This is like Tom Brady’s mom being the line judge in the Super Bowl.

Also, this must be considered excellent news!! for hillary!! considering it comes on the same day she is to release her tax returns. So not only is her campaign strategist lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, we are to discover that the Clintons are filthy rich and possibly the proud owners of offshore accounts.

Yet still, in the face of an endless stream of information proving otherwise, she casts herself as a re-imagined coal miner’s daughter and fighter for the working class. But considering that a number of her supporters still believe Obama to be a Muslim, I guess it's no surprise they'd eat the whole worm on this one, too.

Amazing.

This campaign not only suffers from tone-deafness, its own message-maker isn't even listening to himself.

Whose rhetoric is just words? Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

Perfect! Absolutely perfect!

Just wait until workers in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana learn that Hillary's chief political advisor is strategizing about how to make it easier for corporations to move jobs out of the U.S. and into a country that doesn't just bust unions -- they murder union organizers in cold blood.

The fact that Hillary couldn't see this coming from miles away -- when even many of her staff could -- speaks volumes about an ethical and moral blind spot that voters should beware of.

Keep in mind that, speaking of moral and ethical blind spots, even George W. Bush recognized it would be a conflict of interest for Karl Rove to keep his consulting business while working on Bush's 2000 campaign. He made Rove sell his interest in the company. Why Hillary wouldn't have made the same demand of Penn -- in fact, why should would hire him at all given his obvious incompetence -- is beyond me. Maybe Penn has something on the Clintons.

Just in case anyone was wondering - this is how a Clinton White House would be run.

This is a belly laugh out loud story. I have to drink some water to prepare for the laughter that will ensue as I read Hillary's supporters try to explain why this is all good.

This is a belly laugh out loud story. I have to drink some water to prepare for the laughter that will ensue as I read Hillary's supporters try to explain why this is all good.

"Colombia’s deserved reputation as the hemisphere’s worst abuser of human rights, particularly as they apply to workers and unions."

In fact, 40 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia in 2007 alone -- more than any other country in the world. In addition, trade unionists received 201 death threats last year. And Hillary Clinton's top political strategist thinks we should be cutting trade deals with a country like this?

Because I'm not sure Penn is that stupid, I'll float this theory, purely conjectural and just for kicks:

He sees the campaign going down. He's owed a lot of money and is probably starting to realize he's never going to see it. His association with the Clinton campaign isn't looking like the going concern it once did. Reports, at least, of very hard feelings among the major players in the campaign. Maybe this is him slamming the door on his way out . . .

Interesting theory bdh.

Let's compile that with the rest of what we know:

Other Hillary supporters saying she must win the Popular vote (and therefore PA by large margin)

Hillary campaign running recycled 3 am ad against... McCain.

Could this be the end? I can only hope.

Also, there's a Wall Street Journal that gives a deeper look into the connection between Bill Clinton and Colombian President Uribe:

http://colhrnet.igc.org/newitems/June07/Uribe_in_DC_0604.html

Colombia Goes Full Tilt to Return to Grace
Uribe Administration, Seeking U.S. Trade Pact, Lobbies Hard to Overcome Scandal Allegations
By BOB DAVIS
The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2007

WASHINGTON -- To win approval of a new trade pact, Colombia is putting together a richly financed lobbying campaign piloted by ex-Clinton White House officials, complete with advertisements, a rapid-response media team and regular visits by Colombian bigwigs to Congress.

...

This week, Colombia hopes to make progress. President Uribe is jetting back to Washington to lobby for the votes of conservative Democrats and members of the Hispanic and black caucuses Thursday. The following day he plans to give an award to former President Clinton at a New York dinner -- a signal to Democrats that Colombia isn't politically radioactive. Mr. Clinton "is honored to be receiving an award from the Colombian people," a Clinton spokesman said.

...

While the current ambassador, Ms. Barco, says she regularly confers with Mr. Moreno, now president of the Inter-American Development Bank, the Colombians have turned to Democratic lobbyists with strong ties to President Clinton to put together strategy.

The team includes the public-relations firm of Burson-Marsteller, headed by former Clinton pollster Mark Penn, who is also a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The firm has set up a campaign-style operation to respond immediately to any critical news about Colombia.

Glover Park Group, which includes former Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart and lobbyist Susan Brophy, works on Capitol Hill with the lobbying firm of Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Stewart Inc., including Republican Peter Madigan and another Clinton-administration lobbyist, William Danvers.

Cool :-)

I don't know. Don't count on the MSM to run with this. I couldn't find it at all on CNN. Had to really search for it on MSNBC and Time. Unless we keep pushing it, I bet it gets buried.

I do not see how this is suddenly a controversy or scndal. "Columbiagate!" is the cry.

I disagree. I am a litigator with a large, nationally-known law firm which happens to have a significant lobbying practice (I, however, am not in that practice area--I am a litigator and regulatory compliance expert).

Penn's firm is a lobbbying and PR firm that acts on behalf of a number of clients, one of whom--the biggest of whom, I would imagine--is Senator Clinton's campaign.

However, Penn's firm has numerous other clients. And it is not surprising that those other clients may have--likely have--different interests.

I know mine do. I have been in a meeting with a state Attorney General's office arguing until I was purple in the face that Course of Action A made the wisest choice for my client and for the AG. I have then turned around and stood before the Federal Trade Commission and argued until I was purple in the face that the FTC was stupidly thinking of pursuing Course of Action A when no one but an idiot would think that Course of Action A was a good idea, and that Couse of Action B was the preferred route of resolution.

Attorneys do this all the time. It is our job to represent each client's interest. Even if that means that one client's interest conflicts with another. We are bound by the interests of each client, and each client is, for the most part, an island of interest unto itself.

Penn is not Clinton's domestic policy advisor, in which case such a meeting would justifiably raise eyebrows and pose legitimate questions regarding Clinton's actual views. But Penn is a hired gun, a PR guy, of sorts, whose job is to sell for this particular client at this particular time her candidacy and the candidate herself to the public.

That his firm--large as it is, with many partners--should do the same thing for a different client with different interests does not concern me. He is a hired gun.

Also unsurprising is that Penn himself attended the meeting. I would imagine that if the Ambassador to Columbia was a client, the managing partner of my firm would attend any meeting with a client of such importance.

This paragraph sums it up:

He wasn't there in his campaign role, but in his separate job as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, an international communications and lobbying firm. 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.

I find no scandal here.

Here is another post on this story.

Here is what Hillary said in Ohio:

Here is what she said:

“If you come to Ohio and you go give speeches that are very critical of NAFTA… and then we find out that your chief economic adviser has gone to a foreign government and basically done the old wink-wink – ‘Don’t pay any attention, this is just political rhetoric’ — I think that raises serious questions…

“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.“

http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=998

In Obama's case it was an unpaid advisor, in Hillary's it is the guy who make more money than anyone else in her campaign and from all reports runs it.

Not all the MSM is ignoring this Penn story. At least ABC has Jake Tapper on it.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/hillarys-chief.html

Let me get this straight, you are concerned about the deaths of 40 trade unionist in 2007? How many other Colombians were killed or kidnapped by the FARC in the past 50 years? How many lives have been shattered due to the on-going violence in Colombia? Uribe was re-elected by the Colombian people by an overwhelming margin due to his policies in the reduction of violence for ALL Colombians.

My take: the story will disappear.

Obama so far hasn't attacked Hillary even when the oppurtunity presented itself, and the last thing the MSM wants is to see the race end at PA.

DOES ANY ONE HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS ON HOW WE CAN SEND ALERT EMAILS, ETC TO MAY BE TALK SHOW HOSTS OR NEWSPAPERS ASKING FOR COVERAGE?

Political karma is a bitch.

Bad day for this to break in the media, especially with the 80k jobloss report

Technically it doesn't matter because he was representing his own firm but I don't think the west PA unemployed steel workers will see it this way.

Paulette Revere or Benedict Arnold?

heh; heh-hee!

Oh, snap!

CNN ends their story on Penn's incompetence with this:

Clinton has sharply criticized America's free trade agreements as she campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, and was particularly critical of rival Barack Obama in February when it was reported that one of his chief foreign policy advisors had suggested to a Canadian official that the Illinois senator was not as anti-free trade as he was claiming to be on the trail.

"I don't think people 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," Clinton said then. "That's the kind of difference between talk and action and that I've been pointing out in this campaign."

"I would ask you to look at that story, substitute my name for Senator Obama," she also said. "If some of my advisers had been having private meetings with foreign governments and basically saying ignore what I'm saying because it's only political rhetoric … I think it raises serious questions."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Can she afford to fire him? Can she afford not to?

Please forgive me - I know it is off topic to the theme of the thread, but is the WSJ not considered MSM? Did not WSJ originally break the story?