Topic: WorldNetDaily
Back in the 1990s, WorldNetDaily had nothing good to say about former Clinton administration official Webb Hubbell. Joseph Farah claimed that President Clintion was guilty of "a prima facie case of obstruction of justice in securing hush money for Webster Hubbell," then asserted that Kenneth Starr should have been impeached because he "let Webb Hubbell off the hook." One WND columnist insisted that "The direct link between Beijing espionage, millionaire drug lords and Bill Clinton is Webster Hubbell."
So why is WND suddently Hubbell's best friend? That's simple -- he became convenient to WND's anti-Obama agenda.
WND published a March 9 column by Hubbell criticizing the Obama administration for "tinkering with Medicare" by considering limits on coverage for certain medications. WND wrote an accompanying "news" article calling him a "top Dem" though he hasn't been involved in politics for years. WND also reminds us that Hubbell "served 21 months in prison in the 1990s after pleading guilty to federal charges of overbilling clients at the Rose Law Firm where he was partnered with Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster." (And Farah considers this being left "off the hook"?)
Even more laughably, WND goes on to portray the Obama administration's ultimate rejection of the Medicare proposal as directly attributable to Hubbell's WND column. From a March 11 article:
One day after former Clinton administration official Webb Hubbell sounded off against a proposed Medicare rule change in a WND commentary, the Obama administration dropped plans to restrict access to antidepressant and antipsychotic medications.
In a stunning reversal, the Department of Health and Human Services killed the proposal a day after the official comment period ended and a day before the House of Representatives was set to vote on a bill to block the change.
In a letter to members of Congress, the department said it recognized “the complexities of these issues and stakeholder input” and declared that it “does not plan to finalize the proposal at this time.”Some of that stakeholder input came informally from Hubbell in an unusual critique in WND just a day earlier, as he suggested the plan would hurt Democrats in the 2014 election.
There does seem to be a quid pro quo going on here, which WND doesn't explicitly admit. All three articles note that Hubbell is about to publish a novel and has a website where he writes a daily meditation, so it seems Hubbell is getting some promotional value in exchange for writing at WND.
That seems right -- Farah and WND exploited Hubbell's misdeeds to promote its anti-Clinton agenda in the 1990s, so it seems right that Hubbell is getting a little something in return.
