Hitchens on Hillary's Lies

A must-read from Christopher Hitchens:

The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.

Hitchens is outraged, and eloquently so as always--it's definitely worth reading through. Still, I'm surprised that anyone can be surprised by the Clinton's lies anymore. Frankly, I find them rather comforting in comparison to Obama's new kind of politics, which best I can tell seems to be the same old politics in a new self-righteous package. All politicians lie, and the Clintons more than most. I can't imagine that voters haven't already internalized this reality--which is why I tend to think the explanation for Hillary's plummeting poll numbers must lie elsewhere. Samantha says it's the whining, which is as good an explanation as any.