Correction Please!

ITEM: NBC's Katie Couric praised Hillary Clinton's book Living History as a "very candid" memoir. The June 4th Today show relayed without skepticism Mrs. Clinton's claims of ignorance about Mr. Clinton's philandering. "Hillary's heartache," ran the Couric tease. "Senator Clinton reveals how she learned the painful truth about her husband and Monica Lewinsky."

Hillary's "History".

ITEM: NBC's Norah O'Donnell also gave Mrs. Clinton a pass, speaking of the first lady's alleged reaction in August of 1998: "She now says she was dumbfounded, heartbroken, and outraged that she believed her husband's lies."

CORRECTION: It is simply inconceivable that Hillary Clinton, after eight months of wall-to-wall media coverage, remained oblivious to her husband's adultery until just before his grand-jury testimony.

Moreover, NBC had to know it was just repeating her lies. All the network had to do was to check its previous reporting. On August 14, 1998, according to Media Research Center tapes, Andrea Mitchell told a nationwide audience about Mrs. Clinton: "Politician, strategist, lawyer, protector -- in a marriage that friends say is based on brutal honesty and unconditional love.... Close friends say she knew everything from Day One and still went on NBC in January to deny all."

Longtime Clinton adviser Dick Morris finds this concoction impossible to swallow. "To buy this latest episode of Hillary's Fables," writes Morris, "you'd have to accept that she believed him even after semen was found on Monica's blue dress -- and after the FBI took a sample of his DNA, two weeks before his grand-jury testimony. You'd have to be a fool to buy all that."

Food Czar Tastes Power

ITEM: Business Week for June 16th lauded "McClellan's Friendlier, Speedier FDA." The new head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Mark McClellan, is "unequivocally the best commissioner" in three decades, said a legal enthusiast. "FDA watchers believe McClellan's economic ideas will create more efficient rules and lift unnecessary burdens" for industry.

CORRECTION: This FDA honcho is hardly a market liberator. And the marketplace and free choice are very much under attack these days. For example, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) -- using puffed-up obesity statistics -- is pushing for higher taxes on butter, cheese, whole milk, potato chips, and meat, and then using that revenue for government-sanctioned exercise programs. Fat-fighting legislators in New York want to tax not only "junk food" but also video games and TV commercials. For starters, the CSPI would have the FDA regulate interstate shipments of offending foods to retail outlets.

McClellan seems to be taking a gradualist approach. According to Reuters on June 9th, the FDA "plans to expand food labeling to include such details as trans fats in an effort to counter obesity." (Trans fat was the alleged villain in a recent California lawsuit seeking to outlaw the sale of Oreo cookies to children.)

"Right now companies do a good job of competing on the basis of taste and price and whether a food springs ready to eat out of a box," McClellan said in a San Francisco speech. "But they don't spend much time competing on science-based information about the health consequences of their product. I'd like to see more labeling. We will be taking steps to encourage competition around the health consequences...."

Pummeling the Pound

ITEM: The decision to remain outside the euro threatens thousands of jobs, said a major British union, as reported by BusinessEurope.com on June 10th. The "GMB union believes that the decision could sound a death knell for many in the manufacturing industry. It calculates that 42,000 jobs have been lost in the sector since the beginning of the year, a rate of more than 400 a day. It's a problem that the organization blames squarely on the government's refusal to ditch the pound."

CORRECTION: The labor bosses are being particularly hypocritical in talking about lost jobs and a damaged economy. Indeed, the U.K.'s largest union, Unison, is currently contemplating nationwide coordinated strikes in the public sector -- which would cost Britain dearly. Pushing for even more socialism, GMB head Kevin Curran blasted the Labor government for "turning its back on the Social Democratic traditions that we share with Europe...."

Should Britons abandon their pound, they would have to acquiesce to policies set by foreigners. Consider Germany, where the jobless rate has gone over 11 percent. As former Bundesbank Director Wilhelm Nolling told London's Daily Telegraph: "The present euro zone structure is devastating for Germany. Our economy is bleeding. And I am convinced the U.K. would be crazy to join -- you should stay out for as long as I can foresee."