Clinton Chief Strategist Steps Down...Sort Of

Mark Penn, whose firm's relationship to the South American nation of Colombia has been called into question, has resigned as Hillary Clinton's chief strategist. However his consulting firm will still be retained by Clinton's campaign.

Friday, Penn acknowledged he had a meeting with the Colombian ambassador to the United States earlier in the week in his role as his firm's (Burson-Marstellers) chief to discuss the pending U.S.-Colombia trade pact, which Clinton has been highly critical of on the stump.

Clinton's campaign had paid Penn's political consulting firm, Penn, Schoen and Berland, more than $6 million by the end of February and owed the firm $2.5 million, according to her campaign finance reports.

Political Analogies Rove is to Bush as Penn is to Clinton?

Does Hillary Clinton have a political strategist that Karl Rove would approve of? The Washington Post offers up this interesting food for thought about Mark Penn.

"His client list includes prominent backers of the Iraq war, particularly Lieberman, whose presidential campaign Penn helped run in 2004, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose campaign he advised when Blair won a historic third term in 2005.

Penn sounds a defensive note about his work for Lieberman, insisting that the senator, who all but broke with his party last year over the war in Iraq, bears no relation to his current client. "The war went south, and Lieberman went very north on the war," Penn said in a recent interview in his office. He quickly added: "There's zero comparison between where Senator Lieberman is on the war and Senator Clinton.""