My must read of the day is "Clinton Library to Release Lewinsky, Whitewater Documents Friday," in the Wall Street Journal:
For Clinton conspiracy buffs who don’t suffer from eye strain, Friday could turn out to be a memorable one.
At 1 p.m. ET, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library will release nearly 10,000 pages of records devoted to some of the most high-profile controversies that dogged Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s.
The topics, as described by the library, include: "Monica Lewinsky," "Whitewater," "Vince Foster," the "pardon of Marc Rich," and "staffing of the White House Travel Office."
The documents are the seventh batch of records released by the library on a rolling basis since February. All had been previously withheld from public record requests because they were exempt from disclosure for one of two reasons: They involved appointments to federal office or they dealt with confidential advice between the president and his advisers.
Every time documents come out about the Clintons everyone gets really excited about them, they’re discussed in the media at length, and then about half of the people discussing it will say that it’s old news and it’s irrelevant today and irrelevant for Hillary Clinton if she decides to run. I always disagreed with that notion because I think the old stuff is part of Clinton’s "living history," and that ultimately it’s negligent not to reevaluate aspects of it.
A big reason why I think that is because there are so many new voters who don’t know about all of this. In 2016, the youngest voters will have been born in 1998. They will not know much, if anything, about Vince Foster, Whitewater, or even Monica Lewinsky. Whatever they know is from a classroom or overhearing nostalgic political discussions their parents may have had one night at dinner. They might not even care about it now, but they should have the opportunity to learn about these moments that involved Hillary and decide whether or not they matter. Hillary Clinton is the most likely presidential contender we have for 2016, and people should know about her.
The one criticism that will inevitably be made about anything that comes from these kinds of documents is that they don’t matter because they’re old, and that’s the only criticism everyone should flatly refuse to accept.