not based on objections to a free trade agreement with Columbia,

I don't care what anybody in the press or on the A list says, at this point. I'm betting most voters are with me on the press, and they don't read the A list (lucky them).

The firm has a contract with the South American nation to promote congressional approval of the trade deal, among other things, according to filings with the Justice Department...

The spokesman said he didn't know if Mr. Penn was representing Sen. Clinton or Burson-Marsteller, which signed a $300,000, one-year contract with the Colombian Embassy in March 2007 to work on behalf of the trade deal and anti-drug-trafficking initiatives, according to the Justice Department filings.

President Uribe, who enjoys wide-spread popularity over 90% post the raid in Ecuador, has a carrot and stick approach to the insurgency (that in some form or another lasted since April 9, 1948). The carrot is that any guerrilla member can surrender and rejoin civil society at any time. Housing and job training form part of the offer. Crimes committed are not forgiven but can be worked off through public works. The stick is of course army offensive when and where appropriate. Until Uribe took office, we played defence. When attacked, we would respond. Now we actually attack.

The FTA with Colombia has become lost inside the byzantine arena of Democratic Party politics. The argument is that Colombia allows or fails to protect trade unionists. Hardly the case. 26 trade unionists have been killed this year. The problem is not so much trade unions, Colombia has always had a vibrant trade union history, but that one union is tied to the Colombian Communist Party, the largest in Latin America outside Cuba, that has been infiltrated by the FARC. In 2002, two union leaders blew themselves up in Yumbo, Valle while building pipe bombs. That is the problem, some FARC members hide behind union shields.

The image that Colombia is some sort of right wing dictatorship is so far removed from reality. Long a two party democracy, the country has suffered but two military govts the last from 1953-58. A new constitution in 1991 provided for direct election of governors and mayors. That has led to the breaking of the two party system. Uribe, who hails from the Liberal Party, ran as an independent and is the first non-Liberal or non-Conservative to ever win the Presidency. Bogota, a city of over 7 million people, now has its second leftist mayor in succession and the one prior was an independent who transformed Bogota which now ranks as the world's 13th most greenest city. The BRT system is considered the world's most efficient and modern. A subway has been started. The war in Colombia is now on cars, we have car-free days once a year with the aim to make them monthly. Our ciclovias, which close down 20% of all city roads nationwide on Sundays and holidays opening them up to cyclists, pedestrians offering free exercise classes, are model now being used in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Spain, France and El Paso, Texas. The ciclovias are extraordinary. By bring people out into the street, they discovered civility.

Colombia's export base once limited to coffee has rapidly diversified. We export flowers (70% of US roses come from Colombia), fruit especially bananas, underwear and clothing, coal, meat, and leather goods. If I have a worry about the FTA it would be as a Colombian, not as an American, would we be able to compete with American agriculture. Trade with Colombia is on the order of 2% of US trade. Trade with the US is on the order of 40% of Colombia trade. The danger is for us, not for you.

"I would ask you to look at this story and substitute my name for Sen. Obama's name and see what you would do with this story... Just ask yourself [what you would do] if some of my advisers had been having private meetings with foreign governments."

Mark Penn is not - as in the case that Senator Clinton cited on March 3 - an unpaid issues advisor, but, rather, the commander-in-chief of the Clinton campaign: the chief strategist, pollster, message czar, and the highest paid member of her campaign staff.