<p>mciver - you’re probably right about the exam - I think I confused the multi-state with the ethics exam, which didn’t start in CA until the mid-70’s. </p>
<p>As to Clinton’s law firm history, the fact that you nitpick it and draw the conclusions you do just reinforces my impression of Hillary haters as being driven by irrational forces seeking an outlet. Nobody would question that exact same career path for a male politician. It’s entirely normal. </p>
<p>John Edwards was the exception which proves the rule - a politician who had actually made his mark as a practicing lawyer, rather than being a politician with a nominal “legal” career. (And they hated him for that, too.) Obama’s legal resume is, if anything, a lot thinner than Clinton’s; GW Bush’s business background was somewhere between laughable and disastrous, yet peppered with “chief executive” positions he obtained through connections despite being ill-qualified, and which he performed poorly. Nobody seemed to be too upset about that, did they?</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton is held to different standard, and faced with a mountain of seething, irrational rage. I really don’t understand why (and anyone who’s been here for long knows don’t cop to ignorance all that often.) I think it makes for an interesting sociological study.</p>
<p>In the meantime, with Edwards out, I’m supporting Obama. ;)</p>
<p>Everyone knows I’m for Obama, but I agree that this nit-picking is ridiculous. Maybe she mis-spoke or mis-wrote when she said she “took” both bar exams because she was simply glossing over the complicated system of registering for two character and fitness boards, sitting one state exam, and getting a score high enough for Arkansas but not high enough for DC. The upshot was that she passed the bar in Arkansas and decided to move there. Beyond that, who cares? Why would you lie and say that you failed the bar when you actually passed?</p>
<p>BTW, the rule that you can only waive in after 5 years of practice is standard when a lawyer moves from state to state, but that’s NOT how it works in DC; you can pass a state bar and become a member of the DC bar the same year.</p>
<p>To back up what others have said about Yalies and other elite law students failing a bar exam because they failed to prepare properly…it happens to a few kids every year, and even to the brightest bulb in the class. The most recent example was Kathleen Sullivan, a superstar tenured prof at Harvard Law who became dean of Stanford Law and argued many cases before the Supreme Court. But upon retirement from academia, she failed the CA bar. Let me tell you, if I’m ever accused of a crime, I hope I have Kathleen Sullivan running my defense, even if she failed to memorize the rule against perpetuities!</p>
<p>“To back up what others have said about Yalies and other elite law students failing a bar exam because they failed to prepare properly…”</p>
<p>On this point, it is not for nothing that law firms pay for first years to have prep, pay them while prepping out of the office and offer a five figure bonus for passing. I don’t see anything untoward about Hillary’s statements on this particular issue.</p>
<p>Hanna, I agree with you that this is likely the explanation, and I find it ironic that mciver, in discussing this issue, has, herself, quoted two different dates/years in her posts on CC for when SHE wrote the D.C. exam. </p>
<p>The degree of scrutiny to which Hillary is subjected is, indeed, ridiculous, and beyond irrational. If only the current CIC had been scrutinized thusly eight years ago, perhaps the country and the world wouldn’t be in such a mess today.</p>
Only on the playground, where “I know you are but what am I” constitutes a searing retort. </p>
<p>I’m not a Clinton supporter - she’s my last choice among Democratic candidates - but I don’t see the same kind of goofy criticism of bizarrely irrelevant aspects of other candidate’s personalities. Certainly, some women will vote for Clinton just because she’s a woman, just as some blacks will vote for Obama, some evangelicals will vote for Huckabee, some Mormons for Romney, some Arizonans for McCain, etc. But that’s nothing new.</p>
<p>And Hillary hatred is nothing new either, let me add. Back in the 90’s, here in my Republican suburb, I could rile my friends and neighbors by expressing approval for Bill Clinton, but if I really wanted to set them off, all I had to do was say “…but the one I really admire is Hillary!”</p>
<p>Like I said, I don’t claim to understand it, but the phenomenon is undeniable. Hillary Clinton inspires a visceral, unthinking loathing in a significant number of people - who express that gut feeling by translating it into the kind of nitpicking BS like you see in this thread, and in the places where people complain about her clothes, her accent, her tears, etc. Displacing an emotional response into a more superficially respectable pseudo-rational criticism is done all the time, but rarely so blatantly and with so little challenge. Hillary Clinton is a typical politician, just like all the guys running for president. But she’s not judged by the same standards. Just my observation.</p>
<p>hey, I wouldn’t vote for anyone that strapped their dog in a dog carrier to the roof of their car…that to me, and I am being very honest here, would be a deal breaker no matter who the canditate was</p>
<p>“hey, I wouldn’t vote for anyone that strapped their dog in a dog carrier to the roof of their car…that to me, and I am being very honest here, would be a deal breaker no matter who the canditate was”</p>
<p>And I respect your right to cast your vote as you see fit.</p>
<p>I just spoke to an attorney who took the DC bar in summer 1973 (he agrees the pass rate was a lot lower than other states then and now) and is pretty sure he took two other bar exams that summer because fewer states used the Multistate portion so the exams could be on different weeks. So I am again fully confident in Senator Clinton!</p>
<p>Kluge, that might all be true, but aren’t all the details amounting to the entire substance of the candidate. And this substance --or lack thereof-- amounting to the perception of the character. </p>
<p>What you see as visceral and unthinking perception might very well be the expression of the collective wisdom of the country, with the notable exception of the people who could not care less for integrity and … a number of moral qualities. </p>
<p>People make up their political mind based on little more than whimsical perceptions and end up filling the ranks of the 90% of the voters whose votes get equalized. What can be said about the swinging 10% that DOES send candidates to the White House?</p>
<p>Hanna: My first two jobs out of law school, in the early '80s, were in DC. I didn’t have to pass the bar for them, and we all had to start working in June or July, so neither I nor most of my peers took any bar exams that summer. I also had various conservative law school friends who had not planned to be in DC but were flocking to join the Reagan Revolution without a lot of practice under their belts. The requirements of the DC bar were a constant topic of conversation. You could NOT waive in immediately back then, and I believe the same would have been true in the early '70s, too. (If you could, every one of my friends would have taken the Pennsylvania bar, which at that time you could pass with a 130 on the multistate regardless of your essays. When I finally took it, I didn’t take a review course, and I didn’t even take off work except for the days of the test.)</p>
<p>Obviously, the rule has changed, but it was definitely a rule back then.</p>
<p>alwaysamom: I think he was scrutinized. I think people just didn’t care. Nullification of facts goes on everywhere. We see what we want to see. For example, Gore was the veteran; W barely showed up to collect his Guard checks. Didn’t matter. One got the military image.</p>
<p>Xiggi, the Greeks studying rhetoric discovered that sheer repetition is a powerful device to convince listeners of the truth of the repeated matter, regardless of its actual merit. Americans - particularly American’s who subject themselves to the warped propaganda of the right wing dished out in massive portions every hour of every day on blogs, Fox News, Limbaugh/Coulter/Ingraham, et al, are subjected to constant repetition of certain themes. That’s why a majority of Republicans who got most of their “news” from Fox believed things which were objectively false - and quite publicly acknowledged as false - about Iraq back in 2003. Repetition.</p>
<p>So how does that apply to HC? Well, let’s look at the article linked to in the OP. It’s written by a conspiracy theory nutjob (I’m sure Zoosermom didn’t know that when she posted it; it’s not mentioned by the AIM propagandists.) But, as part of the rational 10% let’s look at what he actual wrote, and analyze its substance.
OK - got it. Clinton=bad, unethical, and wrong. But no specifics - that’s just the accusation.
OK. That’s the conspiracy theory. Certainly different people would have had different opinions about how to respond to Watergate. I don’t doubt that some democrats would have felt that leaving Nixon in office would be to their party’s advantage. They get to think that - that’s politics. And if Dem’s had decided not to impeach for that reason - well, they get to do that too. So let’s assume that that was the plan, or at least “a” plan - which didn’t get implemented. Oh - that’s right. They did proceed with the impeachment, didn’t they? Hmmmm…
OK, here’s a real accusation: he says Hillary said she hadn’t drafted any suggested rule changes. But she had!!! She lied!!! Well, maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t (we only have a conspiracy theory nutjob’s word for it) but so what? Drafting proposals for changes of rules (which aren’t set in stone in this case) is a part of a lawyer’s job. Particularly a 27 year old junior lawyer who has no authority to implement the proposals. The young guys (and girls) are supposed to come up with ideas for the big shots to consider and then implement or reject. It’s their job. So aside from nutjob’s claim that Hillary Lied!!! to him about what she had previously drafted, this is — nothing. No ethical lapse, no misconduct, no nothing. Just a junior lawyer doing her job. (Oh - and exactly how do you “deny” the President representation by counsel? It’s not like he’s got to have a public defender appointed for him or something. This part doesn’t even make sense.) Worst case scenario: a junior lawyer didn’t do her job the way one of her supervisors wanted, apparently in response to something his bosses wanted to consider. Sorry: that’s not an “ethical violation.”
Uh, OK - so the files of the last recorded impeachment procedure were taken to the offices of the staff people working on the current one. This is a scandal - how? Ya think that maybe those files - which he references as precedent - might have been useful there? It’s not like they burned them or something. Again - nothing. No ethical lapse, no “badness.” Just people doing their jobs.
Ooooh! “kept secret”!!! Sounds sneaky, doesn’t it? Except there’s no evidence that the professor’s opinions, which the staff felt wasn’t helpful to the members of congress in their “present form” actually would have been helpful, or that whatever information might have been in it would not have been made available - in suitable form - in the event the impeachment proceeding hadn’t been cut short by Nixon’s resignation. I mean - the book was published; we know what the professor’s said. I’m sure Mr. Zeifman has read it - what important information was suppressed? And “royalties”? Please. </p>
<p>In sum, the reason Zeifman didn’t “report her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations” was that there was nothing to report. There’s no unethical conduct of any sort described anywhere in the article. </p>
<p>But Xiggi - as a member of the thinking 10%, you knew that, right? I mean, you weren’t snowed by the heated verbiage and vague (and both dubious and unprovable) accusations of conspiracy, etc. - you read the substance of the claims and recognized that it was just the venting of a frustrated old man who never achieved the degree of fame and success he had anticipated, and who had veered juuuust a little off the straight and narrow intellectually, trying to sound important and being used by the right wing propaganda mill, right? You wouldn’t be like one of the zillion Google hits on Zeifman’s name who uncritically repeat (and exaggerate) his vague and insubstantial accusations without actually looking at the (lack of) substance behinds them, right? Because the essence of being one of the 10%ers is actually looking at facts.</p>
<p>I’m still pushing for Obama - and I still see the Hillary-haters being driven by a fundamentally irrational, emotion-based reaction. Learning why is a study worth undertaking, although the tool used to maintain that irrational hatred is pretty clear.</p>
<p>"Americans - particularly American’s who subject themselves to the warped propaganda of the right wing dished out in massive portions every hour of every day on blogs, Fox News, Limbaugh/Coulter/Ingraham, et al, are subjected to constant repetition of certain themes. "</p>
<p>And the Americans who subject themselves to the warped propaganda dished out by MSNBC, DailyKos, Glenn Greenwald, etc., aren’t subjected to constant repetition of certain themes?</p>
<p>“I’m sure Zoosermom didn’t know that when she posted it; it’s not mentioned by the AIM propagandists.)”</p>
<p>Actually, Kluge, I knew exactly that. One of the many differences between us is that I often post/say/ask things simply to chat about them with other posters. I don’t have the need to always make points or win arguments, as I’ve said before, I post here for the conversational value. It’s completely fine that you like to make points and try to “win” arguments and even possibly change minds, but that’s not my rationale for posting. Not better or worse, just different.</p>
<p>Kluge, I hope you realize I answered to your comment about the irrational nature of disliking Hillary Clinton as opposed to qualifying the contributions by Zeifman to mankind. I also hope that you’ll consider that people can form valid opinions without having to “subject themselves to the warped propaganda of the right wing dished out in massive portions every hour of every day on blogs, Fox News, Limbaugh/Coulter/Ingraham, et al” and their constant repetition of certain themes. </p>
<p>My point is that there is little reason to support the notion that the supporters of Clinton are less irrational than her detractors are. My point is also that for every voter who could make an intelligent and analytical assessment of the candidates there are more who couldn’t. And, speaking about the 10% that is left after the two opposite 45% neutralize each other, I don’t see it as composed by a whole lot of thinking and rational individuals. </p>
<p>This goes a long way in explaining our choices as occupants of the White House for the past five presidencies.</p>
<p>Zoosermom, when you posted an irrational screed penned by a goofy conspiracy theorist under the heading “Hillary’s History” and the intro “This is an interesting article regarding the Nixon era” I honestly thought you didn’t know the author was a nutjob, and that you had assumed that it was a reasoned criticism of something Hillary Clinton had actually done which was unethical. I apologize for my misunderstanding. As for
I can’t speak for MSNBC, because I don’t watch it (who does? I mean, it’s a cable news network, right? It gets, what - a 1 share most days?) I know what Kos is (don’t read it) and I’d never heard of Greenwald before. I’m sure some daily Kos readers are subject to groupthink just like the Free Republic readers, albeit with a different slant. But again - how many people are we talking about here? Fox is a broadcast network. Limbaugh is on AM radio in dozens of major media markets. I hear the right wing drumbeat everyday, loud and clear. And I also recognize the argument that “because they’re mostly liberals, we should slant the news to ‘balance’ it.” The crafting of that argument - which many accept - was a coup. The logic is faulty, of course, but it has the typical propagandists patina of superficial logic which gets it past most people’s BS meter. </p>
<p>Xiggi - I am unaware of any countervailing drumbeat of pro-Hillary propaganda to counter the kind of stuff of which this article was an example. It may be out there; if you have something in mind you could show me examples. From where I sit, all I see is constant repetition of propaganda of Hillary=Satan level smears. The Ziefman article was quoted and repeated countless times - Google it. All the repetition I see is one way: anti-Hillary. To me, she’s just another politician, to be considered, pros and cons, like any other. I don’t see that level of analysis coming from the anti-Hillary crowd. I see visceral reaction, of a kind I don’t see directed at any other prominent politician these days. And I don’t see any visceral pro-Hillary response. (Do see some for Obama, though.)</p>
<p>"But again - how many people are we talking about here? "</p>
<p>I think on the whole it’s a lot. Matthews has a Sunday show, a lot of people like Olbermann, Jon Stewart (I’ve heard) leans left. As many people as Fox? Probably not, but if the same syndrome applies, it’s either acceptable across the board or its not.</p>
<p>Wanna know a secret? I’ve never, ever in my entire life, listened to Rush Limbaugh. Or any talk radio show for that matter. Sean Hannity makes me absolutely crazed. I think if I ever met him in person I’d have to be restrained from ripping his tongue out. Not for position reasons, but his voice really hits my ears in a bad way. </p>
<p>I don’t think we can lump all of them on either side in with “news” though, because opinion is opinion and either side is entitled. I do think there should be a place for opinion on both sides and much of what I hear (not from you) in terms of complaint about Fox is complaining about opinion commentators, which I think is ridiculous.</p>
<p>“I see visceral reaction, of a kind I don’t see directed at any other prominent politician these days”.</p>
<p>I’m starting to agree with you.</p>
<p>"SEATTLE (AP) - A distasteful comment about Chelsea Clinton by an MSNBC anchor Thursday could imperil Hillary Rodham Clinton’s participation in future presidential debates on the network, a Clinton spokesman said. </p>
<p>In a conference call with reporters, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson Friday excoriated MSNBC’s David Shuster for suggesting the Clinton campaign had “pimped out” 27-year old Chelsea by having her place phone calls to Democratic Party superdelegates on her mother’s behalf. Wolfson called the comment “beneath contempt” and disgusting."</p>
</p>
let’s look at what he actual wrote, and analyze its substance.