The Club for Growth has a nice chart detailing how often this season each U.S. Senator has voted with Majority Leader Harry Reid (the same guy who last year declared the war "lost" just when our troops were turning things around).

Not surprisingly, the two Senators who voted most often with him were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, with nearly 91% each. The three Senators who voted the least often with Reid were small government heroes Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, and... John McCain!

Do you roll your eyes every time someone pretends that the Democrats' heated primary season has been "healthy" to the Democratic Party? I do. Regardless of whom you're rooting for, there is no denying that the Dems' soap opera has hurt their chances in November. My column yesterday is on the subject, check it out here.

My column today, appropriately, deals with China - more specifically, why Americans are better off trading freely with China, and why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama must cease their anti-trade rhetoric. Read it here.

In typical Clinton-esque pandering fashion, Hillary Clinton went around Indiana criticizing a Chinese business deal in Indiana to complement her excessive anti-trade rhetoric of recent months.

Much like with everything else, Hillary is wrong on this. Trade with China has been extremely beneficial to the U.S., as well as to China. More details from the Wall Street Journal.

From a Rasmussen poll released today:

Just 68% of Democrats say they would vote for Obama against McCain. Twenty-three percent (23%) would vote for the Republican, 5% for a third-party option, and 4% are undecided. Clinton attracts 71% of Democrats. In that match-up, 21% would vote for McCain, 4% say they would vote for some other candidate, and another 4% are undecided. McCain attracts 85% of Republicans against Clinton, 82% against Obama, and leads both Democrats by double digits among unaffiliated voters.

People were starting to forget about Hillary's Bosnia fiction, but of course, Bill Clinton somehow manages to make it worse with his own fiction:

"And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you woulda thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them, when they're 60, they'll forget something when they're tired at 11 at night, too.”

CBS News producer Ryan Corsaro, who covers Senator Clinton, reports she made the claim in mid-morning on St. Patrick’s Day.

CBS also has aired videotape of the senator making the claim on at least two other occasions.
The Eleanor Roosevelt claim also has been questioned, since Pat Nixon traveled to Vietnam in 1969.

 Sometimes Bill should just be quiet.

One of the few things this Congress might be able to do to redeem itself is to pass the Colombia FTA. But, as usual, they are playing politics.

USA Today wants them to pass it.

Condi Rice made a great case for it Monday.

And House Republicans have a collection of editorials supporting the agreement, everywhere from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times.

Even Bill Clinton supports it despite Hillary's opposition to it. Why? She's running in a Democratic primary, and he's not. 

There is no economic or other legitimate reason to vote against it. Only dirty politics. 

For those of you who missed it, Dan Calabrese (who runs my syndicate, North Star Writers Group), ran a big story last week about Hillary Clinton's questionable behavior during the Watergate investigation. If you are considering casting  a vote this year, it is a must read.

This week he writes a follow-up  story further corroborating many of the allegations against Hillary. Check it out.

The Washington Post has the Clintons' and the Obamas' tax returns.

Clearly, they have first-hand exposure to the common man's pain. 

According to this poll (opens in PDF), Obama's leading Clinton 45-43 in Pennsylvania. Yikes!

For those of us hoping to see them get to convention, this is not necessarily a cause for alarm. Hillary's still leading in just about every other poll. 

Dan Calabrese interviewed Jerry Zeifman, Hillary Clinton's supervisor during the Watergate investigation, to write an eye-opening piece about how Hillary's severe pattern of lying goes back to her 20s. Excerpt:

When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

After being called "Judas" by James Carville for endorsing Obama, Bill Richardson has finally come out with a fun read (for non-Clintonians, at least) about his decision. My favorite part:

As for Mr. Carville's assertions that I did not return President Clinton's calls: I was on vacation in Antigua with my wife for a week and did not receive notice of any calls from the president. I, of course, called Sen. Clinton prior to my endorsement of Sen. Obama. It was a difficult and heated discussion, the details of which I will not share here.

What are they, 12?

"No, Hillary, I didn't hear the phone ring. Did your husband at least leave a voicemail?  Nuh-uh, LIAR"

The Democratic primary has left 50 Cent (one of my favorite rappers, by the way) quite confused.

He's gone from

 "I just think Hillary would be my choice."

then to

"I'm Obama to the end now, baby!"

 and finally on to

"To be honest, I haven't been following that anymore. I lost my interest... I listened to some of the debate and things that they were saying, and I just got lost in everything that was going on... Don't look for my vote, for me to determine nothing on that. Just say, '50 Cent, he don't know, so don't ask Fiddy."

Classic. 

The Canadians are worried about NAFTA, and for good reason, considering Clinton and Obama have been trying to out-anti-NAFTA each other ever since the Ohio elections.

As I pointed out in a column that received much attention in November, American allies that had formerly socialist leaders have in recent years overwhelmingly voted in more right-leaning leaders. This is in part due to their recognition that free market and free trade policies work best (see: international corporate tax rates plummeting, the U.S. excepted). And despite Democrats' constant claim that they are the internationalist party, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, South Korea, and other countries facing Democrats' challenges to free trade agreements with the U.S. would certainly beg to differ.