The suburban village of New Square, just 30 miles north of New York City, is a place apart.
The peaceful community of about 4,000 is home to a close-knit, but poor, ultra-Orthodox Jewish community which has suddenly been propelled into the political limelight and a scrutiny which it never sought.
A people who never read newspapers, or watch TV, and send their children to religious schools is being asked if its votes for the Senator from New York, Mrs Hillary Clinton, were bought by a promise to commute sentences on four members of the community serving jail terms for stealing $30 million in federal subsidies.
The town was established by four Holocaust survivors who moved from Brooklyn in 1956 as the first completely Orthodox Jewish community in the US.
Life is still dominated by the ideal of leading a simple religious life with a focus on family - the average family includes about 10 children. More than 60 per cent of the population live below the poverty line and depend on public assistance.
What is indisputable is that the community, 82 per cent of whom turned out to vote, cast their ballots together almost unanimously for Mrs Clinton, while other traditional Hasidic communities nearby backed her rival, Mr Rick Lazio. And only weeks after the election on December 22nd, two of their leaders met President Clinton and his wife in the White House to lobby for pardons.
She says she attended the meeting but "never made my views known one way or another at any time". His spokesman insists that all pardons were given on the merits of their individual cases.
This case has resurfaced because of the announcement over the weekend that the US Attorney for New York, Ms Mary Jo White, already investigating the pardoning of the millionaire fugitive, Mr Marc Rich, has opened a file on the New Square commutations.
The decision is particularly galling to Mrs Clinton, whose efforts to distance herself from her husband's pardon spree were blown out of the water last week with the revelation that her brother, Mr Hugh Rodham, had accepted $400,000 for assisting in two pardon appeals. The money has since been returned at his sister's insistence. Mr Rodham may, however, face a Florida Bar ethics investigation for having accepted a contingency fee in a criminal case.
It looks bad. And yet there are features of the New Square case that tend to support the Clintons' version of events. In the past the civic-minded community has often voted in large numbers and as a block. Mrs Clinton had a successful campaign visit to the town. No-one has suggested she gave them even a nod and a wink.
And the local community leaders have argued that, while money was indeed misappropriated, the men concerned did not benefit personally as most of the money was spent on the town's schools. They have already served a year of sentences ranging from 30 months to six years - the commutations reduce that to 24 months to 30 months.
Meanwhile, Mr Marc Rich spoke out on Saturday for the first time describing his pardon as an "humanitarian act".
Mr Rich said that his 1983 indictment on charges of evading more than $48 million in taxes, fraud and illegal oil deals with Iran was a wrong, remedied by Mr Clinton. "I do not consider the pardon granted by President Clinton as an eradication of past deeds - but as the closing of a cycle of justice and a humanitarian act," he said.