Fred Suggests Hillary Slow on the Learning Curve

When the story broke last week of Norman Hsu, the Democrats' campaign funds con man and the Democratic equivalent to Jack Abramoff, Hillary Clinton pledged to give back to the donors roughly $25,000 or so in order to wash her hands of the dirty money.

Today, however, we find that Hillary plans to return over three quarters of a million in dirty campaign contributions from individuals who had been bankrolled by Hsu.

It took Hillary nearly a week to decide to return all of the dirty money--this despite the fact that the Hsu-initiated donations are a clear violation of federal campaign finance laws. After all, nearly a million bucks is quite a sum to come out of her campaign war chest, illegal or not.

But according to Republican Presidential candidate Fred Thompson, Hillary may be a bit slow on the learning curve when it comes to dirty money. It would seem that Fred has first-hand knowledge of 'the Clinton clasp' when it comes to questionable campaign funds.

Thompson was the Chair of the Senate investigation into Clinton ties to illegal Asian-American contributions to Bill's 1996 re-election campaign, as well as the Clintons' legal defense fund in 1996.

According to The Examiner, 'In March 1996, Bill and Hillary Clinton's legal defense fund accepted money from straw donors recruited by Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie. The Taiwan-born Democrat hand-delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of checks and money orders in two manila envelopes to the defense fund.'

It was this discovery by Thompson's committee in 1996 that led Thompson to exclaim today, in an obvious rhetorical question to Hillary, 'Didn't you learn anything from Charlie Trie?'

Indeed, Senator. Apparently both Clintons are a bit slow on the learning curve when it comes to dirty campaign money. Even in a very important election campaign for the Clintons, Bill and Hillary are still up to their eyeballs in scandal revolving around questionable fundraising practices (a court case in California opened just this week on this matter) and illegal campaign contribution schemes.

That 'Clinton clasp' must involve a terrible case of sticky fingers, for Bill and Hillary find it awfully difficult to let go of ill-gotten gain that has anything to do with filthy lucre. One would think that, under normal conditions, people as intelligent as the Clintons would have learned their lesson long ago.

But corruption is not always an effective teacher. More often than not, when one heads down the slippery slope of winning at all costs, power-grabs that know no limits or ethical boundaries, and making shady deals with shadowy figures whose hands have shaken hands with the devil, there comes a point where there is no turning back.

One dirty deal leads to another, yet another, and still another, until finally the person involved has lost all contact with moral and ethical reality.

Is Hillary at that point?

No one can know for sure. What we do know, however, is that she has a penchant for associating herself with shady characters in the murky world of corrupt politics. And no matter how many times she comes close to losing it all over those dangerous liaisons, she always manages to do the same thing yet again.

So here we are in 2007 wondering why we are reconsidering the sleaze of 1996. It is all rather simple. Some people never learn.