As the New York primaries approached, the Mass Media desperately tried to smear Bernie Sanders and angelify Hillary Clinton. There were a series of news stories arguing that Clinton is more trustworthy than Sanders, that Sanders is impossibly far behind in delegates and that Bernie Sanders is otherwise a worse presidential candidate than Clinton. Bernie Sanders is hardly in the running for the Democratic nomination anymore, but not because Clinton is more trustworthy than Sanders.

Over the years Hillary Clinton has had many scandals. Some of these are nothing more than right-wing smear campaigns attempting to tarnish Clinton's reputation by blaming her for her husbands infidelity or the tragic deaths in Benghazi. It's popular on the left— especially the establishment left that constitutes much of the most popular news sources— to write off all of Clinton's scandals as concoctions of the right-wing smear-machine, but not all Clinton scandals are smear campaigns. Clinton has been caught lying—or bemoaning common sense ethics— on several occasions. Headlines like,This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is Fundamentally Honest, are becoming increasingly popular and speak to how little trust people have in Clinton. That headline is false at best.

Hillary Clinton's honesty and virtue should not be in question. She can't possibly be both. Some of her more recent missteps come readily to mind. There's her praise of Nancy Reagan's AIDS activism. Nancy Reagan could hardly have done less during the AIDS epidemic. Then there's the poorly researched shot at Bernie Sanders on healthcare. When Clinton went on the campaign trail asking "where was Bernie Sanders" during the healthcare reform fight in the 90's troves of people pointed out that he was literally at her left hand and even received a letter from Hillary, personally thanking him for his help in fighting for healthcare reform. Of course, it's possible Hillary just doesn't remember the AIDS epidemic very well. It's possible Clinton just doesn't remember who was standing with her in the fight for healthcare reform. Would that be better than her lying?

Clinton has also made dubious claims about her infamous "Super Predator" comments. Confronted by a Black Lives Matter activist Clinton responded, "Nobody has ever asked me before you are the first person to ask me." First, Clinton could have understood what's wrong with calling black children super predators through self-reflection. And while it's not evident that Hillary Clinton has been asked about those comments before it's hard to believe no one has asked her about it in the past 20 years. Still, without any proof this isn't the best example of Clinton's dishonesty. So back to the issues.

Clinton's stance on debates has apparently changed over the years. Clinton's Chief Strategist for her campaign, Joel Benenson, recently said in an interview, "Let's see if he [Bernie Sanders] goes back to the kind of tone he said he was going to set early on. If he does that, then we'll talk about debates." Her press secretary called Sanders request for more debates a stunt. As documented by The Intercept this is antithetical to Clinton's rhetoric during her '08 presidential campaign where she said, "You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere." It would seem Clinton's Campaign is the one trying to make a stunt out of something a presidential candidate should willingly do "anytime, anywhere." Or maybe by "anytime, anywhere" Clinton meant anywhere people don't point out your record and anytime that doesn't interfere with fundraising.

Speaking of financing, Hillary Clinton's finances have been in the news more than usual thanks to a Green Peace activist challenging her on her campaigns relationship with the fossil fuel industry. Clinton lost her temper, a rare event for such a seasoned politician, and shot back, "I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me." Clinton would be right in saying that she doesn't accept money directly from the fossil fuel industry, that's illegal and clearly not the allegation. While Clinton has accepted millions from fossil fuel employees and lobbyists, Sanders has also accepted such donations to a lesser degree. Naomi Klein gets at the heart of the problem:

"The real issue, in other words, isn’t Clinton’s corporate cash, it’s her deeply pro-corporate ideology: one that makes taking money from lobbyists and accepting exorbitant speech fees from banks seem so natural that the candidate is openly struggling to see why any of this has blown up at all."

This is a question everyone needs to ask of Hillary Clinton. Does she understand why the United States and the world needs money out of politics?

In the Spring of 2015 Hillary Clinton announced that she would enforce a litmus test when picking Supreme Court nominees: nominees must vote to reverse the Citizens United decision. Yet, in self-defense Clinton and her supporters have validated and expanded on the logic of the Citizens United decision, as explained by Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept,

"In Citizens United, the right-wing justices merely denied the corrupting effect of independent expenditures (i.e., ones not coordinated with the campaign). But Clinton supporters in 2016 are denying the corrupting effect of direct campaign donations by large banks and corporations and, even worse, huge speaking fees paid to an individual politician shortly before and after that person holds massive political power."

How is anyone expected to believe that Clinton is genuinely against Citizens United and money in politics generally when her campaign is constantly defending itself with the very logic used in the Citizens United decision? If Clinton believes money corrupts, as she obviously does vis-a-vis her Citizens United litmus test, why does she get an exception?

Clinton's relationship with campaign finance reform isn't her only failure she's tried to paint as a success. The half-baked climate conferences in Copenhagen and Paris, the coup in Honduras and the destruction of Libya are all successes if you believe Hillary Clinton.

During the first Debate Hillary Clinton presented the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit as an example of her admirable record on climate change. The problem is Climate experts and activists saw the Summit as a landmark failure. The 2009 Climate Summit lives in infamy. Clinton and Obama failed to commit or bring any other country to commit to anything close to what's necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Clinton refuses to acknowledge that the United States condoned a coup in Honduras that led to horrid increases in human rights violations. Clinton is on record saying that a coup did not occur on her watch in Honduras, but the fact that the President was kidnapped and removed from the country by the military, followed by mass political repression and militarized elections say otherwise.

"She is a very capable woman, intelligent, but she is very weak in the face of pressures from groups that hold power in the United States, the most extremist right-wing sectors of the U.S. government, known as the hawks of Washington. She bowed to those pressures. And that led U.S. policy to Honduras to be ambiguous and mistaken."

One wonders how Clinton truly sees the Honduran coup. Does she really believe, despite her colleagues statements and common sense, that the regime change was not a coup? Does she think it was a coup, but it was still the right thing to do? Or, as former president Zelaya implied, is she subservient to powerful special interests groups in the US, especially the "extremist right-wing Hawks," making other considerations secondary? These are the same kinds of questions one should ask about Clinton in Libya as well.

Libya is a US foreign policy disaster. Obama has called his administrations failure following the regime change— read torture and extra-judicial massacre of the former President— the greatest failure of his presidency. Meanwhile, Clinton called the bombing of Libya, "Smart power at its best." She also said, "we didn't lose a single person," in Libya. Perhaps "we," as in Americans didn't lose a single person— although the families of the victims in the Benghazi attack may disagree— yet "we" the human race lost thousands of lives and stoked a conflict that continues to this day.

In the cases of Climate Change and regime change one can't simply accuse Hillary Clinton of lying. What one can say is that what Hillary Clinton calls success does not reflect progressive or humanitarian goals. And if she's sincere in what she calls a success then she's an Establishment Hawk.

Clinton's greatest hypocrisy's didn't take place in the Middle East. They took place in her youth, as Secretary of State and in Eastern Europe. Just last year a prominent news anchor, Brian Williams, was suspended for lying about being shot at during the Iraq war. NBC, where he worked, called his lies "wrong" and "inappropriate for someone in Brian's position." If it's grounds for suspension for a news anchor then it stands to reason the same crime would elicit an even more damning response for someone who's held to an even higher standard— prospective president of the United States. Yet, Clinton has largely avoided scrutiny. The Clinton camp has defended her by saying that she simply "misspoke" and that she was in fact going to a combat zone, never mind that Brain Williams went to to Iraq in 2003 when he wasn't under fire either. Regardless, the NYT diplomatic correspondent obtained what should be the last word , "I spoke with William Nash, who was the commander of US troops in Bosnia and was at the Tuzla airport with Clinton. He said there was no threat of sniper fire… 'She never had her head down.'"

The other time Clinton got away with a 35 year crime has received far more publicity and is in fact ongoing. This is the infamous email scandal that I'm not tired of hearing about. I am tired of thinking about hypocritical justice: Chelsea Manning rotting behind bars; Edward Snowden being virtually banned from coming home; Julian Assange being trapped indoors for years while his family needs to get fake identities to avoid persecution; Thomas Drake, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim and Jeffrey Sterling facing a life of prosecution and condemnation for trying to do the right thing, all while Hillary Clinton compromises classified documents out of carelessness and incompetence.

Whistle blowing, even when it reveals murderous soldiers in the case of Chelsea Manning, or a change in the law in the case of Edward Snowden, has become a crime against the state even when silence would be a crime against humanity. Enter Clinton's great Hypocrisy. Clinton never objected to the anti-democratic prosecution of whistle blowers. Instead she extolled the importance of protecting national security. Apparently national security requires mass surveillance, CIA mishandling of Nuclear secrets and war crimes to remain hidden from the public. As argued by The Intercept, Clinton has spent years condemning the very behavior she's now guilty of. The main difference being that Manning, Sterling, Snowden etc. acted out of conscience while Clinton was simply careless. Hillary Clinton should probably not be prosecuted, but she should definitely come to the defense of whistleblowers.

Clinton's greatest hypocrisy, and the reason people don't believe she can truly change this country for the better, is revealed from her first defense case as a lawyer. For Clinton's first case she was tasked with defending an accused rapist. It was later revealed that Clinton lost faith in polygraph tests when the test said he was innocent. Of course justice requires a defense regardless so it was her duty to act, but was it her duty to degrade a child? According to Abbe Smith of Slate, yes that was her job, "developing a viable defense theory—that a troubled child might not be a credible witness—is not at all improper." In an affidavit, Clinton wrote the following in her clients defense, "I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.”

Hillary Clinton defended a grown-man accused of rape by insinuating that the 12 year old girl may have been the instigator, may have been asking for it or may have been making it all up to fulfill some fantasy. One could argue against Smith and say that it was not her duty to attack the character of a 12 year purported sexual assault victim. But there is a more powerful statement to be made if Smith's statement and Clinton's actions are taken at face value.

As a career lawyer Hillary Clinton's job was to lie, defame a child and defend someone she knew was guilty. And to that end she performed exemplary. As a career politician and President it will be her job to lie, dehumanize countless children, and defend torture, assassination, war crimes and state terrorism. It's fair to assume she will excel at this as well.