It’s the thing leftists and statists never seem to figure out.

Create an incentive, and people will respond to it.

UPDATE: I thought I posted this this morning, but I didn’t.

[guest post by Dana]

It is being reported that Hillary Clinton has agreed to sit for an interview with CNN senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar:

Presidential interviews usually aren’t game-changing events — almost every other 2016 candidate does them regularly — and tomorrow’s sit-down, in Iowa City, isn’t likely to be a landmark moment in the campaign. Make no mistake, Clinton is not ushering in a new era of access and transparency.

However: The decision to sit down with national media does reflect a shift of gears for the campaign. To date, Clinton has held a few impromptu press gaggles, but by and large has been dismissing or ignoring the inquiries shouted at her as she meets with voters. She may “ponder” the idea of responding to your question, or she might just “sit down and have some pie.” If the press scrum gets in the way of her campaigning, the campaign will corral them, like so many sheep.

In this post-Stephanopoulos season, and in spite of no record of her donating to the Clinton campaign, does Keilar have an obligation to be fully transparent and disclose – before or during the interview – that she has a bit of a tie to the Clinton campaign?

Summer means it’s wedding season, and in Washington that means plenty of potential for conflicts of interest. Consider the wedding of one Hillary Clinton aide, attended by several members of the national political press covering Clinton and her rivals for the White House.

Several of the journalists in attendance cover either Clinton or the Republican candidates for president regularly.

Merica and [Brianna] Keilar, both of CNN, both say they are “covering Hillary Clinton” in their Twitter profiles.

How does one decide what matters and what doesn’t?

On April 14, Keilar hyped, “Yesterday [Mrs. Clinton] stopped at a Chipotle, a campaign aide sharing with us that she had a chicken burrito bowl with black beans and guacamole and an iced tea. And you know what that kind of detail tells you — it says, ‘She’s just like us. She eats at Chipotle.'”

On May 14, 2014, Keilar praised Bill Clinton’s defense of his wife against attacks by Karl Rove, “To do it with humor was effective. I thought it was effective.”

In 2007, Keilar cheered an attack by a liberal senator against conservative Jim Inhofe:

Co-anchor Brianna Keilar: “That was quite an exchange. And, you know, we were expecting something from Senator James Inhofe. He is a critic of global warming….We thought maybe it might be with him and former Senator, former Vice President Al Gore, but it ended up between him and Senator Barbara Boxer. She really got a stinger in there, I will say.”
— CNN’s Newsroom, March 21, 2007, after the liberal Boxer told former GOP Chairman Inhofe, “You don’t do this anymore. Elections have consequences.”

And speaking of Hillary Clinton, and transparency, here is an interesting look at how David Brock’s super-pac for Hillary, Correct the Record, creates a Hillary Clinton echo chamber in an effort to frame her as viable and genuine:

One day in May, operatives from a Washington-based super PAC gathered New Hampshire mayors, state representatives and local politicos at St. Anselm College for a day of training.

They rehearsed their personal tales of how they met Hillary Rodham Clinton and why they support her for president. They sharpened their defenses of her record as secretary of state. They scripted their arguments for why the Democratic front-runner has been “a lifetime champion of income opportunity.” And they polished their on-camera presentations in a series of mock interviews.

The objective of the sessions: to nurture a seemingly grass roots echo chamber of Clinton supporters reading from the same script across the communities that dot New Hampshire, a critical state that hosts the nation’s first presidential primary.

While it’s nothing new for campaigns to feed talking points to their surrogates so they can in turn regurgitate them in the media, this is a bit more than the usual fare:

But the effort to script and train local supporters is unusually ambitious and illustrates the extent to which the Clinton campaign and its web of sanctioned, allied super PACs are leaving nothing to chance.

Code for we are worried about our candidate, because Hillary has a couple of problems she can’t seem to overcome:

The super PAC’s effort also comes as Clinton struggles on the campaign trail to appear accessible and genuine. Some Democrats have long believed Clinton sounds too scripted on the stump, especially compared to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), her insurgent primary rival whose authenticity and liberal message are drawing thousands of Democrats to his rallies.

You know, it’s just really hard to figure out how Hillary could appear both accessible and genuine… Perhaps this hard-hitting interview with Keilar can kill these two pesky birds with one stone.

–Dana

UPDATE: Efforts for Hillary to appear genuine took a nosedive during the interview which aired this afternoon. Hillary spoke out of both sides of her mouth revealing she simultaneously supports and doesn’t support sanctuary city policies:

Clinton also blamed the city of San Francisco for mishandling the case of an undocumented immigrant who had been deported five times before killing a woman there — in a sanctuary city where local law enforcement do not enforce federal immigration laws.

“The city made a mistake, not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported,” she said. “I have absolutely no support for a city that ignores the strong evidence that should be acted on.”

Further, according to Jake Tapper, she was less than truthful during the interview:

Jake Tapper ‏@jaketapper 30m30 minutes ago

Clinton: “I’ve never had a subpoena.”
Gowdy: “she was personally subpoenaed” the moment Benghazi Cmte learned of personal email/server

4:54 PM – 7 Jul 2015 · Details

[guest post by Dana]

Just days after Kathryn Steinle was killed by an illegal alien in San Francisco, Josh Earnest defended White House immigration policies , and shamefully faulted Republicans:

When asked if the case was a failure of the administration’s enforcement policies, White House press secretary Josh Earnest chided Republicans for blocking a bipartisan immigration bill that would have boosted funding for border security.

“I recognize that people want to play politics with this,” Earnest said. “The fact is the president has done everything within his power to make sure that we’re focusing our law enforcement resources on criminals and those who pose a threat to public safety.”

Further:

The spokesman refused to comment on the details of the case, but he pointed to Obama’s executive actions on immigration launched last fall, which instructed the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize the deportation of people who are considered “public safety threats.”

“We have started to make changes in terms of structuring and staffing … to ensure that our law enforcement efforts are focused on felons and not on families,” he said. “These efforts would be significantly augmented had Republicans not blocked common-sense immigration reform.”

Also, San Francisco Mayor Edwin expressed “concern” about the release of confessed killer Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who had multiple felony convictions and had been deported to Mexico five times, but still supported the city’s “sanctuary city” policy:

San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee said Monday he was “concerned” about the release of an illegal immigrant with a criminal record who killed a woman last week but defended the sanctuary city policy.

“I am concerned about the circumstances that led to the release of Mr. Sanchez,” Mr. Lee said in a statement. “All agencies involved, Federal and local, need to conduct quick, thorough and objective reviews of their own departmental policies and the decisions they made in this case.”

He stressed that the sanctuary city policy is intended to protect “residents regardless of immigration status and is not intended to protect repeat, serious and violent felons.”

“Our city’s policy helps immigrant and limited-English speaking communities where sometimes people fear and mistrust the criminal justice system,” Mr. Lee said. “We want people to report crimes, we want children of undocumented immigrants to attend school, and we want families to get access to much needed social services without fear of their city government reporting them to Federal authorities.”

From Judicial Watch (2014):

[T]he Obama administration freed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants convicted of violent and serious crimes last year, according to the government’s own records.

The crimes committed by illegal aliens released from federal custody include homicide, sexual assault, theft, kidnapping and alcohol-related driving convictions. In all, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) freed 36,007 aliens convicted of 88,000 crimes from detention centers throughout the United States, according the breathtaking agency records, which were obtained this month by a nonpartisan research center dedicated to studying immigration issues.

–Dana