That Girl (Hillary!)

By Clarice Feldman

Hill's mendacity on immigration can't escape Mickey Kaus' jaundiced eye:

Sen. Clinton courageously speaks out against anti-immigrant attitudes during the recent Univision debate:

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senator Clinton, the negative tone of the immigration debate has left the country polarized and has created certain racist and discriminatory attitudes toward Hispanics.

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: Well, I think this is a very serious problem. And, as I said earlier, there are many in the political, and, frankly, in the broadcast world today, who take a particular aim at our Latino population and I think it's very destructive.

She was maybe referring to politicians who play on voters' visceral disgust at seeing crowds of scruffy day laborers:

"People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. ... I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx; you're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work."

Who'd say something like that? Lou Dobbs? Er, no. ...

Who, indeed? Clay Waters of Timeswatch notes an article by Nina Bernstein of the New York Times:

"‘Your faces are the faces of America,' said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is running for re-election this year and is seen as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2008.

"Mrs. Clinton was cheered early in the four-hour rally when she thanked the rallying immigrants for their everyday work. ‘Your faces are the faces of those who give us a fair day's work -- and often not for a fair day's pay,' she said."

What Bernstein doesn't get into is Clinton's utter flip-flop on illegal immigration. Back in 2004, after Bush's reelection, she told Manhattan's WABC radio: "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants. Clearly, we have to make some tough decisions as a country, and one of them ought to be coming up with a much better entry-and-exit system so that if we're going to let people in for the work that otherwise would not be done, let's have a system that keeps track of them....People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work."