There is no question President Obama is one of us," she said. However, she
added: "Where I have parted with the president is the issue of Syria and
Iraq. ... I believe that he has to explain to the people why he is
potentially putting us into another war in Iraq, a sectarian civil war."

*Democrats still aren't sure about marijuana*

Medical marijuana is legal in Hawaii, and the Hawaii legislature recently
considered decriminalizing small quantities of the drug, but fell short.
Full legalization enjoys support from the majority of Hawaiians.

But even Hawaii Democrats aren't yet fully pro-pot.

Schatz and Hanabusa agreed that states should lead the way on crafting
policies, a position that has been echoed by the party's leaders nationally.

"States are the laboratory of democracy, and democracy is occurring when it
comes to this issue," Schatz said. "I don’t think Hawaii is ready for it; I
don’t think we’re ready for nationwide legislation."

The two candidates diverged, however, on the extent to which the federal
government should get involved.

Hanabusa suggested the federal government should put in place "a law or a
policy not to interfere with whatever the state and its legislature and its
people determine is in their own best interest."

But Schatz proposed only a national "conversation" about the merits of jail
time for offenders, calling the current system "rigged against young men
and women for nonviolent drug possession."

*The issue of student loans has staying power*

The growing burden of student loans has been invoked regularly by
Democratic candidates in this election cycle, and might be an important
theme moving forward for the party.

It's "the middle-class issue of our times," Schatz said.

"Higher education should be a ladder up economically," Schatz said. "Higher
education is supposed to be part of the American Dream, and people are
being priced out of it."

Schatz has worked with Warren in the Senate to promote student-loan
forgiveness. The issue has been a signature of Warren's as part of a larger
stump-speech theme of economic fairness.

*Some of the starkest divisions are on less-buzzy issues*

Whether to label genetically modified foods, for example.

GMO-labeling is a particularly hot-button issue in Hawaii, where seed crops
comprise an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars — but where some
counties have sought to ban genetically manipulated agriculture.

Hanabusa played directly to the local-economic angle when asked for her
stance.

“I do not believe GMOs are unhealthy and I stand with the farmers on that,”
Hanabusa said. “And I also believe in the science that we have on GMOs.”

But Schatz, perhaps hewing to progressive support for organic produce, said
states should lead the way in crafting policy.

*The Day of New London (Conn.): “Clinton supporters wait in line for
tickets to upcoming Madison book-signing”
<http://www.theday.com/article/20140709/NWS01/140709689/1047>*

By Brian Hallenbeck

July 9, 2014, 12:53 p.m. EDT

R.J. Julia Booksellers sold hundreds of copies of Hillary Clinton’s “Hard
Choices” — or actually tickets to the potential Democratic presidential
candidate’s July 19 book-signing here — over a three-hour span this morning.

Tickets to the signing, which entitled the buyer to a copy of the book at
the signing, went for $35 apiece, plus tax.

Bookstore staff began taking orders by phone at 8 a.m., then began taking
them in person when the downtown store opened at 10. By then, about 40
people had formed a line on the sidewalk outside the store. Women
outnumbered men by a wide margin.

“Yes, I support Hillary. I hope she runs for president,” Vitty O’Toole of
Madison said, while waiting in line. “She has the power and the experience.”

O’Toole, a 1957 Wellesley graduate who shares Clinton’s alma mater,
described herself as an independent Democrat.

“This was always a pretty solid Republican town,” O’Toole said of Madison.
“I generally keep my mouth shut when the talk turns to politics.”

*The Day of New London (Conn.): “Madison bookstore to host Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.theday.com/article/20140708/NWS01/140709708/1047>*

By Brian Hallenbeck

July 8, 2014, 9:48 p.m. EDT

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will appear at a
book-signing here July 19, R.J. Julia, the independent bookstore, announced
in an email Tuesday evening.

Clinton, a presumptive candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination
in 2016, will sign copies of her book, “Hard Choices,” at 4 p.m. at the
bookstore, a Boston Post Road landmark in this shoreline town. A limited
number of tickets will be available by phone on a first-come, first-served
basis, starting at 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Clinton will only sign copies of her book; she will not speak, Roxanne
Coady, R.J. Julia's owner, said Tuesday night.

Tickets will be available in the store after 10 a.m. Wednesday, according
to the email.

Tickets are $35 plus tax and include a copy of Clinton’s book. Customers
are limited to two tickets per purchase.

*Associated Press: “Hillary Clinton Plans St. Paul Stop On Book Tour”
<http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/07/08/hillary-clinton-plans-st-paul-stop-on-book-tour/>*

[No Writer Mentioned]

July 8, 2014, 3:56 p.m. EDT

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make a stop in St. Paul
on her tour to promote her new memoir.

Clinton is due to appear July 20 at Common Good Books, a store launched by
another prominent Democrat — Garrison Keillor.

Clinton’s memoir, “Hard Choices,” sits atop The New York Times’ bestseller
list for hardcover nonfiction.

The St. Paul appearance is a ticketed event.

*ABC News: “Hillary Clinton Offers No Documents to Rebut Criticism of Hefty
Speaker Fees”
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/hillary-clinton-offers-no-documents-to-rebut-criticism-of-hefty-speaker-fees/>*

By Liz Kreutz

July 9, 2014, 11:06 a.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton insists that she donates fees for giving speeches at
colleges and universities but still has not released documents to back up
her claims.

In an interview with ABC News’ Ann Compton Friday, Clinton defended the
high-dollar fees she charges for speaking at universities by saying the
money goes to charity through the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation she controls with her husband, former president Bill Clinton.
But Clinton, in response to specific follow-up questions, has offered
nothing but silence.

“I have been very excited to speak to many universities during the last
year and a half, and all of the fees have been donated to the Clinton
Foundation for it to continue its life-changing and lifesaving work,”
Clinton said. “So it goes from a Foundation at a university to another
foundation.”

After the interview, ABC News reached out repeatedly to representatives
from both the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s office requesting
documents to support Clinton’s claim, but none were provided.

As a nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation is required by law to turn over
detailed financial information to the IRS and release much of that to the
public upon request. But the foundation has yet to file its annual IRS form
No. 990, which would include donation and expenditure details, for the
period since she left the State Department at the start of President
Obama’s second term. The deadline for filing is Nov. 15, 2014.

If Clinton does to decide to run for president, she would have to file
detailed financial-disclosure reports that would shine a light on both her
personal income and assets and those of her husband.

At least eight universities, including four public institutions, have
individually paid Clinton six-figures to speak on their campuses over the
past year, according to the Washington Post.

(Included in this group is the University of Connecticut, which reportedly
paid $252,250 from a donor fund for Clinton to speak in April, and the
University of California at Los Angeles, which reportedly paid $300,000 for
Clinton to speak in March.)

By the Post’s calculations, Clinton has earned at least $1.8 million in
speaking income from universities in the past nine months.

Such  revelations have sparked a backlash from students on some of these
campuses, including at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where Clinton is
scheduled to speak at a fundraiser in October. Students at the school have
asked the former secretary of state to refund her fee of $225,000. In her
interview with ABC News last week, Clinton offered no indication that she
would do so and justified taking the fee because she donates the money back
to charity.

Prior to the interview, Clinton’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, told the Post
that both her UCLA and UNLV fees are dedicated to go to the family’s
Foundation, but said he did not know whether the other six payments were.

Representatives for Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have yet to provide
any documents supporting her claim that all of them have.  ABC News has
also requested that Clinton’s office provide a full list of every school
where she has spoken in the past year and a half, but there has been no
response.

Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees  – roughly $200,000 per engagement — became
a point of contention after she told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer in an interview
last month that she and her husband were “dead broke” after leaving the
White House. Clinton’s detractors seized on the comment as an indication
that the potential presidential candidate is out of touch with average
Americans.

The Republican opposition-research super PAC, America Rising, Tuesday called
on the Clinton Foundation to disclose how it spends its money, in light of
the comments Clinton made about donating her fees to the nonprofit.

“Secretary Clinton is using the foundation as a shield from scrutiny,” the
group’s executive director, Tim Miller, told ABC News. “If she is going to
cite donating speaking fees to the Clinton foundation as her defense for
taking big speaking fees then she has a responsibility to be transparent
about how that money is being spent.”

The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation was founded by former
president Bill Clinton in 2001 and donates millions of dollars a year to
improve global health, opportunities for women and girls, economic growth
and the environment. According to its website, the group says its work has
helped 430 million lives around the world.

*Democracy Now!: “WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Responds to Hillary Clinton:
Fair U.S. Trial for Snowden ‘Not Possible’”
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/9/wikileaks_julian_assange_responds_to_hillary>*

By Amy Goodman

July 9, 2014

In part two of our exclusive interview, Amy Goodman goes inside Ecuador’s
Embassy in London to speak with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
Assange has been living in the embassy for more than two years under
political asylum. He faces investigations in both Sweden and the United
States, where a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role
in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars, as well as State Department cables. Assange responds to former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent comments that National Security
Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should return home to face trial. "It’s
the advice of all our lawyers that he should not return to the United
States. He’d be extremely foolish to do so," Assange says. "It’s not
possible to have a fair trial, because the U.S. government has a precedent
of applying state secret privilege to prevent the defense from using
material that is classified in their favor."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the second part of our Democracy Now! TV/radio
broadcast exclusive. We went inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London last
weekend to interview WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. He has
just entered his third year inside the embassy, where he has political
asylum. Assange faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States.
Here in the U.S., a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its
role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars, as well as State Department cables. In Sweden, he’s
wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no
charges have been filed. Let’s go to that interview.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace
Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where
Julian Assange has actually lived for more than two years. He has political
asylum in Ecuador but can’t make it there because he is concerned if he
steps outside to get on a plane to Ecuador, the British government will
arrest him and extradite him to Sweden. And he’s concerned, in Sweden, he
would be extradited to the United States to face charges around his
organization, WikiLeaks, which he publishes.

So, Julian, I’d like you to respond to Hillary Clinton, the former
secretary of state, could be running for president, her comments on Edward
Snowden. She was interviewed by The Guardian, which first released the
revelations based on the documents of Edward Snowden. And if you could just
hit the first comment.

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, I would say, first of all, that Edward Snowden broke
our laws, and that cannot be ignored or brushed aside.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, that first point of Hillary Clinton’s?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, it’s always interesting when someone proclaims to be
a master of what is within the law and what is not within the law. We’ve
seen a lot with Pentagon generals and other State Department figures,
including Hillary. We’ve seen it in this case with General Alexander,
talking about what is the law and what is not the law.

AMY GOODMAN: The former head of the NSA.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes. But, actually, in the end, in the United States, it’s
the Supreme Court that determines what the law is and what the law isn’t.
And part of what goes into the Supreme Court is the U.S. Constitution and
its First Amendment obligations. So, whether the Espionage Act is
constitutional is a very interesting question and has not been properly
tested before. In fact, the U.S. government has been quite careful to not
go to a proper appeal in relation to a conviction under the Espionage Act,
in order to keep the threat there and not find that it is unconstitutional
in court. So, I think there is actually a question even as to whether
Edward Snowden, through his activities, broke the law. But then you can
even go, OK, well, if he did, was it in fact the correct thing to do? Maybe
the law is out of date. Maybe the law is wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Hillary Clinton’s next point.

HILLARY CLINTON: Secondly, I believe that if his primary concern was
stirring a debate in our country over the tension between privacy and
security, there were other ways of doing it, instead of stealing an
enormous amount of information that had nothing to do with the U.S. or
American citizens.

JULIAN ASSANGE: As a journalist, I have been working at various times in
documenting what the National Security Agency has been doing in its
burgeoning mass surveillance practice for more than 20 years. And other
journalists, some of them very fine, have also been trying to expose the
National Security Agency. And other whistleblowers have come forward—so,
Thomas Drake, William Binney, both from the National Security Agency, for
example. But what was the problem? While we could point to, based on a
sophisticated analysis of what the National Security Agency is doing—say,
look at this piece here, look at this little bit of congressional
testimony, look at the subpoena record, look at the technology that they
are buying from this company, look at the number of employees, look at the
DOD budget as a whole—when you add everything else up, you can work out the
National Security Agency’s budget. That’s a very complex picture, and
that’s not a picture that can generate political reform and debate. And
what Edward Snowden did was, by bringing out classified documents, that
were official documents, that were even some of them just last year, he was
able to show, even to people that didn’t understand, the complexity of what
was actually going on. So, we have proof. People did try to start a debate,
using all sorts of methods, including former National Security Agency
whistleblowers, and it’s only primary source documents in volume that are
probably capable of starting a debate about a complex issue like mass
surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton again.

HILLARY CLINTON: I would say, thirdly, that there are many people in our
history who have raised serious questions about government behavior.
They’ve done it either with or without whistleblower protection, and they
have stood and faced whatever the reaction was to make their case in public.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, Hillary Clinton is alluding to, without mentioning
the name of Daniel Ellsberg, the famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower from
the 1970s. There’s a reason she doesn’t mention his name, because Daniel
Ellsberg has come forward again and again this year and said that, in fact,
he couldn’t do what he did in the 1970s today, that the situation has
changed, as far as the courts—the use of the state secrets privilege, how
things have been sewn up holding all national security cases in Alexandria,
Virginia—there’s not a neutral jury pool—that he couldn’t do that. And the
reality is, that’s the case for all national security whistleblowers who
have classified documents. You can’t fight a normal case, as we would think
about it in the public. You’re swept into a very aggressive system that is
set against you from the first instance.

AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton again.

HILLARY CLINTON: Mr. Snowden took all this material. He fled to Hong Kong.
He spent time with the Russians in their consulate. Then he went to Moscow
seeking the protection of Vladimir Putin, which is at the height of
ironies, given the surveillance state that Russia is. If he wishes to
return home, knowing that he would be held accountable, but also be able to
present a defense, that is his decision to make. But I know that our
intelligence forces are doing what they can to understand exactly what was
taken.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Hillary Clinton. Julian Assange?

JULIAN ASSANGE: This is sadly typical of Hillary Clinton. We have facts
about this matter. Not even the National Security Agency accuses him of
working with the Russians. In fact, the National Security Agency, formally,
in its investigation, has said that they don’t think that he was working
with the Russians, at least not before he left the agency. And Hillary
Clinton, however, tries to reshape the chronology in order to smear Edward
Snowden with being a Russian spy. The actual chronology is that Edward
Snowden went to Hong Kong. He then saw that the situation was very
difficult, reached out for us to help, and we were intimately involved from
that point on. So I know precisely, myself, and our staff know, what
happened. We submitted 20 asylum applications on behalf of Edward Snowden
to a range of different countries, Latin America. It was Ed Snowden’s
intent to go to Latin America—Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador was also
looking favorable, and Bolivia offered him asylum. En route to Latin
America, the U.S. State Department canceled his passport, leaving him
marooned in Russia, unable to catch his next flight, which had already been
booked from the very beginning. His whole path had been booked while he was
in Hong Kong.

AMY GOODMAN: But she does say he went to the Russian Embassy in Hong Kong.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Hillary says that he went to the Russian Consulate in Hong
Kong. I don’t know about that, but I’m sure that perhaps he was looking for
all different kinds of asylum options, and that would have made perfect
sense for anyone to do that in such a severe situation. It is not a matter
of irony that Edward Snowden was marooned by the U.S. State Department in
Russia. Asylum is a serious business. It is something of a concern that the
countries in western Europe, for example, that he asked for asylum—France,
Germany, Spain—did not in fact come to the table. They were too scared
about their geopolitical relationships. It’s something of a concern that
Edward Snowden, as an American citizen, felt that he could not speak freely
in the United States. And he is right. It’s the advice of all our lawyers
that he should not return to the United States. He’d be extremely foolish
to do so.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Hillary Clinton, who now goes on to talk
about the debate in the United States.

HILLARY CLINTON: The debate about how to better balance security and
liberty was already going on before he fled. The president had already
given a speech. Members of the Senate were already talking about it. So I
don’t give him credit for the debate. I think he may have raised the
visibility of the debate, but the debate had already begun.

JULIAN ASSANGE: A lot of people in the civil liberties community in the
United States, in the privacy community in the rest of the world, and
specialists, national security journalists like myself, had been following
what the National Security Agency has been doing for a long time. We have
been trying very hard to erect a debate. And there, yes, there were small
debates, that really didn’t proceed anywhere. The lawsuits filed by the EFF
and ACLU to try and get somewhere went nowhere, because they didn’t have
the evidence. And what Edward Snowden revealed was documentary evidence,
and it was that primary source evidence that has led to this debate.
Everyone knows the difference—most people can’t even remember hearing about
the National Security Agency prior to last year. Now everyone knows about
it. And that is almost entirely as a result of these disclosures.

AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton makes other critical points.

HILLARY CLINTON: I don’t know what he’s been charged with; those are sealed
indictments. I have no idea what he’s been charged with. I’m not sure he
knows what he’s been charged with. But even in any case that I’m aware of,
as a former lawyer, he has the right to mount a defense. And he certainly
has the right to mount both a legal defense and a public defense, which of
course can affect the legal defense.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, your response?

JULIAN ASSANGE: As Daniel Ellsberg, the famous Pentagon Papers
whistleblower, has said, it is not possible for a national security
whistleblower now in the United States to have a fair trial. It’s not
possible to have a fair trial because all the trials are held in
Alexandria, Virginia, where the jury pool is comprised of the highest
density of military and government employees in all of the United States.
It’s not possible to have a fair trial, because the U.S. government has a
precedent of applying state secret privilege to prevent the defense from
using material that is classified in their favor. It’s not possible to have
a fair trial, because as a defendant in a national security case, you are
held under special administrative measures, which makes it very hard to
look at any of the material in your case, to meet with your lawyers, to
speak to people, etc. So, this is—it’s just simply not a fair system. And
even if you do eventually win by the time you get up to the Supreme Court,
you spend seven years or something in a very serious condition trying to
defend yourself, instead of what has happened with Edward Snowden. As a
result of him having asylum, we can talk about the issues, not talking
about whether Snowden is guilty or not, and Edward Snowden himself can tell
the world, "Well, look, this is what actually happened. This is what is
going on."

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to what Hillary Clinton has to say.

HILLARY CLINTON: But the other issue that has never been satisfactorily
answered to me is, if his main concern was what was happening inside the
United States, then why did he take so much about what was happening with
Russia, with China, with Iran, with al-Qaeda?

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Hillary Clinton in her Guardian interview. This last
point that she addresses, Julian Assange?

JULIAN ASSANGE: It’s no surprise to me that Hillary Clinton thinks that
human beings that are not formally U.S. citizens don’t have any rights. But
not everyone thinks like that. Other people in other countries have rights.
Now, if we look at the practicalities of Edward Snowden acquiring documents
while he was a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton working for the National
Security Agency and, prior to that, a contractor for Dell, the National
Security Agency runs a mass surveillance program, a strategic surveillance
program. The same technology, the same protocols are used to surveil people
inside the United States, people outside the United States, etc. So if
you’re trying to collect information to expose mass surveillance, then, by
its very nature, you’re going to expose National Security Agency practices
all over the world, because it’s the same process that occurs, whether
you’re in England or whether you’re in Germany or whether you’re in the
United States.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Julian Assange responding to The Guardian's interview
with Hillary Clinton. It was The Guardian's Phoebe Greenwood who questioned
the former secretary of state. You can see her full interview at
TheGuardian.com. Back to my conversation with Julian Assange in a minute.

*Vanity Fair: VF Daily: Sally Kohn: “The One Thing Republicans Must Do to
Have a Credible Shot at Defeating Hillary”
<http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/07/hillary-clinton-republican-women>*

By Sally Kohn

July 9, 2014, 8:00 a.m. EDT

Gosh, I bet Republicans are starting to regret their systematic alienation
of women.

Not only have 99 percent of sexually active women ages 15 to 44 in America
used birth control, but by a 2–1 margin, American women support the
requirement under Obamacare that private health insurance plans cover the
full cost of birth control. Three in five women support the requirement,
even if it violates the personal religious beliefs of a company’s owners.
Among younger women, that support skyrockets.

The Republican war on women may already be making it difficult for
conservatives to win women voters in 2016. Hillary Clinton makes it
impossible: a strong 68 percent of independent women say they would vote
for Clinton if she runs for president, as would 35 percent of Republican
women. It’s no wonder Republicans are in an all-out battle to attack every
single thing Hillary Clinton says and does: if she runs for president, the
Republicans are screwed.

Of course, they wouldn’t be if there were a credible conservative woman to
run against her. Let’s examine the G.O.P. track record on this front. It
begins and ends with Sarah Palin. Personally delightful. Politically
colorful. But not exactly a credible candidate for a party needing to win
credibility with women voters—or anyone else for that matter.

So who else is there? Well, most often the GOP 2016 contenders mentioned
are all men. But there are some women who could and should be considered.
When pressed to come up with some XX- chromosome contenders, Republicans
most frequently mention South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, New Mexico
Governor Susana Martinez, and New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte. One could
even add Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin to the list and point out that,
generally, while Republicans are struggling to find support at the national
level, the party is doing fairly well in those states. And it’s worth
noting that four of the nation’s five female governors are Republicans.

As for the governors, Haley is charismatic but seems like a long shot; even
within heavily Republican South Carolina, an equal percentage of voters
disapprove of Haley as approve of her. But Fallin and Martinez are both
more popular (64 percent of Oklahomans think Fallin is doing a good job,
and 61 percent of New Mexicans rate Martinez favorably), plus Martinez
hails from a coveted swing state. And yet the 2016 attention focuses on the
likes of John Kasich (Ohio), Scott Walker (Wisconsin), Rick Snyder
(Michigan), and Bobby Jindal (Louisiana). Yet Kasich and Walker are both
far from popular, disliked by almost as many voters as they are liked. And
polls show more voters actively disapprove of Snyder and Jindal than
support them. That’s in their home states!

When it comes to the Senate, Republican presidential pickers tend to focus
not on Ayotte but on Ted Cruz (Texas), Marco Rubio (Florida), and Rand Paul
(Kentucky). But bear this in mind: Ted Cruz won 56 percent of Texas votes
in 2012, only one percentage point more than John McCain earned in the Lone
Star State in the 2008 presidential election. In 2010, 56 percent of
Kentucky voters backed Rand Paul, but 58 percent backed McCain in 2008. In
2010 in Florida, Marco Rubio carried 49 percent of all voters; McCain lost
the state in 2012 with 48 percent of the vote. In other words, even in
their home states, Cruz, Paul, and Rubio aren’t uniquely, nor even widely
popular; they’re just Republicans—faring as well as other Republican
candidates.

By comparison, in 2008 Obama won 54 percent of the New Hampshire vote, and
McCain got 45 percent. But in 2010, Ayotte won statewide with 60 percent
support. That makes Kelly Ayotte a uniquely popular Republican with broad
bi-partisan appeal, especially compared with the other guys.

Of course, Jindal, Kasich, Walker, Snyder, Fallin, and Haley have all
signed extremely draconian laws restricting abortions, so their appeal to
moderate voters is questionable. And certainly Rubio, Paul, and Ayotte
would face a significant hurdle with voters who are fed up with Republican
obstructionism at the federal level and rate Republicans in Congress in
general lower than dirt.

If Republicans want to have a fighting change with women voters in 2016 and
with mainstream American voters in general, abandoning their extremist and
extremely unpopular anti-women agenda would also help. But in the meantime,
some rebranding couldn’t hurt. Out with the Palin, in with the new.

Ayotte and Martinez, and even Haley and Fallin, have all kinds of political
and demographic advantages, in addition to the obvious reality that they
would stop Hillary Clinton from automatically winning the “vote for the
first female president” vote. Ayotte and Martinez in particular should be
rolling off the tongues of the Republican chattering class as they name top
contenders for the presidential ticket. But they aren’t.

Why is that, exactly? There couldn’t possibly be sexism within the
Republican Party. After all, these folks don’t believe sexism exists.

*Politico: Morning Money: “Does Hillary want a tax cut? — Citi close to $7B
settlement — Ex-Im could ride on CR” [PARTIAL]
<http://www.politico.com/morningmoney/>*

By Ben White

July 9, 2014, 7:52 a.m. EDT

DOES HILLARY CLINTON WANT A LOWER TOP TAX RATE? — Hillary Clinton gave an
interesting interview to Germany’s Der Spiegel in which she spoke of her
general agreement with Thomas Piketty (even though she has not read his
book) and expanded on her and her husband’s extensive wealth. Clinton
elaborated on her previous comment that she and her husband were “dead
broke” upon leaving the White House in 2001. And she seemed to suggest that
Bill Clinton needed to make as much as he did (around $104 million so far)
because of their high marginal tax rate.

Clinton told the German weekly: “We are very grateful for where we are
today. But if you were to go back and look at the amount of money that we
owed, we couldn't even get a mortgage on a house by ourselves. In our
system he had to make double what he needed in order just to pay off the
debt, and then to finance a house and continue to pay for our daughter's
education.” …

It seems like the “system” Clinton was referring to was the U.S. tax
system, though we don’t know for sure. Ironically, it was Bill Clinton
himself who signed a top rate increase to 39.6% into law in 1993. Taken
together with her previous comment to The Guardian about how people don’t
resent the Clintons because they pay ordinary taxes “unlike some other
people,” it seems like Hillary Clinton is not too happy with the higher
rate on income and lower rate on capital gains and other investment income.
… Could we be seeing the early stirrings of an economic policy platform?
Full interview: http://bit.ly/1mxbYNl