Someone in the media thought it was worth his time to question whether the named players in the report on steroids in MLB should be given due process before assuming the players' guilt as a given. It seems the suggestion of presumed innocence in the face of allegations has acquired the stigma of co-conspiratorial behavior. Evidently, blacklisting (see MacCarthyism) has a place in this country when used in some proper way.

Re:Marika Johnson"s comment about America fighting our fights for the rest of the world. In fact, the American Invasion into Iraq, which my country was repeatedly slammed for not joining, has indeed made the world less safe. The attempted terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow are being attributed to Al Queda in IRAQ which did not exist before the Iraqi invasion.

The world does not want America to fight for us; they want America to stop thinking they are the best example of freedom, democracy and judgment and realize many countries live in liberty! You only honor your allies when they agree with you…hardly a characteristic that promotes respectful relationships.

Six Canadians died in Afghanistan today and seeing that your country is over 10xs the population as ours, it would be like you losing 60.

If the reasoning to elect a woman solely because she isn't one of the dozens of failed male presidents of history is the best consideration you can give towards a presidency nomination and vote, then I go one step further by urging you all to find a short, overweight, black, muslim transvestite to vote for. Not 1 of that minority has failed america yet, so lets give that social group a shot at leading the country.

Women had their shot with Pelosi, who has been nothing but a small barking dog since I helped electing her (regret that ballot to the day).

Women will indeed vote for a woman in large numbers. It is the nature of the beast. Men vote for men. Minorities vote for other minorities, etc.

There will also be men who would NEVER vote for a woman (old-fashioned), and whites who will NEVER vote for a minority (racists). America is still very race/sex conscious. And we have a long way to go.

The Republicans continue to say Hillary is unelectable; yet, I suspect they are VERY fearful that Hillary will win overwhelmingly if she gets the nomination for President. And so, they want to try and scare everyone and plant that seed of doubt. They are, after all, very good at deception.

We did have some of the best times as Americans when the Clinton's were in the White House. Yeah, Bill did a bad thing, but look at all of the lies, deception, we are above the law, and cheats that the Republicans have been for all of these years. So, when I read about the Republicans bashing Hillary, I take it with a grain of salt.

Hillary will make a wonderful President. Let a woman try to for a change to run the Country. Most of the men have not performed well up to this point.

Whoever wrote this article needs to count how many times Hilary uses the word "I" in any debate.

"Clean sweep"? Not only is that a very unoriginal political cliche; it is coming from a Clinton!!? Oh gag!

To Kevin in Florida,
Saying Jeb was a pioneer of education and governorship is absurd. TWICE the FL Supreme Court ruled Jeb Bush unconstitutional, and he still pursued state vouchers for private schools and the Terry Shiavo debacle. What type of "pioneer" governor pledges to uphold the rule of law and then ignores it even after the court's ruling? Oh yeah, a Bush would.

Back to the topic, Hillary makes a good point about cleaning the White House. I wish her well in her presidential candidacy. I still have not made a final decision yet, but I know it is definitely not conservative–too out of touch with reality and their lack of competence.

I am another woman who is not impressed with this woman and will never vote for her. She voted for the Iraq war because it was the popular thing to do at the time. Don't buy her pretense that she is a moderate. She is a socialist who wants the government to raise your children and tell you what to do. After all, it's for your own good because she knows best.

We very well may neeed a clean sweep however not with a european socialist as you are.

I've read these comments and I have this to add:

Reagan and Bush I wrecked the US economy and cast the outcasts, downtrodden, insane folks out to fend for themselves, crime and homelessness was at an all time high.

Then we had Bill Clinton as president, the social situation got better, there were jobs, the nuts got help, joblessness decreased, salaries began to catchup with inflation, the national debt came down, there began to be a surplus.

Then somehow we got another Bush in the WH "wallah" national debt mounts by leaps and bounds, the environment is under siege the world is rightly scared of us because our government (which is us) attacks for no reason and tortures and kills innocents.

Hillary does have the benefit of experience in the US executive so the learning curve should be truncated and she has the benefit of Bill's council on cleaning up Bush damage. To me Hillary deserves a good look, it is true she hasn't grabbed me yet, but I really resent the current cast of World bully, I am better then that and I think America is better then that too.

I am a woman who will NOT be voting for Hillary under no circimstance! I am a younger Democrat who has voted strait Party lines from Bill Clinton to John Kerry. If Hillary get's the Nomination, I will do something unprecidented for the first time.

I WILL NOT VOTE DEMOCRAT!

As Hilary stated, we will surely discover many undisclosed crimes of the Bush Administration if and when a Democrat takes office. However, if McCain, Romney or Guiliani wins, these Republicans will certainly continue to pander to the Republican party and cover up all of the evidence. Hopefully, Bush's efforts to fix the 2008 election will be as incompetent as the 2006 election and his response to the Iraq war and Katrina. If so, the Democrats have absolutely nothing to worry about.

I am a woman and a voter! I will be voting for Hillary! You go girl!!

Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War!!!

Oh? You intending to fire all the Attorney Generals too? More than a broom was necessary after ole Billy Bub left the White House. It took a sanitation crew a week to clean the stench from the Oval Office. Phew!!

JLE … give the “Clinton Voted for the Iraq War!!!” and “Dems/Congress voted for this war” shtick a rest already. They voted for the Iraq war based on the bogus and selective intel – primarily the “imminent threat” of WMDs pushed by Dubya. It’s a well known fact that without the WMD angle being shoved down everybody’s throat that NOBODY except the White House would have favored the invasion – not Congress and not the people of this country. Congressmen have already said that if they knew then what they know now (that the decade-old WMD hearsay was BS), they never would have authorized an invasion.

I’ll paraphrase a memo (via http://feinstein.senate.gov/crs-intel.htm) entitled “Congress as a Consumer of Intelligence Information” sent from Sen. Dianne Feinstein to Alfred Cumming, (Specialist in Intelligence and National Security in the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division):

“The President is able to control dissemination of intelligence information to Congress because the Intelligence Community is part of the executive branch. It was created by law and executive order principally to serve that branch of government in the execution of its responsibilities. Thus, as the head of the executive branch, the President generally is acknowledged to be "the owner" of national intelligence. As a result, the President, and a small number of presidentially-designated Cabinet-level officials, including the Vice President - in contrast to Members of Congress have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods.”

Basically, the executive branch generally does not routinely share with Congress four general types of intelligence information: 1) the identities of intelligence sources; (like disgraced whackjobs like Ahmad Chalabi and Curveball); 2) the "methods" employed by the Intelligence Community in collecting and analyzing intelligence (like via torture in secret prisons); 3)"raw" intelligence, which can be unevaluated or "lightly" evaluated intelligence, which in the case of human intelligence sometimes is provided by a single source, but which also could consist of intelligence derived from multiple sources when signals and imagery collection methods are employed (like the VERY “lightly” evaluated intel concerning those “mobile weapons labs” touted by Powel that turned out to be nothing more than water trucks); and 4) certain written intelligence products tailored to the specific needs of the President and other high-level executive branch policymakers (like the President's Daily Brief).

So basically, he can reveal selected (favorable) pieces of intel, not reveal their source (Chalabi, Curveball, etc), and/or not reveal how it was obtained (via he application of “torture” until something/anything is said to stop it). And he can do all of this legally as he sees fit. So yeah, other than all of that mentioned above, Congress saw everything that Bush and his administration saw before he invaded Iraq. And yet this lie keeps getting repeated much like the Fox News favorite “Osama was offered to Clinton and Clinton turned him down” lie - Syria offered to send Osama to SAUDI ARABIA, and SAUDI ARABIA refused him. The point is, Dubya, as head of he Executive branch, has the ability to restrict what ANYBODY sees … and thus the ability to hide the conflicting info and push the supporting info. And guess which info he made damn sure everybody saw?

The supporting info - a consciously calculated SUBSET of the intel that Bush had at his disposal. So yeah, they saw “everything” … everything that BOLSTERED his case for war. It’s what’s called “modifying the intel to fit the policy”, or selective intelligence dissemination. The White House even acknowledged it can restrict certain intel when it defended the 149 signing statements that Dubya used to skirt congressional laws he’s supposed to be following, saying that the president has authority to withhold information from Congress that it considers privileged – like, in this case, the unflattering intel in the NIE.

And here’s a specific example of selective information restriction. On September 25, 2006, it was revealed that a leaked (to the press) portion of the National Intelligence Estimate (put out by the National Intelligence Council) concludes that the Iraq war has WORSENED the terrorist threat to the United States. The New York Times, which reported on the document, said that the new NIE document "attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee."

And here’s where the “restriction” part comes in … TWICE! First: The document (the most comprehensive report on intelligence provided by the government) began compilation in 2004 and concluded in April. In APRIL! About the same time Bush was touting all the progress he’s made during the war - something he CONTINUED to do even as a second consecutive increase in troops was on the way there! And continued to do up until he got slapped back to reality by the Nov 2006 congressional elections and by his own Sec of Defense when Robert Gates admitted to a senate committee that we were NOT winning the Iraq war.

Yet this FIVE MONTHS-OLD document had NOT, as of 09/25/06, been shared with senators (CONGRESS). And WHY was that? Because it was classified, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told ABC's "This Week."

And Second: the White House only ended up SELECTIVELY declassifying and releasing PARTS of the report! A total of four pages (out of 30) were declassified. But what about the other 26 pages we didn’t see? Apparently those pages – that ones that didn’t paint such a rosy picture were conveniently “matters of national security” and therefore couldn’t be released. I guess we’re just lucky that the damned “traitorous” media got their hands on it, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen ANY at all!

So much for the thoroughly bogus argument that congress sees “the exact same data that the White house does”. Now stop blaming anyone who voted for the war when they were spoon-fed bogus intelligence by the person who owned it.

Hillary Clinton will never be elected President of the United States. It is obvious she is not interested in what's best for the people of this country. She's only interested in spending the taxpayers' money and furthering her own selfish goals.

when you're such committed to Whitehouse job, then who'll look after Bill?

“If Hillary Clinton thinks women will support her candidacy simply based on her gender she is mistaken,” RNC spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson said…. Yes, I will be voting for Hillary, I am a woman of voting age. Let me repeat Ms Wilkerson, I will be voting for the first woman President of the United States, Hillary Clinton.

I truly hope Hillary gets the White House nod and I also hope I will still be alive to witness this. Her plan to employ Bill as a good will foreign minister will go a long way in returning the United States to it's once great standing in the global stature.

Most people are claiming they want change and a different direction, but the overwhelming majority will again vote for one of the 2 main parties.

Vote parties continue to increase the size of the government, both will use trillions in tax dollars for foreign aid, overseas wars and benefits for the lazy.

If you really want change, vote for someone who wants to adhear to the original intent of the founding fathers.

Uh, has anyone noticed the recent
terror attacks in London and Glasgow,
Spain, Bali, 9/11, Darfur and everywhere else?
If you have, then you know Bush
continues to stand alone fighting for freedom and democracy here and abroad.
The rest of the world, asleep because we have protected them for generation, fight freedom fighting America, not Islamofascist muslims set on imposing global Islam, read Sharia law to stone women perceived as adulterous, or just wanting to choose their own partners,
decapitation for most things unislamic, including free speech and
gay rights.
Clinton is an opportunist white-glag waver and, like most Democracts, will
choose appeasement rather than the hard sad slog of defending our
constitutional rights and freedoms.
Whatever she says, this is the plan.

I cannot take it anymore Paris then Hillary. Who is next? Lindsay Lohan?

Is there anybody left with ideals and honor to lead this country? Is this what we have been reduced too? The polls say that we give congress less than a 25% approval rating. Is she not part of the problem??

God help us all! Please we need a white knight! We need someone with truth and honor. We need a leader that ALL Americans can get behind. I think it is time to get out of the two party system.

I am so tired of the zebras trying to change their spots for the pony show!

Geez, it's so obvious they have been "trained" to say what certain groups want to hear! Ethnicity; this is the script. Health care; say this. War; this is the response because our intel says this is what matters to those that need to hear this or that.

I don't feel any of what has been said so far is genuine. Blah, Blah, Blah. And Reagan was faulted for being an actor!

One of the "tests" Hillary will face everyday until elections is whether or not she is "tough enough" to call it as it lays, and to back up her rhetoric, which by the way is and has always been considerable and formidable, with action.

That she is using gender coded metaphors and language to articulate herself is nothing new. Male politicians have been using bellicose language (particularly the use of war-speak) and sports lingo since they have opened their mouths in public.

So what's the reasoning behind attacking her housecleaning metaphors?

Get real, stop being hypocritical, and start using critical thinking to evaluate what is coming out of the mouths of ALL the candidates. This is an exciting time in history in terms of speech, debate, critical discourse, and active community dialogue. Let's let this arguably "new" set of signifiers into the discourse and see what happens.

A voted democratic for as long as I can remember, over the past decade or so, I began to notice, that it was very difficult to tell the difference from the Republicans. I moved to the center as a Ind. traditional blinkers aside. Now the thought of either party controlling all branches, scares the bejesus out of me.

The last two decades have been under the Bush/Clinton administrations, and I have to admit that I appreciated Clinton 1 more, with Clinton 2 being on the ground issues opposit the will of Americans, I dont think I could support that. So issues do matter

Clinton Voted for the Iraq War!!!

If anyone just closed their eyes and listened to clinton what you find is someone who not only panders but, says alot of nothing and is absent of any real substance. she is good with covering the lack of it but, mostly she just borrows her husband's resume and uses it as her own to tout 'experience' and blathers on about alot of nothing.
what I'd like to know is why the media insists on being so dumb and falling for this act over and over and not bothering to really look honestly at this woman.
she is cotton candy dressed up in a meaty package with a nice bow.
it scares how many people and the media, after years of Bush, are allowing themselves to be taken for a ride again.

She never looked good to me
And I still find her
Simply unelectable.

I have a prediction ! I think Gore will endorse Obama after the first series of primarys. He is NO fan of hers and I can not imagine him campaigning for the Clinton's. He was impressed by Dean's grass roots campaign in 2004, He MUST be impressed with Barack. Just my feminine instinct !

As a Floridian…. Jeb was a great governor.

I doubt he will ever run for president though. He is an excellent pioneer of education and governorship though, I wouldn't be surprised to see him in a cabinet position or even as VP one day.

Interesting comment from Hillary !! I agree but I would add; after BUSH, CLINTON, BUSH and now another Clinton ? In my opinion America needs a laxative….We need change and a complete sweep. I am thinking more and more that Hillary should have run in 2004 ! We would have been spared of Bush's Supreme court appointee's. 2008 is a CHANGE election… I really believe that American is craving NEW leadership and a new direction.

And who will have to choose between in 2016 - Jeb Bush and Chelsea Clinton??

What we don't need is another Bush or Clinton in the white house.

I'm sorry, my math was wrong. It was 4 years of Bush sr, then 8 years of Clintons, followed by 8 years of Bush again. So its 20 now, and if she becomes president, the same 2 families will have controlled the White House for 20, going on 24 years.

Time to clean house and make a change is RIGHT!

“If Hillary Clinton thinks women will support her candidacy simply based on her gender she is mistaken,” RNC spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson said.

I disagree. My biggest fear is that women will vote for Hillary solely because she is a woman, and the ones who don't will vote for her because of her husband.

And she's right - we do need tro clean house. However, SHE is part of what needs cleaning out. If she wins, that means the same 2 families will have ruled the white house for 16, going on 20 years.

I totally agree with her… the Bush Admin has brought nothing but harm and shame to this country.

They cannot point to one good thing they have done for the country. Bush has absolutely no legacy.

Dear Senator Clinton,

STOP BAD GOVERNMENT! NOW!!