Conventional wisdom holds that New York Democrat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be quickly confirmed as Secretary of State. If she is, approving senators will be guilty of gross dereliction of duty. This is not to say whether or not Clinton should eventually be confirmed. But she shouldn’t be approved until her numerous potential conflicts of interest – and those of her husband, the former president – are thoroughly scrutinized, and her record of ethical scrapes has been reviewed. Doubts have been raised about Clinton’s ethics since as early as her work on the Watergate investigative committee in the early 1970s. And let’s not forget that she was cited by the Independent Counsel for giving false testimony in her role as First Lady in the infamous White House travel office firings.

Of immediate concern is whether she can conduct honest diplomacy when her financial interests are intertwined with foreign entities. Both Clintons were deeply involved during his presidency in numerous incidents in which Democratic committees were forced to return hordes of campaign cash illegally donated by foreign interests. Remember Johnny Chung? He handed cash to White House officials in the then-First Lady’s office, and later said the Clinton White House was like a subway – “You have to put in coins to open the gates.”