Bill gets Hillary in trouble — again

Once again, Hillary’s campaign is running up against what may be its most formidable adversary: Bill Clinton.

First, he flubbed big time last week by reviving — and inaccurately describing — the Bosnia sniper controversy. And now, just when Hillary wants to be seen as tough on China, comes an LAT piece yesterday that Bill’s foundation has taken an undisclosed sum from a Chinese company accused of helping the government censor the Internet and crack down on Tibetan activists.

Alibaba, which owns Yahoo! China, asked Bill to speak at a 2005 executives’ conference in China. In lieu of his usual speaking fee, often as high as $400,000, Bill asked for an undisclosed donation to his foundation. Last month, Yahoo! China’s homepage ran “Wanted” posters of Tibetan activists the government accused of spreading unrest. Rebecca MacKinnon wrote recently of experiments she ran on Chinese search engines: Yahoo! China’s was censored the most.

On the campaign trail, Hillary has gotten out in front of her opponents on the Olympics issue by calling on Bush to boycott the opening ceremony, “absent major changes by the Chinese government.” But it certainly doesn’t play well for her position when her husband’s foundation receives large checks from a company so closely aligned with Beijing.