Free Republic

Former Clinton political hitman James Carville, who recently touted New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for a 2008 presidential run, is reportedly behind an advertising campaign attacking President Bush for his 1990 sale of Harken Energy stock as well as his ties to the oil industry in general. American Family Voices, a group described by the New York Times as "secretive," has paid to run a 30-second commercial on cable news programs in Washington, D.C., and in New York through Thursday. The ad blasts President Bush as "sly like a fox" for talking down his dealings with Harken Energy, which Democrats...

At a press conference Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was asked about reports that the Harken Energy Corp. had set up a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, possibly to avoid taxes, while George W. Bush was a consultant to the company and served on its board. "Obviously, there are a lot of questions to be asked before we can come to any conclusions about what happened," Daschle replied. "It is why we think that the administration needs to lay the record straight, needs to allow the SEC to open up its records." This isn't the first time Daschle...

<p>"The stock Bush sold for $4 was selling for $3 two months later and fell to around a dollar by the end of 1990. It rebounded to nearly $9 a year after Bush sold. Today it sells for 44 cents a share."</p>

Among the many questions that have been raised about George W. Bush's business dealings with Harken Energy, there's one that has so far failed to attract the attention of journalists delving into the president's past: Why is all this coming up now? Did Bush's sale of Harken stock more than a decade ago come to the fore spontaneously as a result of public outrage over scandals at Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen? Did enterprising reporters dig up long-buried secrets? Did one of the president's former business associates come forward to expose his hypocrisy?While anything is possible, it appears the...

In Your Nation’s Capital there is a syndrome known as "The August Story." This is a story which will sustain journalists, politicians, cable news anchors, talking heads, and – dare we say it – political columnists, through the dog days of August when the Congress is on vacation, the President is out of the city, and France is shut down. To review the bidding, last summer’s August Story was the Gary Condit/Chandra Levy business. The summer before that (2000) the August Story was the Dueling Republican and Democratic National Conventions. By the way, I went back to the Mullings Archives...

Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday that he had “real questions” about the Harken transaction and said Bush “would do well to ask the SEC to release the file, release it all, let everybody see just what is there