Bill Clinton at Center of Limegate Scandal

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A couple of years ago Bill Clinton gave a one-hour speech to the perfume industry’s trade association. Afterward he stuck around to take a few questions:

In an answer to a question after the speech, Mr. Clinton said he didn’t wear cologne, prompting audible gasps in the room, according to Women’s Wear Daily.

Now that’s some fine investigative reporting. It comes in the middle of a story about how Bill Clinton made money from the speech, and then, a while later, cunningly allowed a fragrance supplier to contribute a bunch of money to the Clinton Foundation in Haiti to set up a project that helps Haitian farmers plant lime trees (apparently limes are a key ingredient for perfumes). It’s honestly not clear what the problem is with this, and author James Grimaldi admits that Clinton “has given so many speeches to companies and groups in recent years, and the Clinton Foundation has collected donations from so many corporations and organizations, that this kind of overlap seems almost inevitable.” Nevertheless, he concludes that this incident “represents the kind of overlapping of private and charitable interests that has become a political liability for his wife as she runs for office.”

Okey doke.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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