Mr. Hitchens may have inadvertently written the best endorsement of Hillary this season, and I am not a supporter. With all his erudition and political acumen, this is really all he could come up with? She fudged a story about her name, she didn't make a public issue of Bill's affairs, and the open-and-shut case kicker: she changes her mind, and THEN tries not to call attention to it. Call me underwhelmed. Is the author aware that we are stuck electing politicians? Would he care to name an alternative who meets his whimsical acid test? And may we know the criteria? What a silly, useless editorial. The health care point was especially cruel and unfounded. A sincere attempt was made on her part to reform health care and it was defeated by a well-funded and deceitful campaign that played upon people's fears. To blame Hillary for this is the height of hypocrisy. How did a failed plan open the doors to what we have now?

A sincere attempt was made on her part to reform health care and it was defeated by a well-funded and deceitful campaign that played upon people's fears.

The way I remember it, the plan was awful. It was doomed to failure and well deserved to be sunk without spending Trillions (with a "T") of dollars on it.

I admit, all I remember were those horrible ads paid for by the insurance companies with the phoney "just folks" couple complaining about government run health care, as if that's automatically a bad thing. I can't imagine it would be any worse than what we ended up with. Where did you get the trillions figure?

The plan was to totally reorganize one eigth (now more) of the economy. The economy is currently 14T, so we hit "Trillions" pretty easily.

As for you can't imagining it being worse, the easy answer is that we could spend much more, get much less, and have to wait a long time to get it as well. The plan was created by a group of leftist lawyers, not doctors, economists, or business men.

How about this:


1) She has acted thundered against predatory lending scams in the Senate, despite having profited from ( Rose law firm) a predatory lending scam ( Whitewater ) which ripped off middle class Arkansans.

2) She has successfully obtained pardons ( with help from her husband ) of Weathermen terrorists, FALN terrorists, the greatest finance fraudster ever ( Marc Rich ).

3) She successfully arranged a payment of $200,000 to her brother, Hugh Rodham, to help get a pardon for a major coke dealer. All Obama could manage was some simple coke snorting.

4) She managed to get the vote of almost 100% of the town of New Square, NY during her first Senate run by arranging the pardon of some of the community leaders who had defrauded the government of millions in fake Pell Grants for non-existent students.

5) She parlayed $1000 into a $100,000 commodities trading profit with the help of a Tyson Foods lawyer at a time when Tyson had a hefty amount of regulation business with Governor hubby. ( Oh, and she forgot to pay federal taxes on it).

what, no reply?

I must agree with jimdatt that the complaints voiced in this article are pretty thin, particularly if one thinks about the Bush Administration's lies, deceits and various domestic and international failures. Though I will not be voting for Hillary, I can say that, unlike Bush, no one has died because of her alleged poor judgment and lack of complete honesty.

what does bush have to do with bills wife's "accomplishments"? ill tell you, nothing. try again and stick to the female...

you remember uncle vince? he died...under very mysterious circumstances....

You could say that about literally any large undertaking government has ever been attempted. If you're against government health care, there's an honest cost benefits argument, but it's absolutely pointless to claim such a specific number about a program that never got close to being implemented. And certainly it's unfair to complain about the cost of a program that we never got to pay for because it never passed. If the Iraq war had never happened, would you blame the Bush administration for the trillion dollars it would have cost us? Absurd on its face, and such a weak argument against Hillary that it almost counts as support for her.

Those would have been much better arguments than the ones the professional made in his column. That was my point. I would say even so, she's at least as good and as ethical as most other people running, but the case against Hillary, while it exists, was not made by Mr. Hitchens.

What is the basis for your presumption that health care policy is better made by businessmen and doctors than by leftist lawyers? And please define your terms. What is "leftist"? Does that mean "bad"?

Also - I wasn't a math major, but I did OK - how does reorganizing an eighth of the economy necessarily result in costing the same amount? Under our current system a lot, and I mean a lot, of money goes to middlemen who add no value to the system. I am talking about insurance companies. The incentive in the current system is contrary to common sense and common morals. I would shed no tears if medical insurance people had to get new jobs, and if that's where the trillions are going, so much the better.

Sorry, I hadn't checked for a while. You are right, there is a case against Hillary. She is not my first choice. But I'm disappointed in Christopher Hitchens, whom I consider to be usually a responsible and entertaining journalist and scholar, to have written such a petty and empty editorial.

Please. Even Drudge and Limbaugh don't bother with that old chestnut any more. Don't you think that if there were anything at all to that loony speculation, that the right-wing media would have been all over it by now? Get a life.