Former Gov. Bill Richardson, who supported Obama over Hillary in 2007 after his own bid ended, announced his support for Hillary today.

"I am pleased to announce I wholeheartedly support Secretary Clinton's candidacy for the Presidency. Her leadership on issues like foreign policy, immigration, climate change and economic populism are important to the future of the country."

He also said he might have set up the same email system as Hillary: [More...]

Here's the important news about Hillary Clinton this week:

• She will be unveiling a new Climate Change plan
• She's building a "formidable" team in Iowa
• She is backing a $15.00 hour minimum wage for fast food workers for NY workers

Here's what desperate Republicans care about: emails and Benghazi.

Here's what the media cares about: Anything that portrays Hillary in a negative light. And the man with straw hair. The attention his every comment brings is absurd.

Radley Balko effectively takes a few Washington Post columnists to task for their articles criticizing Hillary Clinton's recent statements on our unjust mass incarceration policies. His article, also in the Washington Post, is titled "This isn’t 1968. Baltimore isn’t Watts. And Hillary Clinton isn’t Michael Dukakis." He writes:

Both [columnists]compared the civil unrest of 2015 to the civil unrest in 1968. Both cited Nixon’s “tough on crime” campaign, which even members of that campaign team have since admitted was an overt, often racist appeal to white fear of black people. Both scorned Clinton for being “soft on crime,” and daring to criticize mass incarceration in a speech given the same week as the riots. Both mentioned New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and his shift in tone from gently criticizing the New York City police department for excessive force after the death of Eric Garner to robustly defending the officers after they were accused of roughing people up at a recent protest.

[More...]

Hillary Clinton will present her plan for immigration reform today in Las Vegas. She will say a path to citizenship is essential.

Of all the people – including Latino GOP senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida – who have declared that they are running for president, only Hillary Clinton offers a Spanish-language campaign website.

[More...]

Hillary Clinton today announced a plan to revamp criminal justice policy and end the focus on mass incarceration ad draconian sentences, policies favored during the Bill Clinton administration.

Clinton unveiled a sweeping set of proposed criminal justice reforms that would dismantle much of what her husband did. .. Whereas Bill looked to lock up offenders and throw away the key, Hillary is seeking to “end mass incarceration.” His focus was on resources for law enforcement; hers is on transparency meant to protect suspects.

Bill promoted zero tolerance, while Hillary is inclined to lend a second chance. “Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime, but it does a lot to tear apart families,” she said of children guilty of nonviolent offenses.

[More...]

The former First Lady, New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce her bid for the presidency this Sunday via a video according to published reports.

The published reports indicate Clinton will immediately begin campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, but with a bent towards smaller events.

Other potential candidates on the Democratic side include Jim Webb, Martin O'Malley and just recently, Linc Chafee.

The ride officially begins Sunday it seems.

Looks like Hillary Clinton will be running for President. According to the New York Times, she has leased two floors of office space for her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has leased two floors of office space at 1 Pierrepont Plaza in Brooklyn for her presidential campaign headquarters, according to a person familiar with the deal.

She is expected to announce her decision to run within days. Here's a detailed list of her f her 2008 campaign headquarters and staff.

The House has subpoenaed Hillary Clinton's emails.

Use of a private email system wasn't against the law. There was no prohibition on using a private email account for official business, as long as the emails are preserved. There's no indication she reviewed classified information via email. There's no indication (unlike with Dick Cheney, Gov. Scott Walker, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush) any emails are missing, hidden or intentionally destroyed. During the Bush Administration, 22 million emails went missing.[More...]

Talk is already underway about the impact of the 2014 elections on 2016. Andrew Romano says Hillary Clinton is the real winner of yesterday's election.

Take a closer look at demography, geography and the road ahead for the parties, and it’s clear that the long-term winner of the 2014 midterms wasn’t the GOP at all. The long-term winner, in fact, wasn’t even on the ballot this year. Her name is Hillary Clinton.

Romano proceeds to crunch the numbers to support his theory.

The Washington Post reports Hillary and Bill Clinton have been cozying up with former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro, giving rise to speculation she might tab him as her running mate.

Castro has been a nationally rising star since the 2012 Democratic Convention. (I wrote at the time, "Michelle Obama was good, but hands down, the star of the night was Julian Castro.) In May, Obama nominated him as Secretary of HUD. He will be sworn in on Monday. His twin brother Joaquin is a Texas congressman.

Here is the new interview with Hillary Clinton in the Atlantic on Syria, ISIS, Israel and Gaza, Libya and Obama's foreign policy.

Also, the New York Times has a new profile on ISIS leader al Baghdadi today, U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel. It claims Hillary has accused Obama of aiding the rise of ISIS by both withdrawing troops from Iraq and not intervening in Syria: [More...]

Politico today has an article, Hillary Clinton's Shadow Campaign, about a group of her supporters gearing up for 2016.

More than two dozen people in her orbit interviewed for this article described a virtual campaign in waiting — a term that itself makes some of Clinton’s supporters bristle — consisting of longtime Clinton loyalists as well as people who worked doggedly to elect her onetime rival Obama.

It says there's a group of insiders and ones not so close, and they don't always see eye to eye.

The article has some speculation about who might be at the helm of her 2016 campaign, and some details about the roles of Bill and Chelsea (who has hinted 2014 may be the year for a baby.)

In interviews for this article, just about every close Hillary Clinton ally, asked to describe who is at the top of her organizational chart, gives the same answer: Chelsea....But in terms of 2016, people close to the Clintons say it is difficult to divine whether Chelsea wants her mother to run.

The bottom line is that no one knows whether Hillary will run. I'm sure it's tempting, but I tend to think she won't run.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated her now oft stated intention to step down after President Obama's first term:

"I think I have made it clear that I will certainly stay on until the President nominates someone and that transition can occur," Clinton said at a "town hall" forum with State Department employees Thursday morning. "But I think after 20 years—and it will be 20 years—of being on the high wire of American politics and all of the challenges that come with that, it would be probably a good idea to just find out how tired I am."

But what comes next? Previously, Secretary Clinton has said she would not run again for President, the only plausible political office she would seek. This time she said:

I don't want to think about what might come next, because I don't want me or any of us to divert our attention," Clinton continued, adding that she plans to "work as hard as I can to the last minute I have the honor of being Secretary ... to support all of you.

My view is clear - the Democratic Party needs her to run in 2016. After 8 years of a Democratic Administration, it will be tough for the Dems to hold the White House. Hillary is the candidate who can do it (for a variety of reasons, including the distance she has from Obama due to her 2008 run.) I hope she runs and I think she runs. And wins.

Speaking for me only

Not only did Hillary Clinton rule out a presidential and vice-presidential bid today, she also said she wouldn't accept a position as Secretary of Defense. More significantly, she said she's not staying in her current position as Secretary of State in 2012.

Clinton, visiting Cairo, was asked whether she would stay on in a second Obama term. She also was asked if she would like the jobs of president, vice president or defense secretary. She offered single word responses to each: "No."

I wonder if she already has an offer so good she can't refuse it in the private sector.

Post stolen from Melissa McEwan, the Secretary of State speaking at the Female Heads of State And Foreign Ministers Luncheon:

As many of you know, I have advocated for many years that women are the key to progress and prosperity around the world. I believe that. I know that many of you do as well. And the evidence increasingly supports that assertion. We know that investments in women yield very big dividends, and we want women to be given the tools so that they can make the most out of their own lives – run for office to be president or prime minister, work your way up to be appointed to a position of foreign minister, so many opportunities, because we know there is so much talent.

But what I have concluded over the years is that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. And in many places, opportunity is still out of reach for women, no matter how smart they are, how hard they work, how much encouragement they might be given even by their own families, that it is still a very difficult task.

Read the whole thing. What strikes me about Secretary of State Clinton's speech is not that she is speaking about women, but that the statement is true for all manner of people. It is a recurring theme in my writing -- the world is not fair and those of us lucky enough to have had opportunities in our life should understand how much the luck of the draw has put us in a position to achieve whatever successes we have in our lives.

Speaking for me only