"Can These Panties Disrupt the $15 Billion Feminine Hygiene Market?"

THINX panties have "antimicrobial, leak-resistant fibers in the crotch that promise to absorb as much menstrual blood as up to two tampons or a pad � without the wearer feeling it � and promise to leave the wearer feeling dry."

The business is built on a buy-one-give-one model, by which every pair of THINX sold generates a donation to Uganda based AFRIPads, which trains women in developing countries to make and sell reusable pads, which are sold at affordable prices to local women.

On the environmental front, Agrawal says THINX panties can eliminate the landfill waste generated by traditional feminine products. The National Women�s Health Network reports that each year 12 billion pads and 7 million tampons are dumped into U.S. landfills. Agrawal says that by using only THINX during her period, she has made zero carbon impact for the past year.

"The model has responsibility; she paid a high price for a feel-good moment with Bill Clinton."

"But he was riding the back of this small charity for what? A half-million bucks? I find it � what would be the word? � distasteful."

Said Doug White, head the master�s program in fund-raising management at Columbia University, commenting on the way the Happy Hearts Fund operates and got Bill Clinton to appear at a posh gala. Petra Nemcova's charity spent $363,413 on the affair:

She booked Cipriani 42nd Street, which greeted guests with Bellini cocktails on silver trays. She flew in Sheryl Crow with her band and crew for a 20-minute set. She special-ordered heart-shaped floral centerpieces, heart-shaped chocolate parfaits, heart-shaped tiramis� and, because orange is the charity�s color, an orange carpet rather than a red one. She imported a Swiss auctioneer and handed out orange rulers to serve as auction paddles, playfully threatening to use hers to spank the highest bidder for an Ibiza vacation.

And Bill Clinton, who had previously declined invitations to accept an award from Happy Hearts, responded to a donation of $500,000 to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Both Happy Hearts and the Clinton Foundation have the stated goal of helping Haiti. As the HH spokesperson put it: "We believe that we can create the most impactful change by working together."

The best and worst of the NYT article about the best and worst of the U.S. Presidents in their post-presidential phase.

BEST: cool illustrations (of John Quincy Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, etc.); appropriate selection criteria (do good work, don't undermine your successors, etc.); actually saying something nice about Nixon (a "purposeful post-presidency," becoming a "respected elder statesman").

WORST: Acting like they're offering help to Obama (who's "deeply engaged in his presidency," but must be thinking about his post-presidency), when the subject obviously came up because of Hillary Clinton and her ex-president spouse coming in for criticism for their grandiose and lucrative posturings in the direction of great good work.

"George Stephanopoulos Gave to the Clinton Foundation. So What?"

Yeah, that's what I've been thinking, and I tend to not agree with Jonathan Chait. He says:

Rand Paul... accuses Stephanopoulos of harboring a �conflict of interest.� But donating money to a charitable foundation is not an interest. His money is gone regardless of what happens to Clinton�s presidential campaign.... In the absence of a material conflict, is there some symbolic conflict? It is hard to imagine what.... Stephanopoulos�s defense � that he just wanted to donate to the Foundation�s work on AIDS prevention and deforestation � seems 100 percent persuasive....

The Washington Post�s Erik Wemple does make an argument, but not much of one. �The problem with Stephanopoulos�s donations to the Clinton Foundation is that it gives him a stake � even if it�s a small one � in the operations and success of the charity,� he writes, �Like any donor, Stephanopoulos wants his money put to good use and, all else being equal, wants the foundation to prosper as it invests his money in good works.� But how does this bias Stephanopoulos�s campaign coverage?...

I've always assumed Stephanopoulos is biased toward the Clintons. Why should I care about his charitable contributions? Failed disclosure? Bleh. The Foundation is in all sorts of trouble? George isn't linked to that. The Republicans shouldn't accept him as a debate moderator. That was already true. This new thing? I don't see what it adds to the already-existing disqualification.

"I have one very specific reason I have a relationship with Bill Clinton: I admire what he does, and I want to be part of it."

"But I�ve never asked him for a damn thing," said Frank Giustra, who has given the Clinton Foundation over $100 million. He's described � in WaPo's "The Clintons, a luxury jet and their $100 million donor from Canada" � as a "Canadian mining magnate and onetime Hollywood studio owner.

Last week, the Clinton Foundation acknowledged that an affiliated Canadian charity founded in 2007 by Giustra kept its donors secret, despite a 2008 ethics agreement with the Obama administration promising to reveal the New York-based foundation�s donors.

The foundation said the arrangement conformed with Canadian law. But it also opened a way for anonymous donors, including foreign executives with business pending before the Hillary Clinton-led State Department, to direct money to the Clinton Foundation.

For Giustra, the partnership with Bill Clinton provided an introduction to the world of international philanthropy at the highest levels � a feel-good, reputation-enhancing effort that he said he finds more personally satisfying than amassing wealth.

At the same time, Giustra continued to expand his business empire, closing some of the biggest deals of his career in the same countries where he traveled with Clinton.

According to Giustra, you can believe that Bill Clinton didn't get involved in any of those business dealings, because Bill Clinton is utterly bored by that sort of thing: "He doesn�t care about that stuff. His eyes would glaze over." Even if that is to believed, Giustra could still have used the appearance of connection to the ex-President to leverage his business dealings.

As for Giustra's believability, consider that he also says that when Bill Clinton saw that that Giustra was carrying a biography of Julius Caesar, Clinton not only began talking about the book, he began "quoting whole passages of it from memory."

ADDED: By chance, there's a nice, big new essay about Julius Caesar by the great Roger Kimball in The New Criterion. Excerpt:

Alexander Hamilton once told Jefferson that Caesar was �the greatest man who ever lived.� Hamilton might have been tweaking his humorless rival. He knew that his own political opponents often compared him to Caesar, and deep down he probably shared their suspicion, not to say their loathing, of the dictator. But everyone acknowledged Caesar�s military genius. He was a master strategist whose tactics are still studied by generals. In Gaul, through the instrumentality of his legions, he killed or enslaved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Yet he brought stability and a semblance of the rule of law to those rude provinces. He greatly enriched himself at the expense of those he conquered. Yet he also greatly reformed provincial governance, sharply limiting the extent of �gifts� a Roman governor could (legally) help himself to.

"I don�t think the government is doing anything... You can see how many humans are in need."

"This is the corruption and laziness in government... We look at the news, and every country gives us something, but the Nepal government doesn�t give to us."

The word that got Keith Olbermann in trouble: "pitiful."

Keith Olbermann got suspended from his ESPN show for tweeting "Pitiful." He was responding to a tweet by a Penn State graduate who'd tweeted "We are!" (linking to an article about raising $13 million for charity). Olbermann proceeded to tweet "PSU students are pitiful because they�re PSU students � period."

"Pitiful" is a strange word. When we see it alone, as in Olbermann's tweet, we assume it conveys contempt. The 4th meaning in the OED is: "Evoking pitying contempt; very small, poor, or meagre; paltry; inadequate, insignificant; despicable, contemptible." $13 million is very small if the idea is to balance the harm that was done to Penn State's reputation in the recent scandal, and Olbermann has been a critic of the settlement.

"Pitiful" can mean "Full of or characterized by pity; compassionate, merciful, tender." You'd think that literal meaning would predominate in the absence of context, but it doesn't. "Pathetic" works the same way. We assume the sarcastic version: "Miserably inadequate; of such a low standard as to be ridiculous or contemptible." The older, more literal meaning � "Arousing sadness, compassion, or sympathy, esp. through vulnerability or sadness; pitiable" � is overshadowed to the point where you can't even use it without explaining yourself.

And you can't explain yourself on Twitter.