For better or worse, Hillary Clinton's political image is largely dominated by her tenure as First Lady. It seems fairly clear that Hillary was a key, if not the key, advisor to President Clinton on many many issues. And while Tim Russert's questions on documents from the period is not really an attempt to shed light on this, it is rather more of the same gotcha nonsense, it does inadvertently get to a lot of questions about Hillary.

In today's WaPo, Michael Kinsley writes:

[First ladies] must have a better understanding of how the presidency works than all but half a dozen people in the world. One of those half a dozen is Hillary Clinton, who saw it all -- well, she apparently missed one key moment -- and shared in all the big decisions. Every first lady is promoted as her husband's key adviser, closest confidant, blah, blah, blah, but in the case of the Clintons, it seems to be true.

That seems true to me. But here's the thing - my recollection of the Clinton years had Hillary supposedly playing the liberal in the lion's den of Centrists role in the Clinton Administration. I'll never forget the reaction of Peter and Marian Wright Edelman to welfare reform. Peter resigned his post and Marian Wright Edelman made sure everyone understood how she felt personally betrayed by HILLARY, not Bill. Hillary was to be the liberal conscience of the Clinton Administration. How time changes images. Now Hillary's supposed liberal past is long forgotten. For those who favor DLCism, this is a sign of Hillary's good sense. For those who disfavor it, it proves hillary is a corporatist sellout DLCer. This is a central question about Hillary Clinton. Who could best answer this question? I believe Bill Clinton would be that person. I think it would help us all, and probably mostly Hillary Clinton, if he and Hillary were to discuss her role and views on the Clinton Administration and the issues faced at the time. Release of documents to add to this telling would be even better. I think it is time to tell the story - not of the personal lives of the clintons - but the public policy lives of the the Clintons. Tell us what Hillary did, said, advised and thought. To me it is the most interesting and relevant question of the entire campaign.

One of the chapters in Rudy's book is titled "Surround Yourself With Great People." As the Washington Post points out today, many of his appointments as Mayor of New York turned out to be dismal choices, based on blind loyalty to his friends rather than competence.

We all know about Bernie and Rudy, but there are plenty of other examples, which taken together, show "a pattern of rewarding loyalty over competence in personnel decisions:

There's Howard Safir, whom Rudy appointed Police Commissioner after the very competent Bill Bratton:

[Safir] came under intense criticism after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man, for failing to provide adequate oversight of the police unit involved in the shootings and for his detached response. He also came under scrutiny for, among other things, taking a corporate jet to the Academy Awards shortly after the shootings, for assigning eight detectives to his daughter's wedding, and for sending officers to investigate a woman who rear-ended his wife's car.

More...

The number of children fleeing poverty in other countries and entering the U.S. without parents is on the rise. When caught, they are arrested and detained. Sometimes they are sent back, sometimes they are released into the custody of relatives, foster homes or friends.

Children must not be treated as criminals.

Children entering illegally without parents "are usually fleeing something," often don't have relatives here and, in many cases, have endured trauma such as rape and being held for ransom, said Tricia Swartz, director of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children in Washington, D.C.

Across-the-board deportations "would be literally sacrificing children's lives," she said. "Some of them are facing potential execution by gangs."

As for numbers,

Today, about 15.3 percent of migrants seeking asylum protection in the United States are under 18, up from 14.8 percent in 2004, federal records show.

The Department of Justice processes these kids in federal immigration courts. An example of the absurdity:

In Denver's court, a box of toys sits in the lobby. A recent memo encouraged judges to use booster chairs and child-friendly questioning at hearings.

Another example of why "one size fits all" justice is no justice at all.

A 9-year-old boy looking for help after his mother crashed her van off a cliff in southern Arizona on Thanksgiving Day was rescued by an illegal immigrant who stayed with him until help arrived the next day.

His mother was pinned inside the car.

Her son, who was unhurt but disoriented, crawled out to get help and was found about two hours later by Jesus Manuel Cordova, 26.... Unable to pull the mother out, Cordova comforted the boy while they waited for help. The woman died a short time later.

"He stayed with him, told him that everything was going to be all right," Estrada said. As temperatures dropped, he gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. Friday, when a group of hunters passed by and called authorities, Estrada said. The boy was flown to University Medical Center in Tucson as a precaution but appeared unhurt.

Mr. Cordova's reward?

Cordova, meanwhile, was taken into custody by Border Patrol agents who were the first to respond to the call for help. He had been trying to walk into the U.S. when he came across the boy.

As Santa Cruz County, AZ Sheriff Sheriff Tony Estrada says:

Cordova likely saved the boy and his actions should remind people not to quickly characterize all illegal immigrants as criminals.

Obviously, no one at Talk Left will ever support Mike Huckabee's candidacy for President but, via TPM, credit where due, Huckabee's response to the crazy GOP's hatred of, supposedly just, illegal, immigrants:

"If a child is gasping for air, asthmatic, and he's on the hospital steps, what do the other candidates suggest we do, let him sit there and gasp until he doesn't have any air left and he dies? If a child comes to our school -- and our law, by the way, in most of our states, mine certainly says you've got to educate a child if he's of child age -- what do you, break your own law and say, `No, you can't come in the schoolhouse door'? "No, you don't do that. What you do is you elect a president who will fix the problem where it needs to be fixed: At the border. But if your government at the federal government is so incompetent that it fails to secure the border, you don't then grind your heel into the face of a 6-year-old child over it. That's not what this country does. We're a better country than that."

Unfortunately for Huckabee and for the Nation, the Republican Party is NOT a better party than that.

At Swampland, Karen Tumulty demonstrates the problem with the Obama campaign:

The leading contenders are having an argument over Social Security. That program, of course, is something that Democrats usually fight about with Republicans, not each other. Why now? As Obama strategist David Axelrod sees it, the real issue isn't Social Security: "We're not really picking a fight about Social Security. We're picking a fight about candor. [Obama] has been forthright about this, and Senator Clinton hasn't."

Obama's idea of candor is pandering to the Beltway Elite on Social Security? This is outrageous. As Paul Krugman wrote:

Which brings us back to Barack Obama. Why would he, in effect, play along with this new round of scare-mongering and devalue one of the great progressive victories of the Bush years?

I don't believe Mr. Obama is a closet privatizer. He is, however, someone who keeps insisting that he can transcend the partisanship of our times -- and in this case, that turned him into a sucker.

Obama wanted a way to distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton -- and for Mr. Obama, who has said that the reason "we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions" is that "politics has become so bitter and partisan," joining in the attack on Mrs. Clinton's Social Security position must have seemed like a golden opportunity to sound forceful yet bipartisan.

This is what we do NOT need from our Democratic standard bearers. Axelrod will ruin Obama's campaign if he keeps this up. The Clinton campaign must be licking its chops on this.

More.

Another troop hater:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, said this week he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year.

Of course, Sanchez is a controversial figure who allowed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib under his watch. And his past judgments were very faulty. My point is not that we should trust his judgment. I do not. I have made my own. My point is it is hard to label Sanchez or anyone, who favors withdrawal from Iraq as "anti-troops. That is the political sigificance here. Hopefully, it will stiffen some Dem backbones.

Rudy exposed by a surpising source:

[In 1996, Rudy] stepped on the podium at the Kennedy School of Government to deliver a speech on immigration. “I’m pleased to be with you this evening to talk about the anti-immigrant movement in America . . . I believe the anti-immigrant movement in America is one of our most serious public problems. . . . It can be seen in the negative attitudes being expressed by many of the politicians.” . . . At the moment [in 2007], Giuliani and fellow moderate Mitt Romney are attacking each other for being insufficiently Tancredo-esque. . . .

Even the conservative David Brooks recognizes that Rudy Giuliani is as phony as a three dollar bill.

Speaking for me only

My title is facetious. No one is trying to get my support. But the race starts in earnest today and I will support someone in the Dem primary race. Right now, my weak support goes to Barack Obama, with Chris Dodd as my second choice.

What am I looking for in a candidate? First of all, support and leadership on the issues that mean the most to me.

Iraq is the most important issue to me. Barack Obama opposed the Iraq Debacle while all the other leading candidates supported it. (I know, I know, they didn't vote for the war they say. Sorry, they did.) This is a big thing. The problem is what about now? Throughout his Senatorial tenure, Barack Obama has been quite weak in his opposition to the Debacle and has not strongly supported actions by the Congress to end it until recently. He said the Congress should not play chicken with the President on Iraq. It was a terrible moment for him. By contrast, Chris Dodd has been leading on Iraq, calling for Congressional action to not fund the Debacle without a date certain for ending our involvement in the Iraq Debacle. Clinton has largely tracked Obama's path on this -the weak path, also until recently. John Edwards has offered strong rhetoric. Bill Richardson has distracted with a phony argument about "residual troops." On this point, a very important one, advantage Dodd. Among the Big 3, Edwards has been the best of late. But Obama got it right in the beginning. Clinton lags.

More.

An early version. What's your favorite verse? I've got two:

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

and

'Relax,' said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

And I do have one serious post up today, over at Huffington Post, This Thanksgiving, Most of All. A snippet:

What I'm most thankful for is that I'm not in jail eating processed turkey on a plastic plate.

I'm thinking about the children of the incarcerated. There are more than 2.4 million kids with parents languishing in our jails and prisons due to legislators who insist on being tough rather than smart on crime.

America, Prison Nation, has been a costly and harmful failure.

William Saletan of Slate has received warranted and almost universal ridicule for his pathetically bad series on race, intelligence and IQ. But I got a chuckle from this from him:

Why write about this topic? Why hurt people's feelings? Why gratify bigots? Because truth matters. . . .

Heh. Saletan imagines himself able to hurt feelings. Sorry, we do not think enough of you to be hurt by you sir. You simply made a fool of yourself. As for being the holder of the truth, please stop embarrassing yourself.

A front page post at Daily Kos declares:

we should honor our vision of a people not acting as selfish individuals, but pursuing individual goals in a broader society bound with a sense of solidarity, a sense of shared benefits and shared sacrifice, the sense that "we’re all in this together" that Michael Tomasky evoked last year when he succinctly declared "The Democrats need to become the party of the common good."

It is true that Tomasky wrote that. But it was at Daily Kos, in my interview with Rep. Jim McDermott, that I first heard the phrase "Common Good." Of course, McDermott has used this phrase prior to that, for example, in this 2004 speech.

Credit for Tomasky for running with McDermott's phrase, but it bothers me no end that he continues to be credited for an articulation that was originated by Jim McDermott. Daily Kos especially should not be furthering that injustice. Give Jim McDermott his due please.