Hillary Hillary Hillary

Remember when Bill Clinton began to be taken seriously in his first run for president? Remember how the press kept finding things in his past to hound him about? Things like how he managed to not get drafted during the Viet Nam War. Things like the degree to which he inhaled marijuana. Things like extra-marital affairs. Now, except for the extra-marital affairs, most of what Clinton was being hounded about had happened, or hadn't happened, a long time prior to the hounding.

Now, one might wonder what might be lingering in Hillary's past that will be trotted out to cause her embarrassment. I think we can rule out extra-marital affairs. That just seems unlikely.

But, Hillary does have some rather interesting history. Little of which she admits to in her auto-biography, "Living History". Like her involvement with the Black Panthers and her work with a communist lawyer. Now, hitting someone with the antiquated 'commie' smear really likely won't fly these days. But then again, it would seem Hillary has some explaining to do about some things she left out of "Living History".

For instance, Hillary attended Yale Law School in 1969, which was a large area of activity on behalf of the violently racist Black Panther organization. In "Living History" Hillary writes,

"The world and its realities came crashing down on Yale in April 1970, when eight Black Panthers, including party leader Bobby Seale, were put on trial for murder in New Haven. Thousands of angry protesters, convinced the Panthers had been set up by the FBI and white government prosecutors, swarmed into the city. Protests broke out in and around campus. The campus was bracing for a huge May Day rally to support the Panthers when I learned, late on the night of April 27, that the International Law Library, which was in the basement of the law school, was on fire. Horrified, I rushed to join a bucket brigade of faculty, staff and students to put out the fire and to rescue books damaged by flames and water."

According to the records Hillary did quite a bit more than lift water in a bucket brigade. Both Hillary and Bill Lann Lee, (who later became President Clinton's head of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division), helped organize the pro-Panther demonstrations at Yale. Hillary also served on the Board of Editors for the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, a socialist alternative to the school's traditional review. Its fall 1970 issue was devoted to the trial and glorifying the Black Panthers.

During the summer of 1971, Hillary moved to the west coast to become a law clerk at the Oakland firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Bernstein. The public record shows that Clinton worked for Robert Treuhaft, a member of the Communist Party USA and Harvard-trained lawyer for the party.

Citing public sources, Peter Flaherty's book, "The First Lady" says that "Hillary was recommended to Treuhaft by some of her professors at Yale. She was looking for a 'movement' law firm to work at for the summer. As it turns out, Hillary would continue her association and support of the Black Panther cause while working as a law clerk for Treuhaft." Flaherty also states that Treuhaft told Herb Caen of the San Francisco Examiner, "That was the time we were representing the Black Panthers, and she worked on that case." Mrs. Clinton's involvement with Treuhaft is a known occurrence.

Hillary continues to do her best to deny this, even though a New York Times obituary of Treuhaft (who died in 2001), said that he had "accepted a young Yale lawyer named Hillary Rodham (now Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton) as an intern." A British newspaper, the London Times, said that "generations of liberal lawyers were groomed under his [Treuhaft's] tutelage, including a young Yale law student named Hillary Rodham." The Harvard Law Bulletin said about Treuhaft, "He belonged to and served as attorney to the Communist Party of the United States for many years and defended the civil rights of groups such as the Black Panther Party, Vietnam War draft resisters, and members of Berkeley's free speech movement."

The way things seem to be going for Hillary, what with her big loss to Obama in yesterday's South Carolina primary, somehow losing a huge lead, according to last month's polls, but ending up yesterday with half the number of votes as the winner. So, maybe Hillary's time is coming to an end. Maybe. But if Hillary does well on Super Tuesday I think we can expect those debating her to fling some of her past in her face. It would seem only fair, since it was she who started the fight in last Monday's debate when she made the bizarre accusation that Obama was somehow a Reaganite due to a perfectly innocent remark he made.