Former President Bill Clinton was rushed to the hospital for a heart condition and has reportedly received a stent.

ABC News has details:

Former President Bill Clinton was rushed to a Manhattan hospital late this afternoon, sources tell ABC News.
A look back at presidential history from 1960 to 2008.

Clinton, 63, was transported to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan for a condition related to his heart.

ABC News’ chief political correspondent [and former Clintonite, ABC News forgets to disclose] George Stephanopoulos reported that sources said he was taken to the hospital “likely for a stent procedure.”

ABC also tells us that Hillary Clinton was spotted leaving the Oval Office a short time ago and “did not seem ‘too concerned’ or ‘in a rush.’” For what it’s worth.

Update: Clinton received two stents.

The former president’s counselor Douglas Band released a statement saying that Clinton is in “good spirits.”

“Today President Bill Clinton was admitted to the Columbia Campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital after feeling discomfort in his chest,” said Band. “Following a visit to his cardiologist, he underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries.”

A stent is a wire mesh tube used to prop open an artery.

Best wishes for the former president’s recovery.

Now, a timely reminder: Stents don’t grow on trees. They were not created, developed, marketed, or sold by government bureaucrats and lawmakers. One of the nation’s top stent manufacturers, Boston Scientific, has weighed in on the Democrats’ proposed massive taxes on medical device makers:

Boston Scientific Corp (BSX.N) warned on Tuesday that a proposed tax in the U.S. health care reform bill that cleared the Senate Finance Committee last week could have serious consequences for the company, including job losses.

“The bill that came out of the committee last week makes absolutely no sense and would be very damaging to Boston Scientific, and the medical device industry as a whole,” Boston Scientific Chief Executive Ray Elliott said during a post-earnings conference call.

“In a nutshell, it would raise costs and lead to significant job losses. It does not address the quality of care but the political scorecard of savings.”

Elliott said that the company’s tax liability would be doubled, adding $150 million to $200 million a year, and it would be forced to make substantial cuts in research and development spending, which could result in 1,000 to 2,000 jobs being lost at Boston Scientific…

…In addition to direct fees on device makers, the industry faces a double tax because hospitals, which have agreed to accept $155 billion in cuts in government payments over 10 years, will pass on part of that burden to device makers, said Elliott.

A teachable moment: Taxing innovation in the name of “health care reform” has consequences.

***

Related flashback: NHS could ban life-saving heart device ‘because it’s too expensive’

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has no idea how Chinagate scandal figure and old family friend James Riady found his way back into the country this year.

No idea whatsoever, according to the Washington Post:

In March 2004, James Riady, an Indonesian tycoon and devout Christian, received an honorary doctorate from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas. The university — which has a scholarship program funded by the Indonesian — didn’t announce the honor. Nor did Riady pick up the diploma in person: He’d been barred from America after pleading guilty in 2001 to a “conspiracy to defraud the United States” through illegal contributions to the campaigns of Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

Last year, however, the Indonesian mogul finally made it to Arkansas. He traveled there during the first of two previously unreported trips he made in 2009 to the United States. He was allowed in only after receiving a waiver from a rule that forbids entry to foreigners guilty of “a crime involving moral turpitude,” a term that government lawyers generally interpret to include fraud.

Riady’s return to the United States poses a prickly question for Hillary Clinton’s State Department: How and why did a foreign billionaire stained by Clinton-era scandals get a U.S. visa after being kept out for so long under the Bush administration?

Oh, and that $20,000 Riady donated to Bill Clinton’s philanthropic foundation? Nah, no appearance of a quid pro quo there. None whatsoever:

Riady, 52, declined to be interviewed but, in an e-mailed response to written questions, he said the teachings of Christ “inform all that I do.” He said he hadn’t seen the Clintons during his 2009 trips to America but did pay $20,000 to become a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual gathering of prominent figures in politics, business and philanthropy sponsored by Bill Clinton.

A senior State Department official said Hillary Clinton had no knowledge of the decision to let Riady enter the United States. The tycoon’s visa, he said, was issued by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta after the Indonesian asked to travel to America so that he could attend family graduation ceremonies. Riady, added the official, was granted entry for a “very narrow purpose.”

I know, I know. It’s silly to even entertain the idea that something untoward went on here.

I mean, it’s not like Hillary’s ever intervened before on behalf of her hubby’s donors.

Oh, wait…oops…

Secretary of State appointee Hillary Rodham Clinton intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband’s foundation, an Associated Press review of her official correspondence found.

The overlap of names on former President Bill Clinton’s foundation donor list and business interests whose issues she championed raises new questions about potential ethics conflicts between her official actions and her husband’s fundraising. The AP obtained three of the senator’s government letters under the Freedom of Information Act.

Much more documented in Culture of Corruption.

Fun fact: DHS signed off on Riady’s entry, too.

You know what that means: The system’s working!

Brrrrrr.

After years of pressing the Clintons to disclose their foundation funders, the time has come. As part of Hillary’s Secretary of State deal with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton has finally coughed up his donor list. The contributors’ list was published today on the Clinton Foundation site here.

We already knew the Saudis were funding Billy Boy’s presidential library and that other foreign interests had forked over tens of millions.

There’s much more where all that came from:

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Ark., and charitable efforts to reduce poverty and treat AIDS. Other foreign government givers include Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy and Jamaica.

The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on a Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying the sources of its money…

…Other foreign governments also contributed heavily to the foundation.

AUSAID, the Australian government’s overseas aid program, and COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, each gave $10 million to $25 million. Norway gave $5 million to $10 million. Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Oman gave $1 million to $5 million each. The government of Jamaica and Italy’s Ministry for Environment and Territory gave $50,000 to $100,000 each.

The biggest donations — more than $25 million each — came from two donors. They are the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a London-based philanthropic organization founded by hedge fund manager Chris Hohn and his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn and dedicated to helping children, primarily in Africa and India; and UNITAID, an international drug purchase organization formed by Brazil, France, Chile, Norway and Britain to help provide care for HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis patients in countries with high disease rates.

Oh, and all those evil businesses that Hillary railed against throughout her campaign? Not so eeevil when they’re handing money to hubby:

The foundation’s donor list is heavy with overseas business interests.

Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid gave $1 million to $5 million. Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation each gave $1 million to $5 million, as did the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office. The Confederation of Indian Industry and the Swedish Postcode Lottery gave $500,000 to $1 million each. China Overseas Real Estate Development and the U.S. Islamic World Conference gave $250,000 to $500,000 apiece.

The No. 4 person on the Forbes billionaire list, Lakshmi Mittal, the chief executive of international steel company ArcelorMittal, gave $1 million to $5 million. Mittal is a member of the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan, Goldman Sachs’ board of directors and the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council, according to the biography on his corporate Web site.

Among other $1 million to $5 million donors:

_Harold Snyder, director for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the largest drug company in Israel. His son, Jay T. Snyder, serves on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which oversees State Department activities, and served as a senior U.S. adviser to the United Nations, where he worked on international trade and poverty.

_No. 97 on the Forbes billionaire list, Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi.

_Issam Fares, a former deputy prime minister of Lebanon.

_Mala Gaonkar Haarman, a partner and managing director at the private investment partnership Lone Pine Capital.

_Lukas Lundin, chairman of oil, gas and mining businesses including Tanganyika Oil Company Ltd., an international oil and gas exploration and production company with interests in Syria, and Vostok Nafta Investment Ltd., an investment company that focuses on Russia and other former Soviet republics.

_Victor Pinchuk, son-in-law of the former president of Ukraine. Clinton spoke in 2007 at an annual meeting of Yalta European Strategy, a group Pinchuk founded to promote Ukraine joining the European Union.

Yowch. Chicago thug mafia, meet Arkansas thug mafia. Long live Democrat party unity! The soap opera continues:

Bill Clinton appeared to undermine Sen. Barack Obama again Tuesday.

The former president, speaking in Denver, posed a hypothetical question in which he seemed to suggest that that the Democratic Party was making a mistake in choosing Obama as its presidential nominee.

He said: “Suppose you’re a voter, and you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?”

Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: “This has nothing to do with what’s going on now.”

Forget about policy speeches and wooing superdelegates. For Hillary Rodham Clinton, Saturday morning was devoted to chick chat — a panel discussion with a group of working moms on topics ranging from girl-on-girl violence to her daughter’s early dating years.

“Chelsea was a teenager in White House, which meant that the Secret Service went on her dates,” the Democratic presidential contender said on a panel hosted by the Web site momlogic.com. “A lot of her girlfriends’ mothers loved it when they double dated because there was a guy with a gun in the front seat.”

Clinton also acknowledged that for Chelsea’s boyfriends, “It was really intimidating to talk to her father. And, I guess, to me.”

Clinton joined the panel from North Carolina, where she was campaigning before the state’s primary Tuesday. She took questions from a largely-female audience in a high school auditorium here.

The mostly lighthearted discussion focused mainly on how Clinton had balanced work and family when Chelsea, now 28, was growing up. But it also produced a few revelations.

The former first lady said that when Chelsea was a little girl, the family would organize a group activity most Wednesday nights, like going to a movie or hitting tennis balls.

One family night involved a coconut, Clinton said.

“Chelsea said she had heard about coconuts, but had never seen one. So we went to a store and bought a coconut and took it home,” Clinton recalled. “Bill and I, between us, had 50 years of education but we could not get the coconut open. We were throwing it on the driveway, we were beating it with a hammer. We were so embarrassed.”

Maybe the Hillary Nutcracker would work.

***

There are plenty of ways to do it, but this is one of the more amusing methods. Watch carefully, Hill, so you’ll be ready on Day One:

***

Allah’s got the vid of Hillary’s chick chat. She’s growing on you, AP.

Company documents show that Poly Technologies, the manufacturer of the weapons on board the ship, is ultimately controlled by a clique from China’s preeminent military clans with close ties to the Communist party leadership and army.

Major General He Ping, the company’s chairman, is the son-in-law of Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese leader; its president, Wang Jun, is the son of a vice-president and a Deng ally. Its upper ranks are stuffed with military veterans and their offspring, who have greatly enriched themselves with arms sales to some of Africa’s bloodiest trouble spots….

Analysts of Chinese financial affairs say, however, that Poly is actually a front for an elite within the country’s military-industrial complex and that it reports to the general staff department of the People’s Liberation Army.

“People call it the supreme headquarters of the China princeling party,” commented one analyst. “It’s a power centre beyond civilian control.”

Here’s an interesting detail:

In 1996 Poly was named by prosecutors in connection with an attempt to smuggle 2,000 AK47s into the United States.

Note that the links between Harare and Beijing go deeper than just this abortive arms shipment. Chinese troops have been spotted patrolling the streets with local troops, and a delegation armed with pistols checked into the Holiday Inn in Mutare.

I didn’t know that Mutare, Zimbabwe had a Holiday Inn. Was the Howard Johnson’s full?

Anyway, between this and the ongoing Olympics/Tibet protests, the PRC is sure getting some bad PR this year.

____________

UPDATE: MM.com readers remembered the 1996 AK-47 smuggling plan as “Operation Dragonfire”. Some familiar names pop in the investigation, including Reno, Gorelick, and Clinton–though there doesn’t seem to be a direct link.

Details on Dragonfire, courtesy of commenter John Ansell, here. Both companies involved in the Zimbabwe deal, Poly (the manufacturer) and Cosco (the shipping company), were behind the Dragonfire shipment as well–which was destined for…the collector market? No, no: Newsmax (citing that VRWC stalwart Vanity Fair) says they were full-auto rifles destined for LA’s street gangs.

All of which leads me to conclude that all the criticism directed at China this year–from the Left and the Right–may have some important political consequences. Interesting that the Obama campaign hasn’t tried hitting Hillary harder over her China connections.

____________

{Post by See-Dubya}

But somehow, Hillary Clinton was never made aware that her husband had pardoned members of the terrorist Weather Underground–whose ties to the Obama camp she denounced at the ABC debate last week. Can I get a cackle up in here?

Who calls bullcrap?

Newsday cannot suspend its disbelief and deconstructs Hill’s claim:

In an interview yesterday, Hillary — whose connection to President Clinton’s 2001 sentence commutations for two members of the Weather Underground has become an issue since she tried to raise questions about Obama’s acquaintance with another ex-Weatherman — told “Inside Edition” that she “didn’t know anything about” the 2001 clemency case…

…If it’s true, it means that she got the worst briefings in the world when she was running for Senate in 2000 and the clemency issue was hot in Rockland County, and it means that Chuck Schumer didn’t even bother to mention the issue to his fellow NY senator-elect/ First Lady after promising the widows of two dead cops to fight against one of the clemencies.

Here’s the chronology:

On October 19, 2000, as Hillary was hunting for Senate votes throughout New York, Rockland County’s biggest paper, the Journal News, ran a front page story reporting that imprisoned radical Susan Rosenberg — linked to the 1981 Weather Underground Brinks robbery that left two Nyack cops dead — was seeking clemency from Bill Clinton.

The next day, the widows and fellow state and local police attended a memorial service for the two dead cops at the site of the killings. Also in attendance: Sen. Chuck Schumer, who in that fall was frequently campaigning with Hillary. According to another front page story, on Oct. 21, he made a pledge to the widows to fight the clemency: “I intend to take our opposition as high as I can in government.”

On December 16, 2000, after Hillary became New York’s Senator-elect, the paper did another Page 1 story about an upcoming 60 Minutes episode on Rosenberg’s clemency application. It included a quote from one of her new constituents, Diane O’Grady, wife of one of the dead cops: “This is a woman who has taken lives.”

On December 17, 2000, the “60 Minutes” piece on Rosenberg’s case and clemency request ran.

So, Clinton — in her effort to avoid being connected in any way to the case — now says she knew nothing about it. Nobody briefed her, either while she was running or after she was elected, on an emotional hot-button issue that intersected her husband with her constituents. Her husband, who invited her to sit in on a White House meeting with another group of Rockland County residents seeking pardons for four Hasidic members of their community, never so much as mentioned Rosenberg.

Chuckie Schumer, for once, isn’t talking.

AW, “s–t” – another Billbo eruption.

Back in January, worried Democrats pleaded with Bill Clinton to zip his wildly flapping lips.

Teddy Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel reportedly told him to tone down the attacks on Barack Obama. None would comment on the record about those discussions. But based on his latest profanity-laced comments caught during a radio interview with a Philadelphia station on Monday, we don’t have to guess how Clinton reacted:

“I don’t think I should take any s–t from anybody.”

Clinton was talking to a WHYY host who asked him about his comparison of Obama’s win in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s win there in 1984.

The host noted that a black Philadelphia official had switched her support after construing Clinton’s remarks in South Carolina as an effort to marginalize Obama as “the black candidate.”

The host hit Clinton’s touchy-touchy spot.

How dare she have the audacity to suggest that he, Bill “First Black President” Clinton, had engaged in race-baiting! After all, his office is in Harlem – “and Harlem voted for Hillary, by the way” – he fumed.

Clinton then went, well, all Clinton on the host and on the Obama camp, accusing them of “playing the race card” (those were his exact words) and plotting to “do it all along.”

The narcissism, the conspiratorial mindset, the Olympics-sized sense of entitlement, liberal immunity, and indignation, the utter lack of discipline. It was a classic Clintonian moment. All that was missing was a bald-faced lie…

… On a momentous primary night that should have been all about Her, The Big He made it all about Him. As her macho campaign ad baited Obama about his inability to stand the heat in the kitchen, her own husband was melting down in front of the cameras.

This comes on the heels of his humiliatingly false, non-defense defense of Hillary’s Bosnia sniper fire fable – wherein he insisted she only told the lie once (it was three times) and late at night when she was “exhausted” (try well-rested and well-practiced, dating back to December) – and a multitude of outbursts against other reporters meekly raising questions about his racially divisive comments and tactics.

The finger-wagging king of purple fits can’t control his temper, his mouth, or his self-destructive egotism. He may well cost his wife any slim chance she has left of emerging victorious in Denver this August.

Karl Rove couldn’t have planted a more effective saboteur.

Laughingstock.

Police arrested a protester Monday at an early morning campaign stop by former President Bill Clinton and charged him with disorderly conduct.

The protester, identified as Skyler Martin King, 25, of Corpus Christi, had been holding a sign that read “9/11 was an inside job.” After Clinton finished his speech and was shaking hands with the crowd, King began yelling at the former president, who was campaigning for his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential run.

A member of the crowd grabbed the sign and tore it in half. The man began screaming at police officers, asking them to protect his First Amendment rights.

French actress Marion Cotillard sends her sympathies.

She just won a best actress Oscar for playing Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose,” but unlike the famous singer’s signature tune, “Non, Je Regrette Rien,” Marion Cotillard is singing a song of the opposite sentiment.

Cotillard found herself in hot water recently over comments she made in an interview last year accusing the U.S. of a 9/11 cover-up.

“Marion never intended to contest nor question the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and regrets the way old remarks have been taken out of context,” her Paris-based lawyer Vincent Tolesano told the Agence France Presse.

The actress made her comments on a French television program in February 2007, saying “I think we’re lied to about a number of things,” including who brought down the World Trade Center.

Cotillard argued that it was an inside job, prompted by the towers becoming obsolete.

“It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to recable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them,” she said.

No, he won’t shut up. Bill Clinton’s on the attack again, rattling tinfoil, blaming the traitors in the media, and yesterday scuffling with a pro-Obama heckler. Not clear whether the famous finger wag entered the picture, but according to the heckler, Billbo’s eruption may have resulted in physical contact. Vi First Read:

Robert Holeman came to Timken High School here today with a message to deliver to Bill Clinton. He did — and he said the former president wasn’t happy about it.

Clinton spoke to a capacity crowd in this Northeast Ohio town, the third of five events today in the Buckeye State. He told voters that the contest was “the power of speeches against the promise of solutions by a world-class change maker.”

Throughout the event, as Clinton made his case for his wife, Holeman’s dissenting voice could be heard. At times he simply shouted Obama’s name. When Clinton would set up a sure applause line, Holeman could be heard heckling. As soon as Clinton finished speaking, the Canton native made a beeline to the ropeline to give Clinton a piece of his mind.

“I asked the president to please stop the bickering between the campaigns,” Holeman said in an interview afterwards. “All this name calling is like the bully in the yard. He can’t get his way, he can’t get nothing done.” Holeman said he thought Clinton was “gasping for air.”

“This is the last hurrah. After March 4, Hillary Clinton will be out of the race for good, and Obama will take the commanding lead,” he said. “She should back him with her delegates immediately. That’s what I’m asking them to do.”

Holeman said that Clinton responded by saying Obama came after him first. Holeman also described Clinton’s reaction to him as “irate.”

“I think he even hit me in the face with his hand,” he said. “He did give me a little pop. It was okay, because I understand his tenacity for his wife.” Clinton did engage Holeman for a few minutes, at times pointing directly at him. It was unclear whether he did make physical contact, however.

First Read adds: “[A] spokesperson for President Clinton who was near the president said there was no physical contact.”

Well, that’s what Clinton spokespeople are trained to say, isn’t it?

Love for her? Or love for his own indignant voice and for preservation of his legacy/dynasty?

Love drove Bill over campaign line: Clinton

Hillary Clinton admitted Sunday her husband Bill’s hard-charging campaign tactics had gone overboard, but chalked the ex-president’s fiery broadsides up to love and a chronic lack of sleep.

A day after rival Barack Obama trounced her in the South Carolina primary, the former first lady also mounted a vigorous defense of the two Clinton White House terms, which Obama has said did not spark transformational change.

Clinton was asked on CBS television’s “Face the Nation” whether her husband was “out of control” after he took the Illinois senator, and the media to task, during a foul-tempered week-long campaign.

“You know, my husband has such a great commitment to me and to my campaign,” the New York senator said.

“He loves me just like, you know, husbands and wives get out there and work on each others’ behalf.”

She blamed the tensions of the tight battle for the party’s presidential nomination

“Maybe he got a little carried away.”

***

Anyone else have that Tina Turner song in their heads?

Check out the WSJ’s editorial on the education of Barack if you haven’t already read it. Message: Welcome to the club, Sen. Obama.

And check out Billy Boy’s latest purple fit–lashing out at a…CNN reporter:

Bill Clinton became visibly upset Wednesday over comments by a prominent South Carolina Democrat that compared the former president’s actions on the trail to those of infamous Republican strategist Lee Atwater.

In an interview with CNN’s Jessica Yellin, Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a supporter of Barack Obama, said some of Bill Clinton’s recent remarks on the campaign trail were appeals based on race and gender. He said the comments were meant to “suppresses the vote, demoralize voters, and distort the record,” and said they were “reminiscent of Lee Atwater.”

Clinton sharply disputed the charge, and lashed out at Yellin for raising the question.

“You live for this. This hurts the people of South Carolina,” he said. “Because the people of South Carolina come to these meetings and ask questions about what they care about. And what they care about is not what’s going to be in the news coverage tonight, because you don’t care about it.

“What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along.

Damned Clinton News Network!