Hell Has Officially Frozen Over   [Byron York]

It caught my eye as a flash on Brit Hume a few moments ago, but here is a photo from Hillary Clinton's visit today to the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In this picture, she is seen talking to none other than Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the paper and the man who once said that the death of Vincent Foster was the "Rosetta stone" of the Bill Clinton administration. (He also funded the so-called "Arkansas Project" at The American Spectator.) We've heard reports of a rapprochement between Scaife and the Clintons of late, and the Pennsylvania primary is fast approaching, but this is still a pretty striking picture.

The picture is right here: 

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDA2YTFkMmUxNjliNDIzODU1MWQxZmY1MjdiMDE0OGM=

I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it.  It does bring to mind the fact that Rupert Murdoch, owner of right-wing media outlets Fox News, the New York Post, and now the Wall Street Journal (op-ed is far right, we'll see what happens to news), hosted a fundraiser for her Senate campaign. 

The links in this piece will give you some background on Scaife, who is probably the one person single-handedly responsible for the absolutely worst elements of American political life through his donations to bogus "conservative" media outlets and think tanks, including the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review vanity press and The American Spectator.  He's the anti-Obama, the opposite of everything Obama talks about and stands for.  Scaife is constantly injecting more BS and venom into our politics, doing whatever he can to increase ignorance and partisanship.

What the hell is Clinton doing meeting with reporters and editors of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review? The Tribune-Review is a money-losing fringe publication published by Richard Mellon Scaife, a bilious and wealthy crank who spent the 1990s manufacturing vile innuendo about the Clintons. If the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" on which first lady Hillary Clinton famously blamed her troubles can be said to exist, its chairman and chief executive officer was Scaife. Scaife gave the American Spectator $2.3 million to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton, and he used the Tribune-Review to spread, among other things, the reprehensible allegation that Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster, a clinically depressed deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in 1993. Scaife was quoted more than once calling Foster's death "the Rosetta stone to the Clinton administration," adding in an interview with George magazine, "Once you solve that one mystery, you'll know everything that's going on or went on—I think there's been a massive coverup. … Listen, [Bill Clinton] can order people done away with at his will. He's got the entire federal government behind him. … God, there must be 60 people who have died mysteriously."

...

For whatever reason, Scaife decided last summer to extend the hand of friendship to Bill Clinton, whose post-presidency he professes to admire. Perhaps Scaife was looking to burnish his image with the judge then presiding over his extremely nasty divorce. Maybe he wanted to get even with the former Mrs. Scaife, who apparently prefers Obama. (She gave Obama's campaign $2,300 in February.) Bill Clinton overcame whatever scruples he might harbor to raise money for his foundation. Hillary Clinton is now doing the same in the interest of her candidacy. She is free, of course, to associate with whomever she pleases. But she is not free, while paddling the sewers with Scaife, to judge Obama publicly for belonging to Wright's church. Compared with Scaife, Wright is St. Francis of Assisi. The only possible reason why any Pennsylvanian might judge Wright more harshly than Scaife is that Scaife is white and Wright is black. That must be obvious even to Hillary as she cozies up to this repulsive billionaire.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187473/

I'm not sure why this news hasn't hit harder now that Hillary has decided to launch into a new round of Holy Wars.

While in Washington during the Clinton administration, Hillary joined a right-wing Christianist group called "The Family."  She has been a member ever since:

There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she’s a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that “through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the “Fellowship,” aka The Family. But it won’t be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet’s shocking exposé, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.

http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2008/03/hillarys-nasty.html

Ehrenreich follows up in the comments:

This was not a premeditated hit on Hillary, nor is it gossip or a joke. I happened to have been reading a manuscript of Jeff Sharlet's book, The Family, because he sent it to me for a blurb. Late last week, when the business about Obama's pastor broke out, I had just gotten to Sharlet's section on Hillary's involvement with the Family. Already creeped out by Sharlet's account of the Family, I decided I had to blog about this.

As does the author of the book and MoJo piece, Jeff Sharlet:

What's odd about accusations that this is conspiratorial is that it's based almost entirely on the public record. We didn't need to meet anyone in a parking garage at midnight to find out that Hillary considers Doug Coe a "genuinely loving spiritual mentor"; she writes that in Living History. And if you don't want to take my word for Doug Coe's Hitler talk, there are sermons available online and 600 boxes of documents rife with such material available to the public in Collection 459 of the Billy Graham Center Archives, not an institution known for conspiracy theories or hostility to religion.

The fact is, The Family is NOT a conspiracy, it's bad theology. And challenging Hillary's association with this authoritarian interpretation of the gospel can hardly be considered anti-religious when The Family itself mocks religion as suitable for the masses but useless for God's anointed, who, they argue, are given special teachings direct from God.

And making the case that Barbara is drawing on an unsourced hit piece is really absurd. Mother Jones, like all decent magazines, does extensive fact checking -- you don't get to declare something without proof. The piece wasn't a hit piece, either. What's my evidence? I actually voted for Hillary. I've changed my mind since, but I voted for her knowing about her affiliations, worried about her affiliations, because I thought her health care plan was better and that Obama was no different on other issues. I now think I was wrong, and I'll freely admit that I've never been a fan of hers, but I can hardly be accused of pursuing an Obama agenda when I actually voted for her over Obama.

I raised the questions I did because they are there: because Hillary asks us to take her religion seriously as a part of her candidacy. Ok, so let's do so. I've tried to do that, and so has Barbara. Would that Hillary's defenders do as much as to take their candidate at her word.

Posted by: Jeff Sharlet | March 20, 2008 at 05:17 PM

Be sure to read the original article in Mother Jones in its entirety:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html