Bill Clinton: Rich with irony. (Correction, Please!).

ITEM: At a speaking engagement in Melbourne, Australia, former U.S. President Bill Clinton "vowed to dedicate the rest of his life to help redistribute the world's wealth," reported The Age (Australia) for February 27th.

CORRECTION: Of course, Mr. Clinton's vow entails the money he hopes governments will confiscate from taxpayers in the developed world --particularly the United States -- to give to the undeveloped world. He surely is not planning to redistribute his personal wealth.

The main wealth redistribution being achieved by Mr. Clinton these days involves transfusing cash into his wallet, as he gives speeches about poverty and other matters at $100,000 a pop. Indeed, when the former president was waltzing around Sydney on his recent Australian tour, he picked up a reported $300,000 fee from a Chinese front group pushing for the "peaceful" absorption of Taiwan.

This was akin to the favors Clinton did for Beijing when he was in the White House. Such behavior was well documented in, among other places, Year of the Rat by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II (1998), which summarizes his collaboration with Chinese organized crime and espionage agencies.

Mr. Clinton is now even more blatantly for rent. Lucrative speaking engagements, according to the Harry Walker Agency that represents him, "are just piling up like airplanes over LaGuardia on a foggy day." Forbes estimated that a book deal and exorbitant speaking fees would earn him more than $18 million in 2001. That's a lot of principal for a man without principles.