A Stroll Down Memory Lane
by Paul R. Hollrah
Posted here Courtesy Paul R. Hollrah

I remember a Yale Law School student from suburban Chicago, a young woman named Hillary Rodham, who led campus demonstrations in support of twelve Black Panthers charged in 1970 with the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a suspected police informant. The victim was tied to a chair and had boiling water poured over his body before he was mercifully shot to death and dumped into a river.

In addition to leading campus protests that caused a near shutdown of the university, the future first lady, New York senator, and Democrat presidential candidate volunteered to monitor trial proceedings, looking for potential civil rights violations that could later be used by ACLU lawyers to have guilty verdicts overturned.

I remember the young wife of an Arkansas Attorney General, a future governor, who opened a commodity futures trading account with an investment of $1,000. According to a February 20, 1995 report in National Review, Mrs. Clinton was assisted in her trading decisions by James Blair, the general counsel for Tyson Foods, Inc., one of her state’s largest corporations. Her very first trade, on October 11, 1978, was a short sale of ten live cattle contracts at 57.55 cents per pound.

By committing herself to deliver 400,000 pounds of beef cattle two months later, cattle that she and her husband did not own, she pocketed the sum of $230,000. However, on Blair’s advice, she bought back the ten contracts the very next day at 56.10 cents per pound, giving her a tidy one-day profit of $5,300.

Trading on a margin account that was rarely large enough to cover her trades, she consistently sold cattle futures short, in a bull market, turning her $1,000 margin account into a tidy $100,000 profit in just ten months.

I remember a lawsuit filed by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons in February 1993, demanding that meetings of Mrs. Clinton’s 630-member health care task force be opened to public participation. On March 3, 1993, Mrs. Clinton’s health care policy aide, Ira Magaziner, responded to the court by certifying that all 630 members of the working group were government employees and that, as such, they were legally permitted to meet in secret.

However, internal documents later released by the White House showed that several special interest groups, all of which would have profited if the Clinton plan had been adopted, served as members of the task force.

I remember the mid-1995 White House interrogation in which Mrs. Clinton told federal investigators that she had done “limited legal work” for the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association, owned by James and Susan McDougal, and that she had done little or no work on a project called Castle Grande. Mrs. Clinton told the same story, under oath, before a grand jury in January 1996, and in sworn testimony before two government agencies, the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

However, Rose law firm billing records, which mysteriously materialized in the White House living quarters in January 1996, showed that Mrs. Clinton had billed Madison for sixty hours of legal work, that she had discussed the Castle Grande project with Madison officials on fourteen separate occasions, that she had discussed legal matters with the McDougals on sixteen separate occasions, that she had participated in twenty-eight meetings on Madison Guaranty, and that she had discussed Madison with Arkansas state regulators on at least two occasions.

I remember Web Hubbell, a Hillary Clinton law partner at the Rose law firm in Little Rock. While Hubbell was serving a prison term for tax evasion and fraud, it was rumored that he was contemplating a lawsuit against his former employer, a lawsuit that would have exposed the over-billing practices of his former law partners… including Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hubbell insisted that it was common practice for lawyers to over-bill clients, warning, “That would be one area that Hillary would be vulnerable.” What he was saying is that, as a lawyer in private practice, Hillary Rodham Clinton billed her clients for legal work she did not perform and the Rose law firm billing records contained proof of that wrongdoing.

In a recorded March 25, 1996 jailhouse telephone conversation, Hubbell learned that his wife, Suzanna, was being pressured by White House patronage chief, Marsha Scott. Mrs. Hubbell said, “(Marsha) says you are not going to get any public support… if you open Hillary up to this… “

Hubbell replied, “I will not raise those allegations that might open it up to Hillary.” Later, in discussing allegations that Hillary had billed his (Hubbell’s) time as her own, Hubbell told his wife, “So, I need to roll over one more time.”

So what’s the point of this little stroll down memory lane? It’s just a reminder that, anyone who might contemplate voting to return a Democrat to the White House in November 2008, should first understand that: a) the lady in question now wants to be President of the United States, and b) every one of her Democrat opponents was aware of these transgressions and did everything in their power to protect her from having to answer for them.