It was Michelle Malkin who cataloged just a sampling of Hillary Clinton's "misstatements," that occurred before the latest one about her supposedly harrowing landing under sniper fire at Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996...

• This is the woman who insisted for more than a decade that she was named after the late, great mountain-climber Sir Edmund Hilary—never mind that she was born six years before he scaled Mount Everest in 1953.
• This is the woman who told Dateline NBC that daughter Chelsea was on a jog in New York City when the jihadists struck on 9/11—never mind that Chelsea later wrote a magazine essay revealing that she watched the attacks on television from a friend's apartment.
• This is the woman who claimed to have "helped start" the federal Children Health Insurance Program—never mind that the program's original sponsors noted that Sen. Clinton fought the initial bill and had no role in writing the legislation.
• This is the woman (echoed by her husband and daughter) who bragged that she was the "first" to call the disaster in Darfur "genocide"—never mind that several other senators had done so in 2004, while her first press statement referring to Darfur as "genocide" wasn't until March 2006.
• This is the woman who claimed to have organized "instrumental" meetings in Belfast and baldly asserted that she "helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland"—never mind that key negotiators dismissed her as "totally invisible," "cheerleading," and "a wee bit silly."

As to the Bosnia incident, CBS news, among others, released video putting the lie to Clinton's claim, not to mention sardonic blog postings, such as this one, that has appeared in hundreds of variations:

Hillary is a Bosnia war hero. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane, the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy.

Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. She talked to the man in his own language and got him to surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself. Then she turned to his wounds. She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood. How could anyone not vote for Hillary?

Many have asked if such widespread criticism of a presidential candidate, or elected official is some sort of new development, based on the Internet and talk radio. Of course, this is quite foolish since any student of history will have to admit that human nature is essentially unchanged over the millennia. If anything, the phenomenon of the overly sycophantic Leftist news media, combined with the limited number of media outlets, simply took us on a detour—for nearly 100 years.

And, always in play will be those intellecutaloids far too clever to be starstruck with a movie star, who will nonetheless fawn over a politician. Likewise, there have always been a few journalists willing to take on establishment figures.

Early in the history of our republic, for example, there was Benjamin Franklin's grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, who inherited printing supplies and equipment from his famous relative, and started a newspaper in 1790. The publication went through changes in name and focus, ultimately emerging as a cogent political journal, called the Aurora and General Advertiser—commonly known as the Aurora.

A fierce advocate of individual liberty, he was often at odds with the Federalists, but was also known to support certain of their policies. Perhaps the easiest way to understand Bache is that he seemed to be the one guy who never wavered from the original principles of the American revolution. While there were many on the Jeffersonian side who believed that much of the support for Washington and his Federalist policies came only because of Washington’s reputation from the American Revolution, few save Bache would actually write on the occasion of Washington's farewell address:

If ever a nation has been debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington. If ever a nation has been deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington. Let his conduct, then, be an example to future ages. Let it serve to be a warning that no man may be an idol. Let the history of the Federal government instruct mankind that the mark of patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people.

On the day in March, 1797 when Washington was succeeded by John Adams, Bache wrote:

When a retrospect is taken of the Washingtonian administration for eight years, it is a subject of the greatest astonishment that a single individual should have cankered the principles of republicanism in an enlightened people just emerged from the gulf of despotism, and should have carried his designs against the public liberty so far as to put in jeopardy its very existence. Such, however, are the facts, and with them staring us in the face, this day ought to be a jubilee in the United States.

If Bache's legacy is reemerging in alternative media, we have done him proud.