i endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nominee

first of all, for her campaign's iron-fisted control of media access, as reported in the liberal New Republic. good stuff...

Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

ahh, yes, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" is alive and well, even in the left-leaning press.....

i also like the fact that even though she's counting on the support of working-class women, she can't be bothered to actually tip a waitress she spoke to and later used her story in stump speeches (reported by NPR).

Anita Esterday waited on the New York senator and her entourage at a Maid-Rite restaurant in Toledo, Iowa. Esterday posed for photos with Clinton and spoke of her plight as a single mother forced to work two jobs to make ends meet.

Clinton later incorporated Esterday's story into her campaign stump speech. Pictures of their meeting appeared in newspapers and on TV newscasts.

In the NPR interview, Esterday said that while she had enjoyed meeting Clinton, she hadn't gotten much out of her 15 minutes of fame.

"I mean, nobody got left a tip that day," Esterday said, adding, "I don't think she understood at all what I was saying."

then, Tim Russert committed the cardinal sin of actually asking her a yes/no question about whether she supports New York Gov. Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens, she calls that a "gotcha" question...

When, in the waning moments of the debate's "lightning round," NBC's Tim Russert asked Clinton why she had told a New Hampshire editorial board that Spitzer's plan "makes a lot of sense," Clinton credited the governor with "filling the vacuum" in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform on the federal level.

Only after Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd came out against the license plan did Clinton attempt to clarify her position. "I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it," she said.

When Russert asked Clinton to pick a side, she accused him of playing "gotcha" - and her opponents were ready to join the game. "Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes," former North Carolina senator John Edwards said.

and then, of course, Slick Willy came to the rescue, accusing the other candidates of "piling on" against poor defenseless Hillary.

but i especially love the way she combats all of this unfair coverage by planting questions in the audience in "town-hall meeting" campaign stops...

you GO, girl!! HILLARY! '08