Hillary’s Assault on the Second Amendment

Hillary’s Assault on the Second Amendment

By Claude Cartaginese
FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/2/2009

According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mexico’s raging drug war is largely the fault of the United States. As she tells it, illegal drugs have been flowing from Mexico into the U.S. to feed “our insatiable demand” for those substances. In exchange, American weapons—including a variety of military assault-type munitions—have been streaming south into Mexico. “Our [America’s] inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians,” Clinton said last week. On Friday she elaborated:

“The guns that are sold in the United States, which are illegal in Mexico, get smuggled over our border and arm these terrible drug-dealing criminals so that they can outgun these poor police officers along the border and elsewhere in Mexico. So we’ve got to help out here. We can’t stand by and say, Well, you know, you guys just do the best you can, when we, unfortunately, are the market for drugs, when a lot of the money is laundered in the United States back into the hands of the drug kingpins, and when the weapons have come from our country. So I think recognizing the co-responsibility is just stating the obvious.”

There’s only one problem with Clinton’s version of the story: it’s nonsense.

How many American guns are in fact headed south to the Mexican cartels? If prominent Democrats are to be believed, nearly all of them. Thus, according to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, “70% of the weapons in the hands of the drug cartels are coming from the U.S.” Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who contends that restricting gun availability in the U.S. would help prevent violence in Mexico, cites an even higher figure of 90%. (Notably, Feinstein got a concealed carry permit for herself and once vowed to defend herself from a terror group called the New World Liberation Front by stating that if its members tried to harm her, she “was going to take them with me.”) Not to be outdone, Nita Lowey, the far-Left congresswoman from New York, states that fully 97% of all weapons find their way to Mexico via the U.S. Those are indeed staggering numbers. But there is reason to doubt their accuracy.

William Hoover, assistant director of field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, argues that no such volume of American-made weapons are headed south. Says Hoover, “The investigations we have, that we see, for firearms flowing across the border don’t show us individuals taking thousands of guns a day or at a time flowing into Mexico.” His claim is buttressed by the fact that Mexican authorities have refused to provide U.S. law-enforcement officials with the serial numbers of weapons confiscated from drug cartel members—a likely indicator that the weapons were obtained not from American gun shops but rather from illegitimate sources elsewhere.

And what of Mexico’s role in the violence? Before Felipe Calderon became president and called on the military to crack down on drug traffickers, the Mexican government’s attempts at eradicating the drug trade were laughable. In 1997, for example, the Bill Clinton administration announced that it had made the Mexican government a “full ally” in the war on drugs. President Clinton enlisted the assistance of Mexican General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, who at the time was the head of the Mexican National Institute to Combat Drugs. Rebollo was invited to secret meetings at the White House and participated in high-level conferences with the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Agency. He was fêted as a “man of absolute unquestioned character.”

Unfortunately, the honeymoon was short-lived, as Rebollo was thereafter arrested for taking bribes from one of the largest Mexican drug cartels. Despite Calderon’s efforts to combat such corruption, it remains a hallmark of the Mexican government—from the low-level law-enforcement officer who moonlights as a hit man for the drug cartels, right up to highly placed politicians on the cartel’s payroll. This is no secret. Our law-enforcement knows it. The average Mexican citizen knows it, too.

Here’s another example. Last week, a rogue soldier/drug-gang leader named Octavio Almanza Moreles killed retired Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones and 10 other military men. Quiñones had recently been hired by the Cancun city government to help weed out corruption and revamp the local police force. When Almanza and several others were arrested, the operation netted 23 assault rifles, 20 handguns, 23 grenades, two grenade launchers, and a rocket launcher, among many other items.

It is likely that little, if any, of that arsenal originated in the United States. Assault rifles, grenades, grenade launchers, etc. are not available in American gun shops for purchase by the general public. The Mexican drug cartels, with all of their money and sophistication, would be disinclined to risk smuggling small arms from the U.S., especially when they can easily purchase far more potent weaponry on the black market, or from sundry countries around the world (such as Venezuela or Iran), or from Hezbollah-type terror groups wishing to destabilize North America. For that matter, they can easily “procure” their weapons from less-than-savory elements within the Mexican military—weapons that, in all likelihood, did originally come from the U.S., but through legal channels.

Moreover, the drug cartels can afford to transport their purchased weaponry into Mexico from overseas using their own fleet of aircraft, ships, and submarines, which can land unimpeded on the cartels’ own remote airfields or docks. The notion that all of this military-type weaponry is somehow finding its way into Mexico via the southern United States is simply not logical.

Hillary Clinton surely comprehends this, and her statements need to be understood in context. She is a key player in a presidential administration that is passionately opposed to gun rights. The President himself is quietly launching an assault on the Second Amendment. This is the same President who formerly served on the board of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation; who supported a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns; who proposed a 500-percent increase in the excise taxes on firearms and ammunition to discourage the purchase of those items; who voted in support of legislation that would have banned privately owned hunting shotguns and target rifles in Illinois (where he was a state senator); who voted, in 2004, against legislation intended to protect homeowners from prosecution in cases where they used a firearm to thwart a home invasion; and who appointed Attorney General Eric Holder, who helped craft the “Federal Assault Weapons Ban” of 1994 which banned the sale of numerous models of semi-automatic firearms for ten years. (Holder, it should be noted, now seeks to reinstitute that ban.)

The Obama administration has turned the Mexican government’s gun-violence problem into a “blame-America-first” crisis in order to advance a gun-control campaign that will be spearheaded by the likes of Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton. The gun-control lobby fully understands this and consequently has lauded Obama’s quest to prevent civilians from obtaining so-called “assault weapons” (which, as noted above, are often nothing more than semi-automatic shotguns). American citizens at large also understand this instinctively, as evidenced by the frenetic pace at which they have been purchasing guns and ammunition ever since Obama was elected President last November.

When Hillary Clinton laments that America’s “incapacity” to limit gun access has “unfair[ly]” led people to hold “the Mexican government and people responsible” for the violence of its drug cartels, she is merely laying the groundwork for further encroachment on Americans’ right to bear arms. Her modus operandi is to depict the U.S. as the cause of gun violence in Mexico, and to characterize her mission as a pure-hearted quest to save innocent lives.

But in reality, the Clinton-Obama approach will have a number of undesirable consequences. It will hurt the United States by imposing ever-stricter gun-control laws, thereby making it increasingly difficult for law-abiding Americans to protect themselves. It will be ineffective in curbing the violence of the Mexican drug cartels, who clearly can obtain the guns they desire from a host of sources. And, ultimately, it will hurt Mexico by failing to pressure the Mexican government to acknowledge the real cause of its problems and to institute meaningful reform.

Finally, there is the absurdity of Hillary’s recent assertion that it is “not right” to hold the Mexican government accountable for the security of Mexico. Mexico is not Lebanon; it isn’t supposed to have roaming paramilitary groups terrorizing people within its borders. If it is unable to gain control over such groups, it is by definition a failing state, however many weapons may enter the country by way of the U.S.

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October Surprise: Clinton Campaign Drops a Dime on Barack Obama

Clinton campaign alleges “voter suppression, intimidation and harassment systematically engaged in by the Obama campaign.” It’s not just about ACORN any more.

When Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama–possibly under duress from Obama’s cohorts and party leaders–she was probably supposed to have removed from the Internet all damning statements that she and her campaign had made about Barack Obama. Unfortunately for Barry, a letter from her campaign counsel, which is still online at http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2008/images/01/23/nv.state.letter.1.23.08.pdf, is about to become the dreaded October Surprise. (A backup copy is now at http://www.stentorian.com/Obama/clinton_complaint.pdf). This extremely damning letter not only reinforces what is being said about ACORN, but extends allegations of election irregularities to Barack Obama’s own campaign.

There is no place in the American electoral process for the types of voter suppression, intimidation, and harassment systematically engaged in by the Obama campaign, its allies and supporters.

 

RYAN, PHILLIPS, UTRECHT 5. MACKINNON
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
’ Nonlawyer Partner
1133 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20036
 (202) 293-1177  Facsimile (202) 293-3411January 23, 2008
Jill Derby, Chair Nevada State Democratic Party 1210 South Valley View Road Suite 114 Las Vegas, NV 89102

Dear Chair Derby:
I write on behalf of Hillary Clinton for President (”the Committee”) in regard to the January 19, 2008 Nevada Democ-ratic Caucus. The Committee is aware of a letter addressed to you today from the Obama for America campaign requesting an inquiry into the conduct of the caucuses. The Committee shares the Obama campaign’s concern that full participation in the democratic process may have been compromised by the substantial number of irregularities occurring at the caucuses, and we fully support a complete inquiry by the Nevada State Democratic Party (the ”Party”) into all caucus improprieties.

This letter is not intended as a response to the Obama campaign’s letter. However, in the interest of a complete record, and in contrast to the alleged minor procedural problems noted by the Obama campaign, the Committee wishes to bring to your attention information we have received evidencing a premeditated and predesigned plan by the Obama campaign to engage in systematic corruption of the Party’s caucus procedures. Compounding this blatant distortion of the caucus rules was an egregious effort by the Obama campaign to manipulate the voter registration process in its own favor, thereby disenfranchising countless voters. Finally, the Committee has received a vast number of reliable reports of voter suppression and intimidation by the Obama campaign or its allies.

The Committee had 30 phone lines on Saturday to receive calls in its Las Vegas offices. These lines rang continuously from early morning until well after the caucuses concluded with reports from people who were victimized and who observed irregularities. The phone lines were so over-whelmed that many callers resorted to calling individual Committee staff cell phones to report that they could not get through. The Committee also received many similar calls at its national headquarters.

The Committee is confident that any investigation into the conduct of the caucuses will be thorough, fair and in the interest of insuring that future Party caucuses will be as open and democratic as possible.

Systematic Corruption of the Party’s Caucus Procedures
The Committee received substantially similar reports of improprieties of such a number as to leave no conclusion but that the Obama campaign and its allies and supporters engaged in a planned effort to subvert the Party’s caucus procedures to its advantage. For example:

þ Preference cards were premarked for Obama.

þ Clinton supporters were denied preference cards on the basis that none were left, while Obama supporters at the same caucus sites were given preference cards.

þ Caucus chairs obviously supporting Obama:
o Deliberately miscounted votes to favor Senator Obama.
o Deliberately counted unregistered persons as Obama votes.
o Deliberately counted young children as Obama votes.
o Refused to accept preference cards from Clinton supporters who were at the caucus site by noon on the ground that the cards were not filled out fast enough.
o Told Clinton supporters to leave prior to electing delegates.

þ Clinton supporters who arrived late were turned away from the caucus, while late Obama supporters were admitted to the caucus.

Manipulation of the Voter Registration Process
Numerous reports received by the Committee demonstrate a concerted effort on the part of the Obama campaign and its supporters to prevent eligible voters supporting a candidate other than Senator Obama from caucusing. The Obama supporters complained of were acting in positions of authority at the caucus sites. Some of these reports are as follows:

þ Obama supporters wrongly informed Clinton supporters that they were not allowed to participate in the caucus if their names were not on the voter rolls. However, Obama supporters whose names did not appear on the voter rolls were permitted to register at the caucus site.

þ Obama supporters falsely informed Clinton supporters that no registration forms were available for them to register to vote at the caucus site.

þ Obama supporters wrongly told Clinton supporters who were attempting to caucus at the wrong precinct that they could not caucus at that site, while simultaneously permitting Obama supporters at the wrong precinct to participate.

þ Obama supporters were allowed to move to the front of the registration and sign-in line.

Voter Suppression and Intimidation
The Committee received a substantial number of disturbing reports from voters that they had been subject to harassment, intimidation or efforts to prevent them from voting. Some of the most egregious of these complaints are described below:

þ Voters at at-large caucus sites were informed that those sites were for Obama supporters only.

þ Clinton supporters at at-large caucus sites were told that their managers would be watching them while they caucused.

þ Workers were informed that their supervisors kept lists of Clinton and Obama supporters, and were told that they could not caucus unless their name was on the list of Obama supporters.

þ Many Clinton supporters were threatened with employment termination or other discipline if they caucused for Senator Clinton.

þ Workers were required to sign a pledge card to support Obama if they wanted time off to participate in the caucus.
þ Workers at one casino were offered a lavish lunch and permitted to attend and register to vote only if they agree to support Obama.

The complaints summarized above represent only a small sample of the complaints received by the Committee. With respect to each of these complaints and many more, the Committee has the names and phone numbers of those reporting these incidents and the specific precinct numbers where the incidents occurred. Upon request the Committee will share these with the Party with appropriate safeguards to protect these individuals from reprisal. On the whole, these reports show a troubling effort by the Obama campaign and its allies and supporters to advance their own campaign at the expense of the right of all Nevada Democrats to participate in the democratic process in a free, fair and open manner.

Senator Clinton and the Committee are wholly committed to ensuring that every eligible voter has his or her vote cast and counted. There is no place in the American electoral process for the types of voter suppression, intimidation and harassment systematically engaged in by the Obama campaign, its allies and supporters.
Sincerely,
/v
Lyn Utrecht Counsel Hillary Clinton for President

Could Clinton still come back? Internet buzzes with rumours Biden will be replaced by Hillary as Obama’s running mate

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1061791/Could-Clinton-come-Internet-buzzes-rumours-Biden-replaced-Hillary-Obamas-running-mate.html

Big Clinton Fundraiser & Close Friend Rothschild Calls Barry Insane “Arrogant” & Endorses McCain- With Video

http://patdollard.com/2008/09/top-clinton-fundraiser-close-friend-rothschild-calls-barry-arrogant-endorses-mccain-with-video/

Palin’s Going Too???? Run Away! Run Away! Hillery Chickens Out Of Anti-Iran Rally

http://patdollard.com/2008/09/palins-going-too-run-away-run-away-hillery-chickens-out-of-anti-iran-rally/

Analysis: What Clinton’s Body Language Says About Her Support for Obama

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=162243

Clinton Delegate Upset With Her Party

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmdhhW-zSeU

It’s All About Me

It’s All About Me

By Kathy Shaidle
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/27/2008

How can a self-congratulation double as a paean to someone else? That was the question observers asked of Hillary Clinton’s bout of rhetorical self-preoccupation last night. Her speech, bumped out of primetime at the last minute, had been billed as the speech that would close party ranks around Obama and end the most fractious primary debate in decades. But as usual, the Clintons looked out for themselves above all.

This proved unfortunate for Barack Obama, who is yet to score any discernable bounce after Monday’s widely panned convention kickoff. According to the latest Rasmussen tracking poll, Obama and McCain remain tied at 44 percent as of Tuesday morning; Gallup gave McCain a slight edge. Furthermore: 

Obama is supported by 78 percent of Democrats while McCain gets the vote from 85 percent of Republicans. The GOP hopeful also has a slight advantage among unaffiliated voters. 

Worried Democrats looked to Hillary Clinton to come to the rescue on Tuesday night. However, in a National Journal poll of “Democratic insiders” that day, only 52 percent felt confident that Clinton would deliver a gracious address designed to unite the party. One conservative pundit blogged Tuesday morning: 

This is a dream come true for Hillary, no? She gets her big moment tonight with two major national polls pointing squarely at the idea that she should have been named VP and that she, perhaps, alone can deliver the election to the Dems by rallying the PUMAs. 

“PUMA.” That’s the Hillary loyalists’ adopted moniker, standing for “Party Unity My A**.” Almost a third of them say they’ll vote for McCain this November rather than Obama. The PUMAs are considered the convention’s wild card, too; rumors have swirled for weeks that they’ll stage an embarrassing pro-Hillary stunt on live TV, perhaps during the nomination itself. “It seems to be a little more of a problem than I anticipated,” admitted Democratic Party chairman Don Fowler just hours before Hillary Clinton stepped behind the podium. “All you need is 200 people in that crowd to boo and stuff like that and it will be replayed 900 times. And that’s not what you want out of this.”

At least an undisciplined floor demonstration might improve the ratings. Meagan McArdle blogged the bad news about Day One at TheAtlantic.com: 

According to Nielsen, none of you are watching the conventions.  An even lower none than in 2004, which was itself a dramatic decline from the lackluster ratings of 2000.  And why would you?  You could replace all the speeches with the following template:

Blather, blather, blather, American dream, blather, blather, hard working American families, blather, blather, future, blather, blather, anecdote about how the candidate comes from a hardworking American family, blather… 

Arguably Hillary’s most formidable supporter, her husband and former President Bill Clinton, definitely didn’t follow that tedious “blather” template on Tuesday afternoon, and it may come back to haunt them. Mr. Clinton doesn’t officially address the delegates until tomorrow; it was his unscripted remarks to an international affairs forum that made news yesterday afternoon: 

He said: “Suppose you’re a voter, and you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?”

 Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: “This has nothing to do with what’s going on now.” 

Protests aside, that hypothetical musing was clearly aimed at Obama, whose supporters have complained about the Clintons’ tepid support, if not outright disrespect, for the presumptive nominee:

Throughout the 2008 primary season and beyond, Clinton has made no secret of his exasperation with Obama’s success. He called Obama’s anti-Iraq war message a “fairy tale,” and after facing accusations that he had played the “race card” in the run-up to the South Carolina primary, Clinton later accused the Obama campaign of “playing the race card on me.” When asked in a recent ABC-TV interview if Obama was ready to be president, Clinton replied: “You could argue that no one’s ever ready to be president.” 

Hillary Clinton, in turn, energized her loyal supporters throughout the campaign by almost any means necessary, arousing sympathy from them (and ridicule from others) with her famous on-camera crying jag, for example. It doesn’t help that a new McCain campaign ad replays Hillary Clinton’s stinging dismissal of her one-time opponent for the nomination:

“I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.” 

Clinton wasn’t above playing the sex card, either: for millions of women, Republican and Democratic alike, the prospect of electing the first female President evoked powerful emotions. A deferred dream that compelling won’t die after a single speech by Hillary Clinton, no matter how brilliantly crafted and delivered. And this speech was cultivated to do anything but bury them. 

Take two battling personality cults nursing simmering resentments about money and power, add mostly unspoken (perhaps even subconscious) divisions related to sex and race, and the result is a potentially explosive situation. The word “unity” doesn’t fit comfortably in that equation.

In the end, Hillary Clinton valiantly squeezed that word in more than once, and put on a fairly convincing show of sincerity, complete with a little self-deprecating humor. But the focus remained on her own accomplishments, and her hopes for the country, rather than the personality and platform of the nominee.

Clinton stepped onto the stage clad in a startling neon orange pantsuit, and received a passionate ovation. A tearful Bill Clinton repeatedly mouthed the words “I love you” from his box high above the crowd. Hillary Clinton drew another round of applause by describing herself as “a proud supporter of Barack Obama.” She bracketed her praise for the presumptive nominee with tame, generic political boilerplate about “teamwork” and “opportunity.”

“Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president,” Clinton concluded. But he barely rated a mention beyond that. Clinton briefly attacked the other ticket – the one she had praised during the primaries – trying out a somewhat awkward new slogan: “No way, no how, no McCain” and taking a pointed jab at “a Supreme Court in a right-wing headlock” (whatever that might be). An Obama presidency on the other hand will deliver “millions of green collar jobs,” “universal, high quality health care,” “make college affordable again,” and “promoting unionization.”

Missing in all of this was any discussion of the candidate’s character, the experiences that made him uniquely qualified to run the government, or a perfunctory call for her delegates to vote for him instead of her during the nomination roll call.

Instead, Hillary’s speech dwelled on her own campaign, her hopes and dreams, and how Barack Obama frequently agreed with her prescriptions for America. She included a number of anecdotes about herself, including a touching story about a cancer stricken woman who greeted her with the word “Hillary” “painted on her bald head.” In fact, she mentioned the deceased leader of the Arkansas Democratic Party and a relatively obscure Ohio Congresswoman before spending much time on the star of the convention, the man she was allegedly urging her voters to support in November.

The speech only hit its stride when discussing – wait for it – Hillary. The most stirring sections of Clinton’s address likened Hillary ’08 to Underground Railroad conductors and suffragettes, harkening back to the historical accomplishments of Harriet Tubman and the women’s rights proponents of Seneca Falls. (Naturally, Clinton neglected to mention that Tubman was a registered Republican, as were many early feminists.)

The crowd tried to make the best of the Hillary 2012 campaign. As she spoke, tall vertical signs throughout the rapturous crowd read “OBAMA” on one side and “UNITY” on the other. With their bold capital letters and sheer enormity, the signs seemed more like a totalitarian order than a friendly call to come together. On Tuesday night at any rate, the assembled Democrats seemed ready to follow orders. If there was an outburst, the cameras didn’t catch it. But nearly 18 million Clinton voters weren’t at the convention last night, and their reaction to Hillary’s speech remains to be seen.

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A blogger since 2000, Kathy Shaidle runs FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new e-book Acoustic Ladyland has been called a “must read” by Mark Steyn.

Clintons Set to Upstage Obama

Newsmax.com

Clintons Set to Upstage Obama

Monday, August 25, 2008 10:49 PM

By: Dave Eberhart, Newsmax contributing editor

For some disgruntled and worried Sen. Barack Obama supporters at the Democratic convention, the program is too much Clinton – too much of the time.

 

With both Hillary and Bill featured prominently at the Denver conclave, the fear is that the dynamic duo will overshadow the candidate and dilute the big bounce he seeks and needs from the four-day showcase.

 

Add to the mix the fact that Hillary has demanded her name still be placed in nomination. Already, press reports indicate key Clinton aides will leave the convention before Obama’s Thursday night speech.

 

According to a report in the Financial Times, the Obama camp is counting on as much as a 10-percentage-point bounce in opinion polls post-convention.

 

But with Hillary holding the podium Tuesday night, and husband Bill on Wednesday, there are real fears among Obama backers they may steal his show and the media’s focus will stray from Obama and running mate Joe Biden.

 

Consider, for instance, the anointed Obama-Biden pair touring the swing states of the Midwest on the grand and triumphant journey to Denver on Wednesday.

 

Wednesday happens to also be Bill Clinton’s big day in the sun – with his address to party delegates slated for prime time.

 

The Financial Times cites an unnamed Washington think-tanker as noting how nominee Al Gore suffered under the Clinton glare at the 2000 convention. “The Clintons have done this before,” said the unnamed source. “And they are capable of doing it again.”

 

Meanwhile, The New York Times recalled the particulars of how the Gore campaign did its best to neutralize Bill Clinton – only to have the best-laid plans backfire.

 

In 2000, Bill Clinton got assigned the prime-time speaking slot on a Monday, with a symbolic “passing of the torch” to Gore scheduled for the next day in Michigan.

 

Bill Clinton, however, shot into the limelight the prior Thursday with a surprise heartfelt plea that voters should not hold Gore accountable for Clinton’s personal shortcomings. The president then arrived at the Los Angeles venue three days early, becoming a media sensation right up to the time of his big convention speech.

 

And there is good reason the Clintons want to distance themselves from Obama.

 

During his recent trip to Africa, Bill Clinton was asked whether Obama was prepared to become president, according to a Fox News report. He replied, at best, unenthusiastically: “You can argue that nobody is ready to be president.”

 

True to form, Bill Clinton has already gotten a jump on his time slot, making it known that he was unhappy about the assigned topic of his speech.

Politico reported that Bill Clinton was to address the theme of Securing America’s Future — explaining how Obama would be a more effective commander-in-chief than his Republican rival, McCain.

 

According to several media reports, the former president would rather address the economy and general Democratic doctrine, outlining among other things how his own administration successfully pulled the economy along.

 

Meanwhile, Hillary and her still-loyal delegates have their own opportunities at the convention to act the role of the loose cannon.

 

Tuesday night in her own prime-time slot, Hillary gives the keynote address to an audience of 20,000 in the Pepsi Center downtown. Just prior to the speech, she has the singular privilege to screen for the hall a film about her life.

 

She will also hold a private meeting with her top financial supporters Wednesday at noon, and will thank her delegates at an event that afternoon.

 

On Thursday, disaffected Hillary delegates will get the opportunity to make a symbolic roll call vote for her nomination.

 

In a move that perhaps speaks volumes about the quest-for-unity theme, several of Hillary’s key supporters are then planning to leave town – before the Obama acceptance speech that caps off the final day of the convention.

 

Among them, reports The New York Times, are Terry McAuliffe, Hillary’s campaign chairman, and longtime supporters Steve Rattner and Maureen White.

 

Of everything on Hillary’s busy convention itinerary, however, it’s the delegate roll call that has Obama supporters the most nervous.

 

Tension in the Air

 

As the Financial Times reports, the delegates in the hall will be greatly outnumbered by rank-and-file Hillary fans that have descended on Denver.

 

These diehards are still hoping for a miracle that a consensus will build at the convention that the former first lady is the better nominee. They also know that the mood of the delegates inside may be the key to any one-in-a-million upset chance.

 

The Denver Post recently reported that a small group is trying to gather the signatures needed to put Hillary’s name back on the ballot.

 

Hillary has promised to formally release her 1,896 pledged delegates on Wednesday, but U.S. News & World Report noted in a report that as the Democratic National Convention opened Monday, “there were still behind-the-scene jitters among party leaders about what her most ardent supporters might do Wednesday when the nomination roll is called.”

 

Not worried, however, according to U.S. News, is New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. After coming from a New York delegation breakfast where Hillary spoke, Schumer said that her disgruntled supporters who have been threatening to shut out Obama represent a “small, small number of people that the media pay lots of attention to.”

 

Despite Hillary releasing her delegates to Obama on Wednesday and all the concessions to the Clintons – including the symbolic placing of her name in nomination – some of her supporters still say they will refuse to move their votes to Obama.

 

Pat Bakalian, a Clinton delegate from Santa Cruz, Calif., told The Associated Press she had come to Denver to vote for Hillary, “and it’s what I’m going to do.”

 

On Monday, Hillary and Obama were still hammering out the particulars on how to give her some votes in the roll call for the Democratic presidential nomination, but then quickly end the divided balloting in unanimous consent for Obama, according to the AP.

 

The AP also reported that Democratic officials involved in the negotiations said Monday the concept is that at the start of the state-by-state vote for the presidential nomination Wednesday night, delegates would cast their votes for Hillary or Obama.

 

Then, however, the voting would be cut off after a couple of states, the officials said, perhaps ending with New York, when Clinton herself would call for unanimous backing for Obama from the convention floor.

 

Sounds like a plan, but the truth is that the delegates can only be advised – not dictated to.

 

The New York Times in its recent review of a video taken at a private Hillary event noted that Hillary professed to a gathering of the faithful: “We do not want any Democrat in the hall or in the stadium or at home walking away saying, ‘I’m just not satisfied, I’m not happy.’ That’s what I’m trying to avoid.”

 

Ominously, however, she added,

 

“I’ve made it very clear that I’m supporting Senator Obama and we’re working cooperatively on a lot of different matters. But delegates can decide to do this [or not] on their own; they don’t need permission.”

 

 

 

 

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Hillary releases her hounds; Update: RNC hosts Hillary Happy Hour

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/24/hillary-releases-her-hounds/