Dick Morris (born November 28, 1948) is an American political author and commentator who previously worked as a pollster, political campaign consultant, and general political consultant.

A friend and advisor to Bill Clinton during his time as Governor of Arkansas, Morris became a political adviser to the White House after Clinton was elected president in 1992. Morris encouraged Clinton to pursue third way policies of triangulation that combined, to achieve maximum political gain and popularity, traditional Republican and Democratic proposals, rhetoric, and issues. He worked as a Republican strategist before joining the Clinton administration, where he helped Clinton recover from the 1994 midterm elections by convincing the President to adopt Republican policies.^[1]

The president consulted Morris in secret beginning in 1994.^[2] Clinton's communications director George Stephanopoulos has said, "Over the course of the first nine months of 1995, no single person had more power over the president."^[3] Morris went on to become campaign manager of Bill Clinton's successful 1996 bid for re-election to the office of President. His tenure on that campaign was cut short two months before the election, when it was revealed that he had allowed a prostitute to listen in on conversations with the President. Morris then turned his focus to media commentary. He now writes a weekly column for the New York Post which is carried nationwide, contributes columns and blogs to both the print and online versions of The Hill, and appears regularly on the Fox News Channel for political commentary. He is also President of Vote.com.^[4]

More recently, Morris has emerged as a harsh critic of the Clintons and has written several books that criticize them, including Rewriting History, a rebuttal to Senator Hillary Clinton's Living History. Morris said that he would leave the United States if Hillary Clinton were elected president in 2008.^[5]

Morris was the strategist for Republican Christy Mihos's failed campaign in the 2010 Massachusetts gubernatorial race.^[6]

Early life[link]

Morris is the son of writer Terry Lesser Morris, an early proponent of confessional human interest stories.^[7] He attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City,^[8] where he was active on the debate team. He managed Jerrold Nadler's campaign for class president; Nadler has since gone on to represent New York in the House of Representatives. Morris was also involved in the first campaign of Richard Gottfried for New York State Assembly in 1970. Morris graduated from Stuyvesant in 1964, then attended Columbia University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating in 1967.

Morris and the Clintons[link]

Morris first worked with Bill and Hillary Clinton during Bill Clinton's successful 1978 bid for Governor of Arkansas. Morris is credited by many with engineering Clinton's re-election to the Arkansas governorship after a humiliating defeat at the end of Clinton's first term. As a result, Clinton turned to Morris after the mid-term elections of 1994, when Republicans gained control of the U.S. House and Senate and Clinton's own chance for a second presidential term seemed remote. From the early months of 1995 to August 1996, Morris was a principal architect of the Clinton-Gore re-election strategy.

Morris did not have a role in Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign, which instead was headed by David Wilhelm, James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, and Paul Begala. After the 1994 mid-term election, in which Republicans took control of both houses of the United States Congress and gained considerable power in the states, Clinton once again sought Morris's help to prepare for the 1996 Presidential election. It was Morris who proposed a strategy that is now referred to as triangulation, in which Clinton would appeal to a diverse group of voters by distancing himself from both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Scandal[link]

On August 29, 1996, Morris resigned from the Clinton campaign after tabloid reports stated that he had been involved with a female prostitute, Sherry Rowlands, as reported by the Washington Post. A New York tabloid newspaper, the Star, had obtained and published a set of photographs allegedly of Morris and the woman on a Washington, D.C., hotel balcony. News of the impending publication broke during the third day of the 1996 Democratic Convention. The Electronic Telegraph reported unverified claims that in order to impress the woman, S. Rowlands, Morris invited her to listen in on his conversations with President Clinton.^[9][10][11] It was also alleged he had an illegitimate child from an affair with a Texas woman.^[12]

Morris resigned on the same day that Bill Clinton spoke and accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. In his resignation statement, he said that "while I served I sought to avoid the limelight because I did not want to become the message. Now, I resign so I will not become the issue."^[13] In his response, President Clinton praised Morris as a "friend", and thanked him for his years of service. Privately, several of Clinton's aides were furious that in his resignation statement Morris credited himself with helping the President "come back from being buried in a landslide" and that Morris ended by comparing himself to Robert Kennedy.^[14]

Morris was featured on two consecutive covers of Time magazine. The September 2, 1996 issue, which was released before the prostitute story broke, featured Morris as "The Man Who Has Clinton's Ear".^[1] The following week, the cover featured Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann, and the headline read "The Morris Mess: After the Fall".^[14]

Later work[link]

In his 1997 book, Behind the Oval Office, Morris wrote that, following an argument in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, he strode toward the exit and was tackled by Clinton. In 2003, Morris further stated that Clinton cocked his arm back to throw a punch, but Hillary Clinton pulled her husband off Morris. In both versions of the story, she consoled Morris and apologized to him, stating that Bill behaved such only with those he cared for most. According to Morris, she did this to keep him quiet about the incident. He says the incident was the reason for denying Bill Clinton's request to work on the 1992 campaign.

Morris has become a vocal and regular critic of the Clintons since his departure, in particular Hillary Rodham Clinton and her bid for the presidency. Morris has written extensively about the Clintons (see below) and also contributed to Hillary: The Movie, a documentary about Rodham Clinton when she was still a 2008 Presidential candidate.^[15] Later, after former President Bill Clinton's comments about the similarities between the Obama win and the win of presidential candidate Jesse Jackson in 1988, Morris put out an article on his blog that asserted that this was Clinton's way of injecting race into the political campaign.^[16]

Other work[link]

Political consulting[link]

As of August 2009, Morris lends his name and assistance to the League of American Voters, an advocacy group for seniors to defeat the Obama health care reform. He has been described as "America's most ruthless political consultant" in the BBC documentary Century of the Self Episode 4,^[17] which chronicled how he brought lifestyle marketing to politics for the first time.

Morris has also consulted for candidates in other countries of the western hemisphere, including the campaigns of Fernando de la Rua for President of Argentina (1999), Jorge Batlle for President of Uruguay (1999), Vicente Fox for President of Mexico (2000), and Raphael Trotman for President of Guyana (2006).^[18]

Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann, are behind www.vote.com, a site intended to register non-scientific political public opinion on various issues.

Morris worked as a strategist for Christy Mihos, who sought the Republican nomination to run for Governor of Massachusetts in 2010 against incumbent Deval Patrick. Morris "oversaw strategy, polling, and advertising for Mihos".^[6] At the Republican state convention, Mihos lost to Charles D. Baker, Jr. by 89 percent to 11 percent; by failing to reach 15 percent, Mihos did not qualify for a primary against Baker.^[19]

Guest commentator and political prognosticator[link]

Since leaving Clinton's employ in 1996, Morris has said he has become profoundly "disillusioned" with the actions of the Clintons in the late 1990s. He has now formed a career as a political commentator and critic of the Clintons (particularly towards Hillary), appearing on Fox News programs such as Hannity & Colmes, Hannity, and the O'Reilly Factor, and on various local and nationally syndicated radio talk shows. Morris is also a regular columnist and Pundits Blogger for The Hill, a nonpartisan daily newspaper based in Washington, D.C., and for NewsMax.com, a conservative online news website.^[20][21][22]

Morris regularly makes predictions about candidates' chances of winning elections during these appearances. In a 2005 book on the 2008 presidential campaign, Morris stated that it was most likely that Hillary Clinton would face Condoleezza Rice for the presidency. Morris's critics reacted by mocking his mistaken predictions of past races.

Regarding the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, he initially stated that Howard Dean's candidacy could be written off right away. While ultimately vindicated, he had earlier discussed the likelihood of Dean defeating John Kerry after early strong showings by the former Vermont governor. Kerry defeated Dean and all his other rivals and won the nomination. Additionally, in a column in "The Hill" on June 22, 2005, Morris predicted that Hillary Clinton would face her "worst nightmare" in her 2006 Senate race against moderate Republican candidate Jeanine Pirro, whose campaign subsequently collapsed within a matter of two months after repeated crushing defeats in the opinion polls due to her husband's alleged mafia ties. He even went so far as to suggest that Clinton would "give up"^{[citation needed]} and drop out to focus on her 2008 campaign.^[23][24]

Morris further wrote that Hurricane Katrina "has the capacity to shape the second Bush term in the same way September 11 shaped his first term—not only in rebuilding New Orleans but in taking preventative steps around the nation to bolster our defenses against natural and man-made disasters and terror strikes. Responding to disasters is a source of presidential strength and popularity, and Bush is about to show how it is done."^[25] Appearing on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes on January 29, 2008, Morris said that those voting for John Edwards were "at the moment... those that can't decide which they don't like more—a black or a woman getting elected".^{[citation needed]} Host Alan Colmes asked if he was "saying that Edwards voters are bigots?"^{[citation needed]}

Morris elaborated that exit polls showed some Edwards voters were unsure if a woman or a Black American, in reference to then Democratic Primary front runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, could get elected to the Presidency for the first time in 2008.^[26]

After Obama won the 2008 election, Morris was critical of him. In early 2009, Morris said: "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.'s going to take over'? Well, they're beginning to have a case."^[27][28] In April 2009, Morris keynoted an animated debate at the Yale Political Union on the topic "Resolved: Save Capitalism from President Obama".^[29]

In March 2010, About.com, owned by The New York Times Company, named Morris one of the top 20 conservatives to follow on Twitter.^[30]

In a March 2011 column for The Hill, Morris predicted that Obama would not win a second term as President.^[31] For many years a "disillusioned Democrat," Dick Morris has stated he is now a Republican.

In August 2011, Morris began a petition on his website opposing federal funding for the Park51 Muslim community center, claiming that the center is "designed to celebrate the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans", and that the center would "train the same kinds of terrorists who caused the... attacks".

Foreign political consultant[link]

Morris worked with the United Kingdom Independence Party in their campaign before the 2004 European Parliament election. The party, which advocates withdrawal from the European Union, won 12 of the United Kingdom's 78 seats.

In 2004 and 2005, he and his wife had acted as campaign consultants to the successful Yushchenko Presidential campaign in Ukraine. Morris reports that he insisted on the use of exit polls as a means of potentially exposing ballot tampering. He argues this played a significant role in forcing the government of then President Leonid Kuchma to acquiesce to a new poll when the official results of the first varied materially from the exit surveys. Interestingly, faced with a similar (though smaller) divergence between exit polling and election returns, he took the opposite stance in a 2004 article in The Hill when he suspected "foul play" on the part of the exit pollsters in the US presidential race.^[32] Mexico 2004; Morris outlined the strategy of the negative campaign that would be used against the PRD and AMLO: "The PRD would be a disaster for Mexico, the country would go in the same direction as Chávez and Castro."^{[citation needed]} That is to say, López Obrador would be "a danger to Mexico",^{[citation needed]} as Rob Allyn said in an article published on April 3, 2006, published in the New York Post.

In a November 13, 2007 press conference in Nairobi, Kenya, Morris announced that he would be offering his consultancy services pro bono for the campaign to elect Raila Odinga as President of Kenya in the 2007 Presidential election running on the Orange Democratic Movement ticket.

With four weeks to the national elections, an editorial in one of the leading dailies called into question the legalities of Morris's consulting work from the perspective of his presence in and lack of legal ability to work in Kenya "pro bono" or "through the back door".^[33]

The outcome of the December 27, 2007 elections in Kenya is still disputed due to allegations of electoral fraud and rigging by the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, the Party of National Unity and erroneous reporting by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). Massive protests and tribal tensions have since erupted between the president's Kikuyu tribe and the majority of other tribes not favorably aligned to the outcome. Major mediations have commenced between concerned parties, including possible formation of a coalition and/or interim government until reelections are held.

Morris's DVD[link]

Morris has appeared in, and wrote the screenplay for, the documentary film FahrenHYPE 9/11. The film was a response to Michael Moore's 2004 film, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Tax issues[link]

Morris said that he has reached an agreement with Connecticut, and his name will be removed from the next delinquency list. Morris says that he is committed to paying his taxes: "Following a difficult period in my life, I fell into arrears. But since then, I have paid almost $3 million in state and federal taxes."^[34]

Books[link]

Morris has written several books. He authored Condi vs. Hillary (subtitled The next great presidential race) (ISBN 0-06-083913-9) in which he argues that only Condoleezza Rice could block Hillary Clinton's anticipated 2008 bid for the White House. He co-authored this book with his wife, Eileen McGann.

Previously he wrote a pair of books criticizing the Clintons, again co-authored by his wife, Eileen McGann. Rewriting History (ISBN 0-06-073668-2) was published in May 2004 as a rebuttal to Hillary Clinton's book, Living History (ISBN 0-7432-2224-5). In it, he argues that Hillary Clinton has presented a false "nice" persona in the book. Morris instead remembers her as manipulative, cold, and single-minded in her pursuit of power. Similarly, Morris and McGann wrote Because He Could (ISBN 0-06-078415-6) in response to Bill Clinton's memoir My Life (ISBN 0-375-41457-6).

Morris has also written Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (ISBN 1-58063-053-7), a retrospective of his work with the Clintons that was published soon after his resignation from the campaign in 1996. Other books include Power Plays: Win or Lose—How History's Great Political Leaders Play the Game (ISBN 0-06-000444-4), The New Prince (ISBN 1580631479 ),Vote.com: How Big-Money Lobbyists and the Media Are Losing Their Influence, and the Internet Is Giving Power Back to the People (ISBN 1-58063-163-0)and "Outrage" (ISBN 978-0-06-119540-2).

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's latest collaboration is Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want To Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us...And What To Do About It (ISBN 9780061718663), published in June 2008. Its jacket copy states, "In this hard-hitting call to arms, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal the hundreds of ways American tax-payers are routinely fleeced--by our own government; by foreign countries like Dubai that are gobbling up American interests and spending millions to influence government decisions and American public opinion; by Washington lobbying firms that are pushing the agendas of corrupt foreign dictators on Capitol Hill; and by hedge-fund billionaires collecting huge tax breaks courtesy of the IRS."

His book Catastrophe was released in June 2009.

His latest book is Revolt! How to Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs, which was released in March 2011.

References[link]

• Conason, Joe (2008-04-09). "Daily show". comedycentral.com. http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2008/09/jon-stewart-ann.html. Retrieved 2008-03-09. 
• Conason, Joe (2003-06-12). "Setting Dick Morris straight". Salon.com. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/06/12/morris/index.html. Retrieved 2004-10-14. 
• "Dick Morris Biography". NewsMax.com. http://www.newsmax.com/pundits/bios/Morris-bio.shtml. Retrieved 2004-10-14. 
• "Clinton ex-adviser gives boost to Britain's anti-EU party". EUBusiness. 2004-06-15. Archived from the original on June 28, 2004. http://web.archive.org/web/20040628084521/http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040615012643.oukbjuqc. Retrieved 2004-10-14. 
• Morris, Dick (2003-06-12). "Setting the Record Straight: An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton". National Review Online. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-morris061203.asp. Retrieved 2004-10-14. 
• "NewsHour Transcript: The Morris Resignation". Online NewsHour. 1996-08-29. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/election/august96/panel_morris_8-29.html. Retrieved 2004-10-14. 

External links[link]

• DickMorris.com, Dick Morris Blog and Opinion Site
• Vote.com, Dick Morris online polling site (heavily biased, it only offers options for Republican candidates, with none for Democratic ones)[1]
• Podcasts of Morris' recent articles
• Dick Morris' Pundits Blogs for The Hill

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)

Alex Rizzo (January 12, 1968 – May 16, 2002) was a professional wrestler, best known for his work in Extreme Championship Wrestling as Big Dick Dudley, the eldest of the Dudley Family.

Professional wrestling career[link]

Rizzo began training with Johnny Rodz alongside the likes of Taz, Phil Theis and the Santiago Twins and became one of the first students to graduate from the now infamous school in Brooklyn. He claimed his first professional matches came in late 1986 in Puerto Rico alongside fellow Rodz students and future ECW alumni Rocco Rock and Abdullah the Butcher. He returned to the U.S. after his tour of Puerto Rico and began Wrestling on the East-Coast independent scene under the name of Alexander the Great. While being a monster wrestler with a great physique, Rizzo rarely became the star attraction. Still, he continued honing his skills, until coming to a Philadelphia-based organization, Eastern Championship Wrestling (ECW), in 1994. He entered just as the federation began to take off, breaking away from its National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) ties and becoming Extreme. This allowed Rizzo a chance to shine, and he took it, transforming into Big Dick Dudley, the man from Dudleyville a creation he said was thought up between himself, Taz and Tommy Dreamer.

With his partner, Dudley Dudley, the "brothers" became a strong group in ECW, with their strong-arm antics. Big Dick became known for his powerhouse finisher, the Total Penetration, a double arm chokeslam into a tigerbomb, as well as his dangerous habit of attacking fans at ringside. Soon, the Dudley Family grew, including Buh Buh Ray, D-Von, Snot, Spike, Psycho Sam & Dances With Dudley, creating a very dangerous family. Big Dick, being the eldest as well as the largest, formed the heart of the group, planning out attacks and leading the group. He also had to deal with brotherly problems, including feuds with D-Von and Spike.

Although Big Dick was the leader of the family, he rarely was given title shots, instead content to sit back and direct his brothers in their quests for gold. His aid to Buh Buh Ray and D-Von helped create the great tag team that was the Dudley Boyz, and his giant stature made Spike even more popular in their feud. As some of the Dudley family left, the remaining members, Buh Buh Ray and D-Von, became Tag Team Champions. They soon became top heels in the company. He also carried on an almost year-long feud with Spike, the biggest brother against the smallest, with the fans firmly on the side of the underdog. In 1999, after many disagreements with Paul Heyman over what Rizzo felt was a lack of use of his character he finally left the company. Rizzo went on record after his departure saying that he felt he never got the opportunities he deserved, going as far as saying that he felt that given the chance he could have become the top draw in the company.

After Big Dick left ECW he would spend time in many different organizations over the next couple of years including making his Puerto Rico return for Carlos Colon's WWC becoming a mainstay over the next few years wrestling the likes of a young Carly Colon, Abdullah the Butcher and the infamous Invader I. He had reasonable success in WWA becoming one of the bigger heels in the company but never capturing any titles possibly due to the fact that his tours tended to be reasonably frequent but brief. It was during his time in Puerto Rico that he worked in front of the biggest crowds of his career stating that some of his heel antics caused near riots during events.

In 1999 helped found the semi-popular XPW, known, like ECW, for its hardcore antics. At one point, Big Dick took home the XPW World Heavyweight Championship. He would go on to earn belts in the NWA Jersey faction and the USPW federation. But things soon began to go downhill for the senior member of the Dudleyz. In only two years, Big Dick was involved in four auto accidents, including a serious motorcycle crash that left him with a broken neck. This kept Big Dick on the sidelines of wrestling for over a year.

Personal life[link]

Outside of the ring, Rizzo was good friends with Buh Buh Ray Dudley and Nicole Bass. He also has one daughter, Alexandria, born in 1990 with Donna Adamo and one son, A.J. (Alex Jr.) born in 1997 with a different spouse.

Rizzo also had a reputation of being a legitimate "badass", as tough outside the ring as inside the ring. For example, in a shoot interview with the Dudley Boyz produced by RF Video, Bubba Ray Dudley claims to have seen him beat up five people on his own in a nightclub on Long Island. He was also known to have a "dead" hand, due to nerve damage from putting it through a plate glass window. As a result, he was unable to feel any pain in the hand.

On May 16, 2002, Rizzo was found dead in his apartment due to kidney failure.

In wrestling[link]

• Finishing moves
  • Total Penetration (Chokebomb pin)
  • Dick Driver (Overhead gutwrench backbreaker)

Championships and accomplishments[link]

• Northeastern Wrestling
  • NEW Heavyweight Championship (1 time)^[1]

• Northern States Wrestling Alliance
  • NSWA Heavyweight Championship (1 time)^[1]

• NWA Jersey
  • NWA Jersey Hardcore Championship (1 time)^[2]
  • NWA Jersey Heavyweight Championship (1 time, first)^[3]

• Pro Wrestling Illustrated
  • PWI ranked him #200 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the PWI 500 in 1998^[4]

• USA Xtreme Wrestling
  • UXW Heavyweight Championship (2 times)^[5]
  • UXW Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Sam Dudley ^[5]

• Xtreme Pro Wrestling
  • XPW World Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Professional wrestling portal

• Big Dick Dudley Memorial Show

References[link]

External links[link]

• "Alex Rizzo". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6717170. Retrieved August 9, 2010. 

Alan Colmes
Colmes in July 2009
Born	(1950-09-24) September 24, 1950 (age 61) New York City
Nationality	American
Education	Hofstra University
Occupation	Television personality/host, Talk radio host, political commentator, Author & blogger
Employer	Fox News Channel
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Dr. Jocelyn Crowley
Website
Alan Colmes' Liberaland

Alan Samuel Colmes (born September 24, 1950) is an American radio/television host, liberal political commentator for the Fox News Channel, and blogger. He is the host of The Alan Colmes Show, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show distributed by Fox News Radio that also airs throughout the United States on Fox News Talk on Sirius and XM. From 1996 to 2009, Colmes served as the co-host of Hannity & Colmes, a nightly political debate show on Fox News Channel.

In addition to broadcasting, Colmes runs the Liberaland blog and contributes to AOL News. He wrote Red, White & Liberal: How Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong (2003).

Early life and education[link]

Alan Colmes was born in New York City. He attended local public schools and went to Hofstra University, where he graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts degree from its School of Communications.^[1] While at Hofstra, he worked at its radio station WRHU.^[2]

Career[link]

Colmes began his career in stand-up comedy.^[3] He developed his radio career in the Northeast, eventually working at stations such as WABC, WNBC, WHN, WMCA and WEVD in New York, WNHC in New Haven, and WEZE and WZLX in Boston.

His radio career took off when WABC hired him for the morning drive time slot. He was billed as "W. Alan B. Colmes", as in the station's call sign. He moved to WNBC in 1987, but his tenure there would be short when NBC announced in 1988 it would close its radio division. When WNBC went off the air for the last time on October 7, 1988, Colmes' was the last voice heard. He has been syndicated nationally, starting with his involvement with Daynet, a venture created by Colmes and other regional radio hosts. Daynet was sold to Major Networks, Inc. in 1994. Colmes kept his own show, which is distributed by Fox News Radio.^[4] He was hired by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes in 1996. He was the co-host of Hannity and Colmes, beginning with the Fox News Channel launch on October 6, 1996, and ending on January 9, 2009. He also appeared live on Shovio.com's new broadcasting technology, TalkBackTV.

Colmes's book, Red, White & Liberal: How Left is Right and Right is Wrong (ISBN 0-06-056297-8), was published in October 2003. He left Hannity and Colmes at the end of 2008.^[5] Fox replaced it with Hannity, premiering in January 2009. Colmes has continued as a commentator on Fox News, most often on The O'Reilly Factor where he frequently appears with his conservative sister-in-law, Monica Crowley. He is an infrequent guest-panelist on Fox News' late-night satire program Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld.

Post-Hannity and Colmes, Colmes has also been a frequent panelist on the news analysis program Fox News Watch alongside Cal Thomas, Judith Miller, and other pundits. On a June 26, 2011 show, Thomas remarked that he sensed a "disturbance in the liberal force" and then referred to Colmes as Jabba the Hutt (afterward Colmes burst out laughing).^[6]

Criticism and satire[link]

While Colmes describes himself as a liberal and his Fox News biography touts him as "a hard-hitting liberal," he has sometimes been referred to disparagingly as a "token liberal" or a "Fox News liberal" by liberal sources.^[7] Colmes told USA Today that he considers himself "quite moderate."^[8]

During his run on Hannity and Colmes, Colmes was criticized for being less charismatic and telegenic than Sean Hannity, and just a "seat-filler" for the liberal side.^[9] Some newspapers reported him as being Hannity's "sidekick".^[10] Democratic Senator Al Franken criticized Colmes in his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, saying he refused to ask tough questions during debates and neglected to challenge erroneous claims made by Hannity or his guests.^[10] Franken claimed that Colmes did not speak as much as Hannity during the show. Some liberal critics questioned whether or not both hosts receive equal time to interview guests.^[10] Some of Colmes's liberal critics, notably commentators at Media Matters for America, praised him toward the end of the show's run. He began to cite their reports in interviews with some conservative guests on the program.^[11][12]

Bob Garfield, interviewing Colmes for On the Media in 2003, asked him if he was "the human straw man" and a "foil" rather than an equal of Hannity. Colmes replied that if the conservative members of the audience saw him that way, that was "their problem," and said "It's more fun for me to be in a situation like this than to preach to the choir."^[13]

The Colbert Report[link]

On January 5, 2009, the beginning of his last week on Hannity and Colmes, Colmes was a guest on The Colbert Report in a spoof called "Colbert & Colmes", which parodied criticisms of H&C. In addition to being given a list of pre-approved responses to Stephen Colbert's opinions and forced to sit on a stool (making him appear shorter than his co-host), Colmes's face was covered by the on-air graphics while Colbert discussed issues of the day.^[14] Colbert "fired" Colmes by the end of the show for pointing out fallacies in his logic.

Following Colmes' announcement that he was leaving H&C, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart also paid tribute to him with a guest appearance by legendary rock duo Hall & Oates, who in a parody version of their hit "She's Gone", dubbed him "Tango to his (Hannity's) Cash" and "Laurel to his Hardy."^[15]

Remarks on Dead Baby[link]

In January 2012 on Fox News, Colmes was discussing Rick Santorum's 2012 presidential campaign when he brought up the death of Santorum's child Gabriel, who died two hours after birth in 1996. Colmes said people would bail on supporting Santorum once they "get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home and played with it so that his other children would know that the child was real." National Review editor Rich Lowry, who was on the show with Colmes, immediately went after Colmes for the remark, calling it a "cheap shot".^[16] In reality, Santorum and his wife stayed with Gabriel overnight and brought him home to their children the next day, where their daughter Elizabeth said as she held him, "This is my baby brother, Gabriel; he is an angel."^[17] Colmes was heavily criticized for the comment, and apologized to Santorum and his wife Karen the next day, which he said they "graciously accepted".^[18]

Personal life[link]

Colmes is married to Dr. Jocelyn Elise Crowley, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University, whose sister is Monica Crowley, the conservative radio commentator, pundit and television personality.^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

• "Alan Colmes' Liberaland" – Official site and blog
• Official website of The Alan Colmes Show
• Alan Colmes at the Internet Movie Database

Bill Clinton
42nd President of the United States
In office January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001
Vice President	Al Gore
Preceded by	George H. W. Bush
Succeeded by	George W. Bush
40th and 42nd Governor of Arkansas
In office January 11, 1983 – December 12, 1992
Lieutenant	Winston Bryant Jim Tucker
Preceded by	Frank White
Succeeded by	Jim Tucker
In office January 9, 1979 – January 19, 1981
Lieutenant	Joe Purcell
Preceded by	Joe Purcell as Acting Governor
Succeeded by	Frank White
50th Attorney General of Arkansas
In office January 3, 1977 – January 9, 1979
Governor	David Pryor Joe Purcell (Acting)
Preceded by	Jim Tucker
Succeeded by	Steve Clark
Personal details
Born	William Jefferson Blythe III (1946-08-19) August 19, 1946 (age 65) Hope, Arkansas, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Hillary Rodham (m. 1975-present)
Children	Chelsea (b. 1980)
Alma mater	Georgetown University University College, Oxford Yale Law School
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Baptist
Signature
Website	Clinton Presidential Library

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.

Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.

Clinton was elected president in 1992, defeating incumbent president George H.W. Bush. As president, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. He signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. He implemented Don't ask, don't tell, a controversial intermediate step to full gay military integration. After a failed health care reform attempt, Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, for the first time in forty years. Two years later, the re-elected Clinton became the first member of the Democratic Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term as president. He successfully passed welfare reform and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children. Later, he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in a scandal involving a White House intern, but was acquitted by the U.S. Senate and served his complete term of office. The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clinton's presidency.

Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U.S. president since World War II. Since then, he has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. Based on his philanthropic worldview, Clinton created the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes such as prevention of AIDS and global warming. In 2004, he released his autobiography My Life, and was involved in his wife's and then Barack Obama's campaigns for president in 2008. In 2009, he was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, and after the 2010 earthquake he teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in public opinion polls of U.S. presidents.

Early life and career[link]

William Jefferson Blythe III, in 1950 at age four

Bill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, III, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas.^[1][2] His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Bill was born.^[3] His mother Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923–1994) traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon after he was born. She left Bill in Hope with grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store.^[2] At a time when the Southern United States was segregated racially, Bill's grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all races.^[2] In 1950, Bill's mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton, Sr., who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas with his brother.^[2] The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950.

Bill Clinton boyhood home in Hope, Arkansas

Although he assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Billy (as he was known then) turned fifteen^[4] that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather.^[2] Clinton says he remembers his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton, Jr., to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.^[2][5]

In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School – where he was an active student leader, avid reader, and musician.^[2] He was in the chorus and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section. He briefly considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his autobiography My Life:

"Sometime in my sixteenth year, I decided I wanted to be in public life as an elected official. I loved music and thought I could be very good, but I knew I would never be John Coltrane or Stan Getz. I was interested in medicine and thought I could be a fine doctor, but I knew I would never be Michael DeBakey. But I knew I could be great in public service."^[2]

Clinton has named two influential moments in his life that contributed to his decision to become a public figure, both occurring in 1963. One was his visit as a Boys Nation senator to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy.^[2][5] The other was listening to Martin Luther King's 1963 I Have a Dream speech, which impressed him enough that he later memorized it.^[6]

College and law school years[link]

Clinton ran for President of the Student Council while attending the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.) degree in 1968. He spent the summer of 1967, the summer before his senior year, interning for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright.^[2] While in college, he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Clinton was also a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry, but he never became a Freemason.^[7] He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi honorary band fraternity.^[8]

Upon graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, though because he had switched programs and had left early for Yale University, he did not receive a degree there.^[5][9] He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford^[10] and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests and organized an October 1969 Moratorium event.^[2]

Clinton's political opponents charge that to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War during his college years, he used the political influence of a U.S. Senator, who employed him as an aide.^[11] Col. Eugene Holmes, an Army officer who was involved in Clinton's case, issued a notarized statement during the 1992 presidential campaign: "I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program... I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification."^[12][13] Although legal, Clinton's actions were criticized by conservatives and some Vietnam veterans during his presidential campaign in 1992.^[14][15][16]

After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973.^[5] In a Yale library in 1971 he met fellow law student Hillary Rodham, who was a year ahead of him.^[17] They began dating and soon were inseparable. After only about a month, Clinton proposed to Rodham and postponed his plans to be a coordinator for the McGovern campaign for the 1972 United States presidential election in order to move in with her in California.^[18] They later married on October 11, 1975, and their only child, Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980.^[17]

Clinton did eventually move to Texas with Rodham to take a job leading McGovern's effort there in 1972. He spent considerable time in Dallas, at the campaign's local headquarters on Lemmon Avenue, where he had an office. There, Clinton worked with future two-term mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk, future governor of Texas, Ann Richards, and then unknown television director (and future filmmaker), Steven Spielberg.

Political career 1978–1992[link]

Governor of Arkansas[link]

After graduating from Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a law professor at the University of Arkansas. A year later, he ran for the House of Representatives in 1974. The incumbent, Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt, defeated Clinton in the general election by a 52% to 48% margin. With only minor opposition in the primary and no opposition at all in the general election,^[19] Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976.^[5]

Clinton, as the newly elected Governor of Arkansas, meeting with President Jimmy Carter in 1978

Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978, having defeated the Republican candidate Lynn Lowe, a farmer from Texarkana. He became the youngest governor in the country at 32. Due to his youthful appearance, Clinton was often called the "Boy Governor", a referent that continues to be used to refer to him during his gubernatorial era on occasion.^[20][21][22] He worked on educational reform and Arkansas's roads, with wife Hillary leading a successful committee on urban health care reform. However, his term included an unpopular motor vehicle tax and citizens' anger over the escape of Cuban refugees (from the Mariel boatlift) detained in Fort Chaffee in 1980. Monroe Schwarzlose of Kingsland in Cleveland County, polled 31% of the vote against Clinton in the Democratic gubernatorial primary of 1980. Some suggested Schwarzlose's unexpected voter turnout foreshadowed Clinton's defeat in the general election that year by Republican challenger Frank D. White. As Clinton once joked, he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history.^[5]

Clinton joined friend Bruce Lindsey's Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey and Jennings.^[23] In 1982, he was again elected governor and kept this job for ten years.^[19] He helped Arkansas transform its economy and significantly improve the state's educational system. He became a leading figure among the New Democrats.^[24][25] The New Democrats, organized as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), were a branch of the Democratic Party that called for welfare reform and smaller government, a policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans. He gave the Democratic response to President Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address and served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 1986 to 1987, bringing him to an audience beyond Arkansas.^[5] Clinton made economic growth, job creation and educational improvement high priorities. For senior citizens, he removed the sales tax from medications and increased the home property-tax exemption.^[24]

In the early 1980s, Clinton made reform of the Arkansas education system a top priority. The Arkansas Education Standards Committee, chaired by Clinton's wife, attorney and Legal Services Corporation chair Hillary Rodham Clinton, succeeded in reforming the education system, transforming it from the worst in the nation into one of the best. Many have considered this the greatest achievement of the Clinton governorship. Clinton and the committee were responsible for state educational improvement programs, notably more spending for schools, rising opportunities for gifted children, an increase in vocational education, raising of teachers' salaries, inclusion of a wider variety of courses, and compulsory teacher testing for aspiring educators.^[5][24] He defeated four Republican candidates for governor: Lowe (1978), White (1982 and 1986), and businessmen Woody Freeman of Jonesboro, (1984) and Sheffield Nelson of Little Rock (1990).^[19]

The Clintons' personal and business affairs during the 1980s included transactions that became the basis of the Whitewater investigation that dogged his later presidential administration.^[26] After extensive investigation over several years, no indictments were made against the Clintons related to the years in Arkansas.^[5][27]

According to some sources, Clinton was in his early years a death penalty opponent who switched positions.^[28][29] During Clinton's term, Arkansas performed its first executions since 1964 (the death penalty had been re-enacted on March 23, 1973).^[30] As Governor, he oversaw four executions: one by electric chair and three by lethal injection. Later, as president, Clinton was the first President to pardon a death-row inmate since the federal death penalty was reintroduced in 1988.^[31]

Democratic presidential primaries of 1988[link]

Governor and Mrs. Clinton attend the Dinner Honoring the Nation's Governors in the White House with President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan, 1987.

In 1987, there was media speculation Clinton would enter the race after then-New York Governor Mario Cuomo declined to run and Democratic front-runner Gary Hart withdrew owing to revelations of marital infidelity. Clinton decided to remain as Arkansas governor (following consideration for the potential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton for governor, initially favored – but ultimately vetoed – by the First Lady).^[32] For the nomination, Clinton endorsed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. He gave the nationally televised opening night address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, which at 33 minutes was criticized for being too long.^[33] Presenting himself as a moderate and a member of the New Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, he headed the moderate Democratic Leadership Council in 1990 and 1991.^[24][34]