Hillary’s Wright-eous retort: ‘he wouldn’t have been my pastor’

“He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton told reporters in Greensburg, Pasadena. “You know, we don’t have a choice when it comes to our relatives. We have a choice when it comes to our pastors and the churches we attend … Everyone will have to decide these matters for themselves. They are obviously very personal matters … I think the choice would be clear for me.”

The candidate wasn’t the only Clinton on the hot seat on Tuesday. Earlier, daughter Chelsea Clinton bristled when an audience member at a rally in Indianapolis asked her if the Monica Lewinsky scandal damaged her mother’s credibility.

“Wow, you’re the first person actually that’s ever asked me that question in the, I don’t know maybe, 70 college campuses I’ve now been to, and I do not think that is any of your business,” she said before taking another question.

Hillary Clinton has been on the defensive following revelations she exaggerated the personal risks she and Chelsea took during a 1996 goodwill tour of US bases in Bosnia. A week ago, Clinton told reporters in Washington she braved sniper fire during the visit and had to skip a welcoming ceremony on the tarmac because of the danger.

But she backed off that account on Monday after a videotape of the trip surfaced showing Clinton — relaxed and unhurried — greeting well-wishers on the runway.

“I did make a mistake. … I have a different memory,” Clinton said. “That happens. I’m human.”

In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Clinton likened Wright to Don Imus, the white radio host fired last year after making racially disparaging remarks about the predominantly black Rutgers women’s basketball team.

“While we, of course, must protect our right to freedom of expression, it should not be used as a license or an excuse to demean and humiliate our fellow citizens,” she said.

The Obama campaign accused the former first lady of bringing up the Wright controversy to deflect attention from a humiliating episode that undercuts her foreign policy credentials.

“After originally refusing to play politics with this issue, it’s disappointing to see Hillary Clinton’s campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention away from the story she made up about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

In a move geared at pressuring Clinton to increase financial disclosure, Obama on Tuesday posted tax returns from 2000 to 2006 on his campaign’s website. Clinton, who had planned to withhold the documents until April 15, countered by saying she would release her returns within a week.