Subject: ​Correct The Record Saturday January 17, 2015 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 13:00:12 -0500
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*​**Correct The Record Saturday January 17, 2015 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*MSNBC: “Is this Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda?”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-hillary-clinton-will-tackle-inequaly>*

“A new report from a leading Democratic think tank offers clues about how
Hillary Clinton might tackle economic inequality, which has become a key
motivating issue of the progressive base, if she decides to run for
president in 2016.”

*The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Clinton: Focus more on wages, less on regs”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/229795-clinton-focus-more-on-wages-less-on-regs>*

“Hillary Clinton on Friday criticized the new Republican-controlled
Congress for trying to boost economic growth by loosening regulations,
which progressives say would weaken financial watchdogs.”

*MSNBC: “Clinton slams GOP attempts to roll back Wall Street reform”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/clinton-slams-gop-attempts-roll-back-wall-street-reform>*

“Hillary Clinton has been very careful about which issues she weighs in on
as she considers a second run for the presidency in 2016, but she took to
Twitter Friday to condemn Republican attempts to gut the Dodd-Frank Wall
Street reform law.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “RNC chairman: 'We're ready for Hillary'”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/229797-rnc-chairman-were-ready-for-hillary>*

“Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a speech
Friday that ‘we're ready for Hillary’ and previewed a line of attack
linking the former secretary of State to the Obama administration.”

*Politico: “Mitt Romney's 2016 pitch: I'm a foreign policy prophet”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/was-romney-really-right-114347.html>*

"But, as Democrats point out, any losing candidate can cherry-pick a few
issues that later broke his way. And Romney’s batting average was hardly
perfect. Nor do bragging rights on a few specific issues necessarily
translate to a popular foreign policy vision overall."

*New York Times: Sec. Clinton supports pro-democracy Saudi blogger
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/world/caning-of-saudi-blogger-is-delayed-amid-protests.html>*

“Ms. Badawi also sued the government in 2011 for not allowing women to vote
in local elections, a move cited by the State Department when it gave her
an International Woman of Courage Award in 2012. ‘You are making a
difference,’ Hillary Rodham Clinton, then secretary of state, told her at
the award ceremony, which was also attended by Michelle Obama.”

*The Weekly Standard: “Hillary Clinton's Charlie Hebdo Problem”
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/hillary-clintons-charlie-hebdo-problem_823878.html>*

“What seems most likely is that Clinton has remained silent in response to
the Charlie Hebdo massacre in order to avoid scrutiny of her own failure to
defend free speech in the face of Islamist violence.”

*The Hill blog: “Five reasons the left doesn’t believe Elizabeth Warren”
<http://thehill.com/policy/finance/229840-five-reasons-the-left-doesnt-believe-elizabeth-warren>*

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has said time and time that against she’s
not running for president in 2016."

*Articles:*

*MSNBC: “Is this Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda?”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-hillary-clinton-will-tackle-inequaly>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald and Suzy Khimm

January 16, 2015, 6:27 p.m. EST

A new report from a leading Democratic think tank offers clues about how
Hillary Clinton might tackle economic inequality, which has become a key
motivating issue of the progressive base, if she decides to run for
president in 2016.

The report, assembled by an international panel of prominent economists and
policy experts, tries to tackle one of the biggest and most difficult
questions of contemporary economics – how to boost wages for the middle
class and share prosperity more broadly. As Massachusetts Democratic Sen.
Elizabeth Warren and many others have noted, while much of economy has
recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, middle class wages remain
stagnant.

But while Warren pins the blame on Wall Street, the Center for American
Progress report, released Thursday, takes a broader and less
confrontational approach, highlights a wide basket of policy solutions
employed successfully by other countries. Its authors have embraced a more
positive, hopeful message of economic empowerment, putting aside the
messier and more contentious questions of whether and how such sweeping
initiatives would be paid for.

Clinton will have to “walk a tightrope” between speaking to the middle
class and Wall Street, as longtime Clinton donor Alan Patricof put it on
Bloomberg TV Friday. “I think that she’s very sensitive to this kind of
Elizabeth Warren trying to paint her as being identified with Wall Street,”
he added.

It’s hard not see the report as the potential seed of an economic agenda
that helps Clinton walk that tightrope. It tackles the issues Americans
consistently list as their top priority in polls – jobs and the economy –
but in a way that’s less likely to alienate the business community and
financial sector, or appear inauthentic to her own identity. The report’s
international focus also plays to the former secretary of state’s
strengths, and it would allow her to promote lessons she’s learned from her
many travels abroad.

“In our time, advocates and apologists for anti-democratic regimes argue
that the democracies are no longer capable of managing their problems or
creating a sense of social dynamism. Democracies are cast as sclerotic,
inefficient, and ungovernable,” the report says. “But countering this
persistent attack on democracy requires that free economic and political
systems restore their vitality and reclaim their ability to deliver on the
promise of prosperity for all.”

Democrats made inequality a centerpiece of their 2014 campaign, but the
party’s steep losses in November suggest that their message and policy
prescriptions weren’t strong enough to break through. Now that the pace of
the recovery has picked up, they’re also struggling to take credit for the
recovery while acknowledging the work that still needs to be done to make
sure those gains reach ordinary Americans.

The CAP report suggests one potential way forward, providing a broad
framework and positive message of empowerment that encompasses many of the
economic policies that Clinton has highlighted in recent years, from paid
family leave to a higher minimum wage to more affordable college education.

If the report seems tailor made for a Clinton campaign, that might not be
an accident. CAP, after all, was founded by key Clinton allies to be an
ideas factory for establishment Democrats.

Its current president, Neera Tanden, was Clinton’s policy director and one
of her closest aides during the 2008 presidential campaign. Tanden keeps in
touch with Clinton and her aides today, and will likely advise Clinton’s
2016 campaign from the outside, though Tanden has said she’s not interested
in a day-to-day job on the campaign.

In addition to Tanden, the task force behind the report included former
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a board member of the pro-Clinton
Priorities USA super PAC, and economist Larry Summers, who served as
treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. And the man who founded CAP, John
Podesta, served as Bill Clinton’s last chief of staff and is expected to
become the chairman of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign should she
decide to run.

Though Clinton has yet to lay out a detailed policy agenda, she has
stressed the urgent need to deal with inequality since at least the spring.
“The dream of upward mobility that made this country a model for the world
feels further and further out of reach and many Americans understandably
feel frustrated, even angry,” Clinton said during a high-profile speech in
May at the New America Foundation.

And on Friday, Clinton tweeted that Congress should focus on helping the
middle class, instead of rolling back financial reform, as Republicans are
trying to do.

*The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Clinton: Focus more on wages, less on regs”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/229795-clinton-focus-more-on-wages-less-on-regs>*

By Kevin Cirilli

January 16, 2015, 2:37 p.m. EST

Hillary Clinton on Friday criticized the new Republican-controlled Congress
for trying to boost economic growth by loosening regulations, which
progressives say would weaken financial watchdogs.

"Attacking financial reform is risky and wrong. Better for Congress to
focus on jobs and wages for middle class families," Clinton tweeted on
Friday.

The former secretary of State and presumed Democratic presidential
frontrunner has received criticism from progressives in her party who are
concerned about her ties to Wall Street.

But the tweet is a clear signal that Clinton is looking to adjust her tone
as she continues to mull her expected presidential campaign.

Clinton's tweet comes as progressives continue their efforts to try and
draft Warren to challenge Clinton from the left in 2016. On Saturday,
MoveOn.org will launch its efforts in New Hampshire with a kick-off
campaign for its "Run Warren Run" effort, which the liberal group funded
with a $1 million donation last month.

Earlier this week, the House passed legislation on a 271-154 vote that
would delay for two-years the implementation of a portion of the 2010
Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.

*MSNBC: “Clinton slams GOP attempts to roll back Wall Street reform”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/clinton-slams-gop-attempts-roll-back-wall-street-reform>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

January 16, 2015, 3:50 p.m. EST

Hillary Clinton has been very careful about which issues she weighs in on
as she considers a second run for the presidency in 2016, but she took to
Twitter Friday to condemn Republican attempts to gut the Dodd-Frank Wall
Street reform law.

“Attacking financial reform is risky and wrong. Better for Congress to
focus on jobs and wages for middle class families,” Clinton tweeted to her
2.66 million followers.

Many will read the move as channeling Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the
Massachusetts Democrat who has risen to prominence as the Senate’s top Wall
Street foe.

Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, they’re preparing
for a showdown over the 2010 financial reform law, which they say is too
burdensome on business.

Late last year, President Barack Obama signed a government funding bill
that included a provision to remove a part of the law that dealt with
financial instruments known as swaps, despite vociferous objections from
Warren and other progressive Democrats.

And this week, the House approved a measure on a largely party-line vote to
reign in regulators, with more attacks on regulations promised for the
future. The White House has threatened to veto attempts to gut progressive
regulations, but Republicans may find ways to slip the measures into larger
must-pass legislation, as they did with the funding bill in December.

Clinton, who faces criticism from some progressives over her financial
support from Wall Street, has been trying to find ways to shore up her left
flank ahead of a presidential run. She stumbled during a joint appearance
with Warren last year when she said business don’t create jobs.

Clinton tweets rarely, and the vast majority are about her work at the
Clinton family’s charitable foundation.

The presumed Democratic front-runner typically waits until her next planned
public appearance before weighing in on the issue of the day, whether it’s
Syria or protests in Ferguson. Clinton has been laying low for about a
month, but has two speeches scheduled for next week in Canada, sponsored by
a Canadian bank.

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “RNC chairman: 'We're ready for Hillary'”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/229797-rnc-chairman-were-ready-for-hillary>*

By Peter Sullivan

January 16, 2015, 2:51 p.m. EST

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a speech
Friday that "we're ready for Hillary" and previewed a line of attack
linking the former secretary of State to the Obama administration.

"At the RNC, we’re not waiting until Hillary’s the nominee; we’re not
waiting until she announces to go after her record," Priebus told the RNC's
Winter Meeting in San Diego. "We’ve been preparing for a long, long time,
and we’re Ready for Hillary."

Priebus previewed what could be a line of attack against Hillary Clinton,
arguing that she represents a continuation of President Obama's policies.

The extent to which Clinton differentiates herself from Obama is a major
question. Likely Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said this month
that Clinton "will have some different views from the president," but "for
the most part" agrees with his policies.

"We’re ready to show America that this country can do better than Hillary
Clinton and Obama’s third term," Priebus said. "Because the next generation
deserves better."

The RNC has already been attacking Clinton's paid speeches and travel
requirements, dubbing her "high-flying Hillary." Priebus continued this
line of criticism in the speech, referencing her gaffe last year that she
was "dead broke" after leaving the White House.

"And let’s be clear: she is campaigning," Priebus said. "She’s just found a
way to get paid really, really well for it. For example, bilking
cash-strapped public universities for a quarter million dollars to fly in
on a private jet and give a speech about nothing. But, she still wants you
to know she’s just your average 'dead-broke' American."

Priebus has also recently said that the RNC has opposition researchers in
Arkansas looking for dirt, and that Bill Clinton's personal life is "fair
game."

While Clinton is widely seen as by far the Democratic frontrunner, the
Republican side has a wide field of viable candidates. But Priebus played
up that contrast.

"The good news is we have great potential candidates for president,"
Priebus said. "Our voters are going to have a real choice. Leaders with
diverse backgrounds and diverse experiences. We should be excited because
this means real debates and real conversations."

"I’d much rather have that than what the Democrats have," he added.

*Politico: “Mitt Romney's 2016 pitch: I'm a foreign policy prophet”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/was-romney-really-right-114347.html>*

By Michael Crowley

January 17, 2015, 8:19 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] But is he right about that?

He saw Vladimir Putin as a threat to peace. He insisted that radical Islam
was spreading. He warned that Iraq was at risk without American troops to
stabilize it.

And he was right.

As Mitt Romney’s supporters push the idea that the 2012 Republican nominee
might run for president again, one of their core talking points is that
Romney was a foreign policy prophet in the last campaign. His vindication
on several scores, they argue, gives him a rationale to run again — and a
leg up on his potential Republican rivals.

“The results of the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama foreign policy have been
devastating,” Romney declared at the Republican National Committee’s winter
meeting in San Diego on Friday. “The world is not safer.”

But, as Democrats point out, any losing candidate can cherry-pick a few
issues that later broke his way. And Romney’s batting average was hardly
perfect. Nor do bragging rights on a few specific issues necessarily
translate to a popular foreign policy vision overall.

“Romney was right about the world getting more complicated,” said Mieke
Eoyang, director of the National Security Project at the moderate
Democratic think tank Third Way. “But a complicated world doesn’t mean a
more simplistic response, which is what Romney was offering.”

Back in 2012, President Barack Obama was less charitable. “You haven’t been
in a position to actually execute foreign policy,” Obama told Romney in an
October debate. “But every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been
wrong.”

More than two years later, however, hindsight suggests that’s not true.
Romney offered warnings on several major issues that now appear prescient.

On Iraq, for instance, Romney told an audience in November 2011 that
America’s withdrawal from the country the prior year was “an enormous
mistake,” one that “puts at risk many of the victories that were hard-won
by the men and women who have served there.” Obama later scoffed at his
rival’s claim that the U.S. should have maintained a long-term troop
presence in Iraq. Two years later, Obama has ordered thousands of troops
back there to prevent the country’s collapse.

Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his intervention in eastern Ukraine
dominated much of last year for Obama. But as early as December 2011 Romney
called Putin ”a real threat to the stability and peace of the world,”
noting that the Russian president’s rhetoric had been growing sharper.

After Romney later called Russia America’s top “geopolitical foe,” blocking
U.S. interests at the United Nations and elsewhere, Obama openly ridiculed
him: “The 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” the
president told Romney in an October 2012 debate. “You know, the Cold War’s
been over for 20 years.”

Romney also cast repeated doubt on Obama’s claim that, after Osama bin
Laden’s killing, al Qaeda was “on the run.” He warned about the spread of
radical Islam in the Middle East and North Africa. “This is a group that is
now involved in 10 or 12 countries, and it presents an enormous threat …
and we must have a comprehensive strategy to help reject this kind of
extremism,” Romney said. That characterization of the Islamist threat seems
more apt as extremist violence surges around the world.

Beyond the emotional satisfaction of saying “I told you so,” people close
to Romney argue that the 2012 record positions the former Massachusetts
governor well for his third straight White House bid.

“Romney was right about a lot of this stuff. But I don’t see it as
vindication,” said a former senior Romney advisor. “I think it’s a
demonstration that he has a view of the world that’s rooted in reality.”

Credibility on foreign policy could matter more in 2016 than in the last
presidential contest. Amid terror threats and the beheadings of Americans
in the Middle East, voter concern about national security has spiked
sharply.

Romney may also find it harder to repeat his warnings that the U.S. economy
is headed for a crisis. Romney set a target of unemployment under 6 percent
by the end of his first time. The jobless rate currently stands at 5.6
percent.

Meanwhile, Democrats say Romney is more vulnerable than he appears. “I
think he should run again. It would be great for the Democratic Party,”
said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama White House national security spokesman.

Vietor insisted that claims of Romney’s vindication overlook Obama’s
repeated caveats that Islamic terrorism was still a threat even after the
death of bin Laden. And he argued that Obama’s response to Putin had helped
to cripple Russia’s economy. “Putin turned out to be his own greatest
enemy,” Vietor said.

Romney’s hard-line approach to Iran, said Eoyang, would have precluded the
nuclear talks Obama began in late 2013, which have paused the progress of
Iran’s nuclear program. “He was totally wrong on Iran,” Eoyang said, saying
that putting greater pressure on Iran would “potentially force us into
another military confrontation.”

And Democrats scoffed at the contention of an unnamed Romney advisor quoted
in the Boston Globe last week, who said that “there wouldn’t be an ISIS at
all,” if Romney were president.

One former advisor declined to repeat that assertion, saying “you can’t run
the counterfactual in history,” while adding that Romney would have taken
stronger action to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels — perhaps blunting
the rise of radical Islamists in that country.

Romney can’t perfectly recreate his campaign against Obama, of course. But
one Romney advisor, foreshadowing a likely Republican line of attack for
2016, said that’s not a problem. “Will you be running against Obama? Nope.
You’ll be running against the architect of his foreign policy” — namely,
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Democrats claim to be unfazed by such cocky talk. “Things aren’t perfect,”
said Vietor, who has worked on behalf of Clinton since leaving the White
House. “But by no means do I think Mitt was borne out to be the next Henry
Kissinger.”

*New York Times: Sec. Clinton supports pro-democracy Saudi blogger
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/world/caning-of-saudi-blogger-is-delayed-amid-protests.html>*

By Ben Hubbard

January 16, 2015

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A lawyer in Saudi Arabia who founded a human rights group
was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His wife, a women’s advocate who won a
courage award from the State Department, says she is barred from leaving
the country. Her brother, a writer who ran a liberal online forum, is also
in jail and was sentenced to be caned regularly in a public square over the
next few months.

International condemnation of the writer’s sentence, which also included a
prison term and a heavy fine, has mounted since a video of him receiving
his first round of blows appeared on YouTube, and the State Department and
the United Nations have called for the caning to stop.

The Saudi authorities did not administer the second round of blows as
scheduled on Friday. But the case of the writer, Raif Badawi, has
nonetheless drawn new attention to the Saudi government’s harsh treatment
of dissidents for acts that are considered anything but criminal in the
West.

Adding to the scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s legal system are the rise of the
Islamic State extremist group, which, like Saudi Arabia, claims to rule
according to Shariah, and the attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo
for its satirical portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad, an act considered
criminal in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi government, which has joined the United States-led air campaign
against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, condemned the violence in
Paris as a “cowardly terrorist attack which is incompatible with Islam.”
But at home, Saudi rulers strike hard at those who question how they apply
Islam to governance, rights groups say.

“There is just no tolerance for any kind of domestic dissent or activism,”
said Adam Coogle, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “They have made it a
red line and a zero-sum game, where anyone who crosses that line will be
dealt with.”

The caning of Mr. Badawi is the latest step by the Saudi government to
punish a small group of activists in the western port city of Jidda who
have challenged the kingdom’s fundamentalist, patriarchal system, to the
fury of the state and conservative elements of Saudi society, including
their own families.

Speaking through Skype from Jidda, Samar Badawi said her problems began
after she fled her father’s house and moved into a shelter for battered
women. Her father, angry that she had left, filed a lawsuit against her in
2009 for “parental disobedience.”

For her defense, she took on a young lawyer named Waleed Abulkhair, who had
started a group to track human rights in Saudi Arabia, and the two found
common ground in their activism.

“He was a rights activist, and his path was full of dangers, so would he be
able to find a woman who would put up with the thorny road he was on?” Ms.
Badawi said.

For her part, she liked how he valued women’s rights.

The couple decided to marry, but Ms. Badawi’s father withheld his consent.
So she sued him under a Saudi law that makes it illegal to prevent a woman
from marrying.

At the first court hearing in that lawsuit, she was arrested on the
disobedience charge and spent six months in jail, according to Human Rights
Watch. After she was released, she prevailed in both cases — hers against
her father and her father’s against her — and she and Mr. Abulkhair finally
married.

The couple worked together on rights campaigns, calling for women to have
the right to drive in the kingdom and criticizing Saudi Arabia’s
guardianship system, which generally bars women from working, marrying or
traveling abroad without the permission of a male guardian.

Ms. Badawi also sued the government in 2011 for not allowing women to vote
in local elections, a move cited by the State Department when it gave her
an International Woman of Courage Award in 2012.

“You are making a difference,” Hillary Rodham Clinton, then secretary of
state, told her at the award ceremony, which was also attended by Michelle
Obama.

But the Saudi government was pursuing her husband, barring him from
traveling abroad, detaining him for holding “unauthorized gatherings” and
charging him with various crimes, including seeking to overthrow the head
of state, tarnishing the reputation of the judiciary and forming an
unlicensed organization, according to a State Department report.

Mr. Abulkhair was convicted last year and is now serving a 15-year prison
sentence. The United States government says he was punished for “exercising
his rights to freedom of expression and association.”

Ms. Badawi has continued her activism. But she said that when she tried to
fly to Geneva a few months ago, she was told that she, too, was barred from
traveling.

Meanwhile, Ms. Badawi’s brother, Raif, started a website called “Free Saudi
Liberal Network” that featured writings by him and others who had often
criticized Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment.

“He wanted to create an environment where there was an open forum to talk
about ideas,” said his wife, Ensaf Haidar, who spoke by telephone from
Canada, where she has political asylum with the couple’s three children.

On the website, which has since been taken down, Mr. Badawi criticized what
he considered religious hypocrisy, lauded Western legal systems and said
that atheists should have the right to state their views without
punishment, according to Saudi court documents.

Prominent clerics responded with accusations that he was seeking to spread
atheism, and he received personal threats, his wife said. Mr. Badawi’s
father, Mohammed Badawi, denounced him and his sister repeatedly on
television; in one program, the father said his children’s minds had been
“formatted” like hard disks and filled with ideas that were foreign to
Saudi society.

“I hope he will go down to the square of retribution, he and my daughter,
to receive their retribution in front of me,” the elder Mr. Badawi said.
“The reason: infidelity to God.”

Mr. Badawi’s wife said he was arrested at a supermarket in 2012. A Saudi
court convicted him of running a website that promoted “heresy” and of not
removing comments that were considered insulting to God, Islam and
prominent Saudi clerics, according to court documents.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 blows, to be given in
installments of 50 with at least a week in between; he was also fined more
than $250,000.

In the video showing the first installment on Jan. 9, a uniformed security
officer swiftly strikes Mr. Badawi up and down his back with a wooden cane
as a crowd looks on. Mr. Badawi squirms a bit, and the crowd applauds and
yells “God is great!” as he is led away.

Mustafa Alani, an analyst with the Gulf Research Center who often works in
Saudi Arabia, said that while the cases of the three dissidents had raised
alarm in the West, few people in the conservative kingdom were bothered by
them.

“These people have no support from the great majority of Saudi society,”
Mr. Alani said. “They think that those people are weird, and influenced by
the West, and trying to damage the interests of Saudi Arabia.”

He said the Saudi government faced competing pressures in dealing with
human rights issues, with the West calling for more openness and tolerance
of dissent while powerful conservatives at home want strict enforcement and
punishment. He said that international pressure might have prompted the
delay in the second round of caning for Mr. Badawi, and that the Saudi
authorities might decide that one round was enough.

“You need to send a message,” he said, “and the message has already been
sent.”

*The Weekly Standard: “Hillary Clinton's Charlie Hebdo Problem”
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/hillary-clintons-charlie-hebdo-problem_823878.html>*

By John McCormack

January 16, 2015, 3:52 p.m. EST

In the days since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the response from American
politicians has ranged from pathetic to parodic. Through his press
secretary, President Obama expressed regret on Monday that neither he nor
any other high-ranking American official joined 44 world leaders who
marched alongside millions in Paris last weekend. Then on Friday, in an
effort to make amends, Secretary of State John Kerry brought James Taylor
to Paris to sing "You've Got a Friend."

The response from Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and likely
2016 Democratic presidential nominee, hasn't been any better. Clinton has
remained silent about the Charle Hebdo massacre since it occurred on
January 7.

Clinton's spokesman Nick Merrill confirmed in an email to THE WEEKLY
STANDARD that the former secretary of state has not publicly commented on
the attack, but Merrill declined to give any particular reason for
Clinton's silence. (She did manage to find the time Friday afternoon,
however, to condemn Republicans in Congress for "[a]ttacking financial
reform.")

What seems most likely is that Clinton has remained silent in response to
the Charlie Hebdo massacre in order to avoid scrutiny of her own failure to
defend free speech in the face of Islamist violence.

Three days after the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack killed four
Americans, including Ambassodor Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya, Clinton
attended a ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base welcoming home the remains of
the slain Americans. While flanked by four four flag-draped caskets,
Clinton blamed an "awful internet video that we had nothing to do with" for
the "rage and violence directed at American embassies." Clinton did not, in
the course of her speech, defend the right to free speech.

What's worse, Clinton privately told the father of one of the CIA officers
killed in Benghazi: "We will make sure that the person who made that film
is arrested and prosecuted." By the end of the month, an American citizen
known as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who made the anti-Islam YouTube
video, was indeed arrested for violating the terms of his probation. He was
later sentenced to a year in jail for using a name other than his given
legal name.

A number of questions remain for Hillary Clinton: Does she dispute the
claim that she said she would "make sure that the person who made that film
is arrested and prosecuted"? How did she know on September 14 that the
American who made the film was going to be arrested? And does Clinton see
any difference between the blasphemous Charlie Hebdocartoons and the
blasphemous anti-Islam YouTube video?

"I’d refer you to what she wrote in her book," Clinton spokesman Nick
Merrill told me in an email. When I replied that the book does not address
the questions I was asking, Merrill wrote: "She addresses the attack fully
and comprehensively in Hard Choices, I don’t have anything to add to that."

Despite her spokesman's stonewalling, we do know that Clinton did not
dispute in her book the claim that she vowed the American filmmaker would
be arrested and prosecuted, and her spokesman is not disputing it now. We
also know, of course, that the terrorist attack on Benghazi was not the
result of a spontaneous protest in response to the offensive video, but the
filmmaker became a convenient scapegoat for an administration arguing that
al Qaeda was on the run.

"A violation of probation, though, usually produces a court summons and
doesn’t typically lead to more jail time unless it involves an offense that
would be worth prosecuting in its own right under federal standards. Not
for Nakoula," National Review's Rich Lowry wrote in a column in May of
2013. "This wasn’t a case of nailing Al Capone on tax evasion. As Nina Shea
of the Hudson Institute points out, Al Capone’s underlying offense was
racketeering and gangland killings. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula’s underlying
offense wasn’t an underlying offense. He exercised his First Amendment
rights."

*The Hill blog: “Five reasons the left doesn’t believe Elizabeth Warren”
<http://thehill.com/policy/finance/229840-five-reasons-the-left-doesnt-believe-elizabeth-warren>*

By Kevin Cirilli

January 17, 2015, 8:50 a.m. EST

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has said time and time that against she’s
not running for president in 2016.

But don’t tell that to her fans in the Democratic Party.

Supporters on the left are moving full-steam ahead with efforts to draft
her into the 2016 race, believing it’s only a matter of time before the
Massachusetts senator changes her mind — and becomes the populist
challenger to Hillary Clinton that they think the party desperately needs.

Here are five reasons the left hears “yes” when Warren says “no.”

1.) She hasn't definitively ruled out a presidential run.

Warren has yet to definitely say she won’t run for president in 2016,
choosing instead to phrase her denials by saying she isn’t running now.

"Every candidate says they're not running before deciding to run," said
Erica Sagrans, campaign director at Ready For Warren.

Sagrans pointed to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who up until
this week insisted he wasn't running for president. Now there are reports
he's mulling a third presidential bid.

"Things change fast in politics, and Warren hasn't ruled anything out,"
Sagrans said.

Political watchers say Warren is smart to keep Washington guessing about
her political ambitions.

"Warren is wisely hedging her bets. She is underselling herself politically
by saying, 'No,' which is intriguing to the base but she is leaving room to
potentially over-deliver publicly should the circumstances merit her
jumping into the 2016 fray," said Ford O'Connell, a GOP strategist.

2.) She's distancing herself from President Obama.

Warren flexed her political muscle during the budget negotiations late last
year and spearheaded a successful revolt against an Obama nominee to the
Treasury Department with ties to Wall Street.

Her attention-grabbing moves come at a time when Democrats are fiercely
debating whether to move to the middle on economic issues or shift to the
left.

"She's shown that she can rally, hold and lead progressives groups these
past few weeks, especially," said Neil Sroka, communications director at
the liberal Democracy For America, which is pushing to draft Warren into
the presidential race.

Warren also has worked to get the White House to issue a veto threat on a
financial regulatory bill she says would weaken Wall Street regulations.

"She's battling the White House on a lot of these issues," Sroka said.

3.) She hasn't ordered the grass roots groups to shut it down.

Groups like Ready For Warren and MoveOn.org's $1 million-funded "Run Warren
Run" campaign are maneuvering in early caucus and primary states Iowa and
New Hampshire. On Saturday, hundreds of supporters are expected to attend
MoveOn's draft Warren kick-off event in New Hampshire.

In August, Warren's attorney filed a letter with the Federal Elections
Commission (FEC) saying she wasn't endorsing "Ready For Warren," but has
yet to personally comment on the groups’ efforts.

"We're not running this campaign because of some sort of parsing of her
speech," said Nick Berning, MoveOn.org communications director. "We take
her at her word. We're running the campaign because we think our country
will be better off if she enters the race."

"Elizabeth Warren has always been a reluctant politician, but she has
always listened to her supporters," Sagrans said.

Sagrans noted that in Warren's book, the senator wrote that she was
persuaded to challenge then-Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) during the 2012
Senate race after one of her supporters urged her to get in.

"We've got an entire nation asking the same question now, and we think it's
in Warren's nature to give the same answer she gave last time: 'Yes,

I'll fight,'" Sagrans said.

4.) Her promotional tour didn’t end after the midterms.

Warren campaigned heavily during the 2014 midterm election campaign,
hitting the trail in states like Iowa, Kentucky and West Virginia. While
she campaigned for these candidates, it also seems to have fueled national
interest in her own political career.

Veteran pollster Peter D. Hart, chairman of Hart Associates, last week
released the results of a special interest group with 12 voters in Aurora,
Colo. that found widespread intrigue with Warren.

"There's a connection that she's made in terms of talking about the
economy," Hart said. "The most established candidates, such as Mitt Romney,
Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie — they did less well."

Still, Hart noted that, "someone who is appealing before they’re in [the
race] may not find the same type of appeal once they've announced."

"That doesn't diminish Elizabeth Warren," he said. "But she's connected as
a person who is talking about economic issues in the way the public is
responding positively."

5.) She's remained tight-lipped about Hillary Clinton.

It seems that virtually every prominent Democratic politician is being
asked about Clinton ahead of 2016. While Warren did join each of the female
Democratic senators in the last Congress in signing a letter urging Clinton
to run, she has not openly endorsed her probably candidacy.

In an interview with The Washington Post in June, Warren declined an
opportunity to defend Clinton after she said in an ABC News interview that
she and former President Bill Clinton were "dead broke" after leaving the
White House.

The Post reported that Warren paused for "a full 19 seconds" because
answering: "Uh, I was surprised."

"There is no question about Warren is mulling a run and she has the
dynastic Team Hillary unnerved," said O'Connell, the GOP strategist.

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  January 21 – Saskatchewan, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Canadian
Imperial Bank of Commerce’s “Global Perspectives” series (MarketWired
<http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/former-us-secretary-state-hillary-rodham-clinton-deliver-keynote-address-saskatoon-1972651.htm>
)

·  January 21 – Winnipeg, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Global
Perspectives series (Winnipeg Free Press
<http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Clinton-coming-to-Winnipeg--284282491.html>
)

·  February 24 – Santa Clara, CA: Sec. Clinton to Keynote Address at
Inaugural Watermark Conference for Women (PR Newswire
<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hillary-rodham-clinton-to-deliver-keynote-address-at-inaugural-watermark-conference-for-women-283200361.html>
)

·  March 4 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton to fundraise for the Clinton
Foundation (WSJ
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/15/carole-king-hillary-clinton-live-top-tickets-100000/>
)

·  March 19 – Atlantic City, NJ: Sec. Clinton keynotes  American Camp
Association conference (PR Newswire <http://www.sys-con.com/node/3254649>)