MSM still footsies with Clintons

Yes, the mostly Democratic MSM has recently been giving the Clintons a hard time while puff-puffing for Sen. Obama.

But MSM hasn’t forgotten the Clintons are Democrats, and therefore deserve friendly coverage as long as it doesn’t hurt Obama.

So we get this from USA Today:

Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

The archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

Clinton's legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.

The decision to withhold the records could provide fodder for critics who say that the former president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, have been unwilling to fully release documents to public scrutiny.

How do you like that?

“Federal archivists … are blocking the release….”

No they’re not!

All the Clinton’s have to do is say the word, and the documents will be made public.

Do you recall the media frenzy during the ’04 presidential campaign over whether President Bush, as a Air National Guard officer during the early 1970s, had attended training sessions in Alabama?

MSM demanded the government find and release any documents it had proving he did.

MSM was in such “hot pursuit” of “the story” that when the records of a dental exam Bush underwent at the Alabama training base at the time he was supposed to be there were released along with x-ray exam data, reporters wanted to know why they weren’t being told where they could locate the dentist who’d conducted the exam.

But there’s been no media frenzy demanding the release of papers relating to Marc Rich’s pardon.

At the time President Clinton pardoned him, Rich was a fugitive from justice. His attorney who prepared the letter requesting the pardon was former Clinton White House counsel Jack Quinn. And Rich’s wife Denise, a friend of the then First Lady, had just made a seven-figure gift to the Clinton Library.

Where Bush and something about attending training sessions 30 years ago were concerned, we had a media frenzy. But when documents concerning the Rich pardon are withheld by the Clintons, we get MSM “ho-hum’ and spin making it seem the archivists are responsible.

Even USA Today’s story headline,

Clinton-papers release blocked,

is a spin. It should have been:

Clintons block documents release

USA Today’s story is here.