A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

It's always funny watching protectionists twist themselves into knots:

It's a story Hillary Clinton loves to tell, about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.

And it's a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but didn't.

If she were president, she says, she'd fight to protect those jobs. It's just the kind of talk that's helping her win support form working-class Democrats worried about jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country's security.

What Clinton never tells in the oft-repeated tale is the role prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company, or that the sale was approved by the administration of her husband. "Hillary Clinton must have been hoping we Hoosiers have short memories," Ed Dixon of Valparaiso said in a letter to a local newspaper after a recent Clinton visit. "Her husband was president at the time and allowed this to happen."

"They would have us believe Bush was behind this sale," added Fred Sliger of Valparaiso in another letter, "when in fact the Clinton administration rubber-stamped this along with the sale of numerous other high-tech secrets to the Chinese. ...Let's get the facts straight."