Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Hillary Behind Giuliani Billing Disclosures?
2. Former U.N. Official Compares Pregnancy to Slavery
3. Clinton Library Sells 'Secret' Donor List
4. Republicans Recruit the Rich as Candidates
5. No Arab Ambassadors in Iraq
6. Ron Paul Leads Military Donations
7. We Heard: Don Imus, Harry Reid
1. Hillary Behind Giuliani Billing Disclosures?
Political insiders are speculating that the hidden hand of Hillary Clinton was behind recent disclosures about Rudy Giuliani's questionable billing practices as New York City mayor.
The Politico.com disclosed on Wednesday that Mayor Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security costs during the time he was starting an extramarital affair with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons on Long Island, where she had a condo.
Those costs had nothing to do with the city offices that received the bills, including agencies aiding the disabled and regulating loft apartments, The Politico reported.
The Web site noted that it's "impossible to know whether the purpose of all the Hamptons trips was to see Nathan."
But the New York Daily News noted: "It has been known since 2000 that then-Mayor Giuliani used his official, taxpayer-funded NYPD detail to escort him to weekend getaways at Nathan's Southampton condo as early as 1999."
Giuliani said Thursday that the agencies were billed because the NYPD was slow in paying its bills.
The speculation by insiders is that the information about Giuliani's billing practices was unearthed by Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign researchers while she was running for the U.S. Senate in the 2000 election.
At the time, Republican Giuliani was also seeking to fill the seat vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He formed an exploratory committee in April 1999, but withdrew his candidacy in May 2000, citing the need for prostate cancer treatment as the reason.
Why might Hillary's current presidential campaign want this information to come to light now, while she is still battling for the Democratic nomination?
The thinking is that Hillary is convinced that she'll win the nomination, and is seeking to knock off Rudy early because Clinton and her backers believe Giuliani is the only GOP candidate who could beat her in the general election.
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2. Former U.N. Official Compares Pregnancy to Slavery
A former top official at the United Nations likened pregnancy to a form of enslavement and called for more support for abortions in the developing world.
Dr. Gertrude Mongella, a former U.N. under-secretary, told a recent United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) gathering in New York that she supported UNFPA's controversial promotion of "reproductive rights" — a term used by some U.N. committees to mean abortion — as a means to reduce maternal mortality.
Mongella, now president of the Pan-African Parliament, said that from 10 percent to 30 percent of maternal mortality in Africa was due to unsafe abortions.
But in a response to Mongella's lecture, the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute pointed out: "In fact, the World Health Organization stated recently that virtually no data exists to make such a claim since most developing countries do not report the cause of death or the sex of the deceased."
Despite the failure of U.N. agencies to reduce maternal deaths, Mongella praised UNFPA, saying that before it began promoting reproductive rights, "reproduction was some kind of enslavement" that "chained" women.
Mongella blamed the failure of UNFPA's reproductive rights approach largely on a lack of support.
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3. Clinton Library Sells 'Secret' Donor List
Three years after Bill Clinton's presidential library opened in Arkansas, the list of donors who gave money to build the $165 million complex is still kept secret from the public.
But the Clinton Foundation did rent portions of the list through a firm headed by a longtime Clinton backer, according to a report from ABC News' "The Blotter" blog.
"The fact that they've sold the list and then turned around and said that these names must be kept anonymous completely undercuts their argument," said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Walter Karl, a subsidiary of the data company InfoUSA, made a list of more than 38,000 contributors to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library available for sale to foundations and other nonprofit groups from June 2006 to May 2007, ABC News reported.
InfoUSA's CEO, Vin Gupta, was sued earlier this year by company shareholders, who have charged that he has wasted millions of dollars of the firm's money on political causes unrelated to his business.
The identities of several donors to the Clinton Library were inadvertently revealed in 2004 when a reporter for the New York Sun found their names on a touch-screen computer at the library after its opening.
Those 57 donors, who each gave $1 million or more, included members of the Saudi royal family, Arab businessmen, the governments of Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, and Taiwan, plus Hollywood celebrities, the Sun reported.
The computer was disconnected after the report was published, but library officials promised that a list of donors contributing $100,000 or more would eventually be made public. That has still not occurred.
The Republican National Committee has sought to capitalize on the donor list sales report by posting an abridged version of the ABC News story on its GOP.com Web site, under the headline, "In Case You Missed It."
The site also asks visitors to sign a petition "to open the Clinton Library documents."
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4. Republicans Recruit the Rich as Candidates
Faced with a large fund-raising gap compared to Democrats, Republican Party officials are recruiting wealthy Congressional candidates who can spend their own money to finance their campaigns.
So far the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has steered well-to-do individuals into campaigns in at least a dozen Congressional districts, many of them against first-term Democrats in districts that President Bush carried in 2004.
These wealthy candidates have already spent $100,000 to $1 million of their own money on their campaigns, according to the New York Times.
In Texas, wealthy businessman Francisco Canseco has spent more than $700,000 of his own fortune in an attempt to unseat first term Democrat Ciro Rodriguez in the San Antonio area.
In New York, Alexander Treadwell, grandson of a General Electric founding executive, has already dished out $320,000 of his own money in a campaign targeting freshman Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in the Albany area.
Other wealthy Republicans who have been enlisted include dairy magnate James Oberweis in Illinois, business executive Mike Erickson in Oregon, and Ed Tinsley, owner of a restaurant franchiser, in New Mexico.
According to the most recent figures, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has raised $56.6 million and has $29.2 million on hand, while the NRCC has raised $40.7 million and has only $2.5 million at its disposal.
"National Republicans are in disarray, forcing them to recruit inexperienced and unprepared self-funders," DCCC spokesman Dough Thornell told the Times.
The GOP campaign to recruit the rich might make more financial sense than political. Of the 10 candidates who reportedly spent the most of their own money on House races in 2006, only two won.
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5. No Arab Ambassadors in Iraq
Not a single Arab nation currently has an ambassador in Iraq — and the real reason should be troubling for the U.S.
For the record, Arab countries maintain that they don't send ambassadors to Baghdad because the Iraqi government is led by sectarian Shiites who don't look after the interests of Iraq's Sunnis.
But the Wall Street Journal points out in an editorial that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets regularly with Sunni sheiks and billions of dollars in oil revenue flow from the central government to the provinces.
"Which brings us to what is perhaps the real motive underlying the Arab world's rejection of its 'brother' state Iraq: A functioning Muslim democracy — federalized, pluralist, majority-led and imposed by American arms — is a worrying precedent for the autocratic houses of Assad, Saud and Mubarak," the Journal observes.
"If these Arab leaders don't want the world to conclude they want a failed Iraq, it's time they sent envoys to work with that country's duly elected government."
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6. Ron Paul Leads Military Donations
In the heat of the recent CNN/YouTube debate, GOP candidate Ron Paul was accused of failing to support America's troops in harm's way. He delivered a cutting response:
"I raise more money from military people… than anyone here," Paul spat back at Sen. John McCain, who had taken issue with Paul's calls for troop withdrawal.
Newsmax examined Paul's claim, and our research indicates he's right. In fact, Ron Paul continues to outpace all candidates — Republican and Democrat — by a wide margin when it comes to contributions from active duty and reserve members of the U.S. military.
According to the most recent campaign records compiled by the Federal Elections Commission, Paul raised nearly $27,009 from military members between July 15 and October 15. That's an 8 percent jump from his military haul of $24,965 the previous quarter, and represents more than 25 percent of the contributions made by America's warriors.
Democrat Barack Obama was a distant second with $18,891 in contributions from military folks last quarter. McCain, a Vietnam war veteran and former prisoner of war, took in $17,919 from America's soldiers, sailors and airmen.
According to the FEC, the top 10 candidates in contributions from military members last quarter are:
- Ron Paul: $27,009
- Barack Obama: $18,891
- John McCain: $17,919
- Fred Thompson: $15,225
- Hillary Clinton: $10,855
- Mike Huckabee: $5,900
- Mitt Romney: $4,060
- Rudy Giuliani: $3,000
- John Edwards: $1,245
- Joe Biden: $1,175
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7. We Heard . . .
THAT at least one member of Congress is none to pleased with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's political skills.
Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., told a Democratic Professionals Council gathering in West Palm Beach that he's frustrated when bills passed by the Democrat-controlled House stall in the Democrat-controlled Senate, where filibustering and the narrower Democratic edge give Republicans more clout.
"I like Harry Reid, but Mitch McConnell (R-Ky., the Senate minority leader) is a better politician than Harry Reid is today," Hastings said in remarks reported by George Bennett in the Palm Beach Post.
Hastings asserted that Reid needs to be more confrontational.
"If Al Hastings was the person that was the majority leader of the United States Senate," Hastings said, "I would call Mitch McConnell in my office and I'd say, 'Mitch, let me tell you one damn thing. What you are going to do is all of this legislation is going to come to your desk. And you can filibuster until you are blue in the face. We'll go to the American people and you tell them why children don't have health care.'"
THAT Don Imus' new radio station has decided to put him on a 21-second delay instead of the usual 5-second — presumably to allow WABC-AM in New York to more easily squelch any comments similar to those that got him yanked from CBS Radio.
One guest scheduled to appear on Imus' Dec. 3 debut program is former Clinton adviser James Carville, according to the New York Observer.
Carville said: "I defend the speaker, not the speech."
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