File under "Why Would Hillary's Team Choose to Mislead You if the Actual Plain Facts Were in Their Favor"?
A Hillary supporter wrote:
"So Hillary is held to account for a crime bill her husband passed, a securities modernization act her husband signed, a welfare bill her husband signed, and basically everything Bill did (mind you she could not vote for any of these). The anointed one on the other hand voted for the very same crime bill, securities act and against immigration reform in 2007 but gets a free pass because he didn't "mean it". So a woman is held to the actions of her husband but Bernie can't be held accountable for his."
Hillary was no passive actor in her husband's career; she was extremely active both in promoting him and in advising him. My recollection from the time is that she supported the crime bill -- but unlike Bernie had input into fashioning it. She supported the Commodities Future Modernization Act, which Bernie "supported" only because of a "must pass" federal budget; he later tried to roll it back, without her support. She supported the "welfare reform" bill; Bernie -- you may have missed it above -- opposed it. He absolutely did oppose "immigration reform" in 2007 because the so-called "guest worker" program was so bad that the Southern Poverty Law Center called it akin to slavery.
I then pointed out that Bernie only supported it in the federal budget because he's not the equivalent of a Ted Cruz. The Hillary supporter replied with this: "He voted no on the bill yet he voted in favor of an amendment that would allow militias to operate in the border without fear of federal prosecution." And he posted this link to the Congressional record:
So I did something that no one would ever expect. I read it -- the whole damned thing. Here's what the amendment actually says:
"None of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide a foreign government information related to the activities of an organized volunteer civilian action group as defined by DHS OIC-06 -4, operating in the state of California, Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona, unless required by international treaty."
Rep. Kingston, its sponsor, justified the amendment as follows:
"What my amendment does is simply says that the U.S. government cannot tip off Mexican officials as where these [self-proclaimed "militia"] are located. Plain and simple, nothing fancy about it. I'm sure the Border Patrol will say 'oh, no, we are not doing that,' and yet one of the web pages of the Secretary of Mexico had the information very explicit, and we just do not believe that this is a good practice. So what we wanted to do is confirm Congress's opinion in an amendment.
No Democrat spoke against the amendment. Of Democratic House members, 76 supported it, 106 opposed it, and 19 didn't vote.
Rep. Sabo, the only Democrat to speak on the amendment at all, said this:
"We are told by Customs and Border Control that this amendment has no effect on its operation because it only shares information when required by international treaty, the same as what this amendment says. So to the best of my knowledge, this amendment simply restates what is policy. If people want to put it in the bill, I guess that is OK because it merely restates policy."
Now Hillary's attack, based on some researcher' careful combing through the Congressional Record for ANYTHING they could use (or misuse) to smear Bernie, was that "he voted in favor of an amendment that would allow militias to operate in the border without fear of federal prosecution."
Go ahead and click the link at the end of this post yourself. Review the debate -- it's pretty short -- which you'll find about 2/3 of the way down the page. (Search on "Amendment Offered by Mr. Kingston" to find it quickly.) Now, DO YOU THINK THAT WHAT THE HILLARY SUPPORTER WROTE IS WHAT BERNIE ACTUALLY DID?
Assuming that you agree that he did not, ARE YOU GOING TO TOLERATE THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN MISLEADING YOU LIKE THIS? Do you prefer to be misled -- or to support a leader?