She SHOULD axe Penn... especially after she was so superior about how she would never stay at a church with a minister like Obama's. It's not like PENN brought her to Jesus, is it?

On a side note, I'm sorry to say I didn't know there was a pro-labor James Hoffa, and suffered a serious mental doubletake at the name. Any relation, I wonder?

Brilliant!!! This is surely the final nail in Hillary’s coffin. She won’t fire someone who nobody knows. David Axelrod is an F*cking Genius.
A change you can believe in, indeed.

They should call on Hillary to embrace him. That guy has done more good for the Obama campaign than anyone...

Tom De Frank and Michael McAuliff at the New York Daily News reports that:

Hillary Clinton's political guru may have been pushed from the top spot in her campaign, but he didn't land in the grave.

Despite embarrassing the White House hopeful by consulting for the Colombian government on a U.S. trade agreement she opposes, Mark Penn remains "very much in the loop," a Clinton source said...

"Reports of Mark's death are greatly exaggerated," said a Penn confidant.

"You don't break a circle like that easily and quickly," a senior Clinton adviser agreed.

link here: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/04/08/2008-04-08_mark_penn_still_in_clinton_loop_source_.html

I'm confused -- why should Obama's campaign care if Penn stays on? I mean, c'mon. Right now, Penn's the best thing that could happen for them. A lobbyist for a free trade agreement that labor hates is running the campaign of Clinton, the alleged anti-free trade agreement candidate, right before a union-filled blue collar state votes in the primary. And the Obama campaign wants to change this scenario why?

Greg Sargent posts:

After leaving this to surrogates for a couple days, the Obama campaign is ratcheting up the pressure on onetime Hillary chief strategist to ax Mark Penn once and for all..sic

How is he onetime when he's still with the campaign in giving strategic advice and polling to Hillary Clinton?

I agree with many of the above. Penn is most valuable to the Obama campaign as a current employee. Rather than tell her campaign what to do (which always seems petty and pointless to me), they should turn Penn into a symbol of what is wrong with Clinton: she's part of the establishment, she says one thing and does another. I'd tell Axelrod and Hoffa to hold their fire until the week before the primary and then relentlessly hammer home the message that she's in bed with the other team.

Obama has lobbyists on his campaign too and agree there is a conflict of interest like these folks:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_defense_investments;_ylt=AjCs_VWfZAe8YOsfY9K_MHMXr7sF

They're not really trying to get Penn fired - they're trying to make it an issue. Big difference.

Thank you - I was trying to say that and I left this whole part of it out.

And it seems to have worked, since it's a win-win - Obama made a plea for her to do the right thing, and she's ignoring it.

:)

Every union member knows who Mark Penn is- a union-busting slimeball. That's who knows. And they're, you know, a pretty important demographic in PA and IN.

That's awfully nice of the Obama campaign to be so hypocritcal, when it just goes to highlight the repeated lies about an Obama campaign official having contact with the Candadian government re: NAFTA. The campaign thoroughly denying any conversation had taken place, and ultimately had to admit that their previous denials were now inoperable - but they didn't reflect the position of the campaign (mm hmm RIGHT). A overly fair (to the point of accepting the Obama campaigns denials of the Canadian memo substance with no proof) analysis of the NAFTAgate debacle can be found here : http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/the_facts_about_nafta-gate.html

Contrast that with Hillary's clear opposition to the Columbia trade agreement and the fact that she will have the chance to vote against it very very soon as a demonstration of what her beliefs are. Is anyone really arguing that Penn was operating as anything other than a renegade representing his own intrests rather than Hillary's campaign? The NAFTA-gate incident there is no such clear indication that Goolsbee was off the reservation - as evidenced by the fact that the whole snafu had no impact at all on his association with the campaign.

As I've said before, those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

government re: NAFTA. The campaign thoroughly denying any conversation had taken place, and ultimately had to admit that their previous denials were now inoperable -

...but the Canadian government itself had to back off the claim because it was all a misunderstanding, so far as the evidence shows right now, according to the story you linked to.

And how that relates to having scum union-buster and NAFTA advocate, Mark Penn, as an "important member of your team" is way beyond me.

I'm sure many people recall months ago when an Obama senior official was found to be making overtures to Canada about soft peddling Obama's position on NAFTA prior to the Ohio primary?

Just to refresh everyone's memory, HilLIARy said on March 4th -
"I don't think you should come to Ohio and tell the people of Ohio one thing and then have your campaign tell a foreign government something else behind closed doors," she said in Toledo. "That's the kind of difference between talk and action that I've been talking about throughout this campaign."

At one time I was a Hillary supporter but the last several months have shown me a huge distinction in how the candidates handle adversity when confronted with a negative attack. I don't see how anyone that supports her can honestly look at her campaign tactics and say they are proud of the way it's being run. If anything I'm ashamed, for her.

Granted, Columbia doesn't represent that much in jobs or actual dollars between our two countries, but you have to ask yourself, what the HELL was Mark Penn thinking? Not much of a strategist if he didn't see the "big picture" conflict of interest by doing this deal for his lobbying firm. He should be removed from the campaign.

It's about time. The continuing scandal of millionaire scumbag Mark Penn staying on the with the Clinton campaign after he was "fired" (guess that depends on what the meaning of fired is) ought to be a major campaign issue.

Why any candidate would tolerate a situation where a major campaign staffer (whether strategist, pollster, advisor or asshole-in-chief) simultaneously represents corporate and foreign government interests is beyond me. The arrangement was always a guarantee of conflict of interest and a recipe for corruption, now it has been proven out, yet still he lingers. Still the checks are paid from Hillary's dwindling campaign treasury to a Burson-Marstellar subsidiary. And still, Hillary's purported opposition to the Colombian Free Trade Agreement is undermined (not only by Penn, but by Wolfson's and Bill Clinton's business dealings, too.

Pennsylvania's union members and other blue collar workers need to be aware of this. It's too bad the media hasn't splashed it across the front page, but hopefully that will change now that the Obama campaign is doing its job.

Meanwhile, members of AFSCME, AFT and the Machinists ought to be asking their unions' leaders about why they continue to back Hillary when she can't even get up the backbone to sever all ties to millionaire union-buster Mark Penn.

Now there's a face I haven't seen in a long time. Give me slack, Bob (or kill me).

Thanks, Angry Vet. I've since googled it and learned that he is, indeed, Jimmy Hoffa's son. Talk about someone with the ears of labor!

I don't understand the lack of Union leadership outrage over this situation with Mark Penn in the Clinton campaign. All she did was "shuffle the deck" so to speak. This guy is still gonna do polling and provide "advice". Mark Penn needs to be GONE! I cannot put any trust in Clinton that she has the best interests of American union members at heart as long as she refuses to part with this guy. And neither should the leadership of any union. I don't understand all the wailing about Obama's unpaid advisor's comments to some Canadian official, while the leader of Clinton's campaign is holding strategy meetings to get this onerous Columbian legislation passed? She is basically spitting in the eye of the unions by moving this guy to the back room for a while till the heat (what little of it that has been generated) dies down. Is union leadership so in love with (or in fear of) the Clintons that they accept this with nary a whimper? WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE? The AFL-CIO ought to be hounding Clinton night and day to make a complete break with this guy. Can someone explain to me why that is not happening?