By Christopher G. Adamo

So Hillary was caught in a brazen lie about her 1996 trip to Bosnia, in which she lately claims to have landed in the midst of a sniper attack, even having to duck and run for cover at the airfield. Is anyone surprised? Certainly nobody who has dispassionately observed the Clintons on the national scene over the past sixteen years, nor the forthright citizens of Arkansas who witnessed such behavior for much longer than that.

The only people who are really astounded this time around are the Clintons and their minions. Hillary’s foray into being “human” (as she rationalizes her phony recounting of the incident), merely constitutes standard practice. Far more stunning is that, this time around, the national media have opted to point out the fabrication, which is a great departure from their past willingness to abet the hoaxes of the former First Lady and husband Bill.

Prior to their current infatuation with Senator Barack Obama (D.-Il), the print and electronic media have diligently covered over the fraudulent tracks of the Clintons. And on those occasions in which stories could not be completely buried, the media were still willing to participate in the ruse by shifting the focus away from the blatant dishonesty, and onto any number of rabbit trails, such as the “skill” with which the Clintons ostensibly dodged political bullets.

While any comprehensive list of Clintonian fraud would require volumes to catalog, a few memorable events should be recalled in order to remind the nation of the class of politician with which it is dealing. And, despite media claims that their personal activities were irrelevant to their official duties, deception and duplicity in the nation’s highest office eventually exacted an awful toll.

From the start of his campaign in 1992, Bill Clinton palpably defined himself and the true nature of his political operations with the transparent disclaimer of having smoked marijuana (apparently too many witnesses were available to facilitate total denial), though he ostensibly “did not inhale.” No matter how many people saw him putting the funny little cigarette to his mouth, nobody could decisively prove that he had partaken of its intoxicating effect.

His implicit message to detractors was that he would simply never admit to any accusation that might present even the tiniest chance of an evasion. This pattern was incessantly repeated with tiring regularity throughout his administration and even after.

Of course the most notable episode involved a vehement denial of his tryst with Monica Lewinsky, weaving and dodging from pointed questions with such transparent and juvenile tactics as his dispute over the definition of “is,” and later, when DNA evidence from the infamous blue dress eliminated any avenue of escape, his similar discussion of the definition of “sex.”

Along with these incidents were innumerable others, such as his claims to have seated himself at the rear of public transportation in honor of Rosa Parks, or his fabricated childhood recollections of black Church burnings in Arkansas when in reality, none had occurred during that period. While easily relegated to the genre of mere pandering, these tales were brazenly dishonest, and ultimately indicative of the Clintons’ utter contempt for the truth.

More sinister in their implications for the nation are some clearly dishonest rationalizations, meant to sugarcoat dangerous policy making, as exemplified by Bill Clinton’s releases of critical missile and nuclear information to the Chinese. In defense of his actions, Clinton falsely claimed that the technology was applicable to “peaceful” uses of space, such as the development of rockets for satellite launching.

Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of modern rocketry knows that the technology needed to launch a satellite is essentially identical to that used to hurl a nuclear warhead. Only the targeting information is different. And this truth was readily available to Bill Clinton. Yet he stuck to his story, and the media dutifully covered for him.

Throughout Bill Clinton’s two terms in office, First Lady (now Senator) Hillary Clinton was his chief enabler, often going to the microphones to diffuse the latest lie or scandal. Hardly a stranger to such tactics, and perhaps the chief architect of employing brazen lies as a political strategy, she has over time assembled an impressive quantity of her own.

From her “cattle futures” scam to the mysterious disappearance/reappearance of the Rose Law firm billing records, Hillary Clinton ran the gauntlet of legal problems that would easily have sunk any public figure less adept at dancing away from the truth. And nobody in recent memory has been more flagrant in their taunting deflections of questioners than Hillary Clinton, who is probably best remembered for her sneering retort of “I do not recall,” when queried about her dubious dealings by Congressional committees.

Bill and Hillary’s political adversaries responded quickly to each ensuing outrage, but were just as quickly repelled by typical Clinton antics, from accusations of a “vast right wing conspiracy,” to their spurious claims of the moral “high ground,” while decrying the “politics of personal destruction.”

For nearly two decades, the Clintons regularly dissembled with virtual impunity. But with the advent of the Barack Obama phenomenon, the liberal media no longer see any reason to disgrace themselves on behalf of the Clintons. And if Obama does clinch the Democrat nomination, an unbroken succession of petty lies and juvenile story telling may be the only sorry remains of the “ Clinton legacy.”