This week, Hillary Clinton doubled down on the email scandal in a speech that appeared to mock the ongoing investigation of her use of an unsecured email system during her time as Secretary of State and dismissing questions over her use the system as pure politics. She even joked “You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account. I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves.” It is a great line but it is only funny for those who are entirely untroubled by the real danger that Clinton put national security secrets at risk by insisting on retaining control over her own emails and server. One group that is not laughing are former intelligence officials who have accused the government, again, of showing special treatment for powerful figures in the mishandling of classified material or current officials who are continuing to classify hundreds of emails from Clinton’s records. The number of Hillary Clinton emails now flagged for classification has grown to 300. The number is expected to rise even higher as the agencies plow through thousands of emails that remain after the Clinton staff erased thousands of others from the server.
Clinton again insisted that “I never sent classified material on my email, and I never received any that was marked classified.” The key of this spin is again the word “marked.” I have previously discussed why that explanation is less than compelling, particularly for anyone who has handled sensitive or classified material. As I discussed earlier, virtually anything coming out of the office of the Secretary of State would be considered classified as a matter of course. I have had a TS/SCI clearance since Reagan due to my national security work and have lived under the restrictions imposed on email and other systems. The defense is that this material was not technically classified at the time that it was sent. Thus it was not “classified” information. The problem is that it was not reviewed and classified because it was kept out of the State Department system. Moreover, most high-level communications are treated as classified and only individually marked as classified when there is a request for disclosure. You do not generate material as the Secretary of State and assume that it is unclassified. You are supposed to assume and treat it as presumptively classified. Otherwise, there would be massive exposure of classified material and willful blindness as to the implications of the actions of persons disregarding precautions. For example, there is not a person standing next to the President with a classification stamp in the Oval Office. However, those communications are deemed as presumptively classified and are not disclosed absent review. Under the same logic, the President could use a personal email system because his text messages by definition are not marked as classified. This is the whole reason that Clinton and others were told to use the protected email system run by the State Department. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure such systems. Even the Washington Post is now reporting that Clinton’s statements that there was no classified information on her server appear to be “untrue.”
Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd in Iowa that “It’s not about Benghazi. And you know what, it’s not about e-mails or servers either. It’s about politics.” Despite both the State Department and intelligence agencies now finding hundreds of classified emails, Clinton has portrayed the entire matter to be the work of political operatives. In an incredible spin, she has insisted that she is the one who is serious about national security and the protection of secrets in this controversy in refusing to answer questions:
“I won’t get down in the mud with them. I won’t play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those we lost. I won’t pretend this is anything other than what it is: the same old partisan games we’ve seen so many times before. I don’t care how many super PACs and Republicans pile on. I’ve been fighting for families and underdogs my entire life and I’m not going to stop now.”
Those words are likely to leave many grinding their teeth in the intelligence agencies after Clinton refused for months to turn over the server and then turned over a server that had been wiped clean — unilaterally destroying tens of thousands of emails that were on the server but cannot now be reviewed.
The number of flagged emails is now over 300. Some 305 have already been sent to various agencies for review.
The steady worsening of the scandal stands in stark contrast to the rhetoric of denial coming from the Clinton camp. At the very least, the use of a personal server was reckless and clearly designed to allow Clinton’s staff to control her emails (few people are buying the spin that Clinton just wanted to avoid carrying more than one device). Many view the refusal to use the secured State Department email system as a signature Clintonian move to retain control over information. The decision clearly put national security secrets as risk and I would be astonished if foreign intelligence did not target the vulnerable server. What is striking is that Clinton continues to deny that this was obviously bad judgment and a bad practice for any high-ranking government official. She is not the first to commit such errors but the campaign is unwilling to alter its initial position of denial and mockery of the controversy. This is not a political hatchet job. I dealt with classified material for decades. This is a serious potential breach in my view and the view of people who worked with such material for a living.
In the end, the Clinton campaign may be calculating that denial will get her through the primary even if she will have taken severe damage for the general election. The campaign clearly views Bernie Sanders as no real threat and that the opposition in the primary is still incapable of challenging Clinton with the money and party leadership behind her. Nevertheless, her national lead has called from 40 points to 19 points nationally.
Aridog…..I don’t see anything derailing the Hillary Clinton nomination. Hillary supporters do not care how many classified documents she “mishandled”, and even IF we were found to be criminally liable (a very unlikely scenario in the Obama/Lynch world), it would not have much of an impact on her supporters.
Read the third comment in these posts for an example of this mentality.
Paul C… Yeah, I rarely listen to him, but I caught that exposition of total blarney. Does no one vet his work? Fox is slipping.
Nick:
“The duopoly cult mantra is “lesser of evil.” The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one.”
Yet you favor Carly Fiorina.
Clarification: The STU-III devices I used were also capable of ordinary non-secure conversations like a regular telephone, and I presume the STE’s are as well. One has to consciously activate the security measures for those pieces of equipment….by both the caller and the receiver of the call. Again, if you failed to do so, then tried to claim nothing was classified because you failed to ensure it, and communicated classified information it was intentional and you could be charged for dong so. It is also a clarification to note that STU-III’s and STE’s are capable of messaging with the same protocols required. No one at Hillary’s level in government isn’t aware of these systems and their purpose. No one.
Darren Smith … you pretty much covered everything I might have said on this email-gate thing. I think she will lose the nomination, and may even be charged. If not, there is no justice for the rest of us. I worked in DOD & DA for a long time, plus in uniform before that, and I know that had I done 1/10th of the mishandling Hillary has done, I’d be in jail as I write this.
I also know, without a shadow of doubt, that there are means available to high level officials, such as cabinet members, to communicate over very secure lines by voice or messaging. I know because I’ve used them under orders from my superiors. Hillary appears to have by-passed that process as too inconvenient for her. Next time you get a TV look at Obama’s desk note the telephones there…one is a STE (Secure Terminal Equipment) device, the successor to the STU-III’s that I used and all high ranking officials used for secure communications. The protocol requires both parties to a communication be aware of the security level necessary, and to activate the encryption it entails. To intentionally not use the devices is criminal if the content of a transmission is classified or from intelligence sources.
Hillary’s first malfeasance clue she dropped was printing out 116 reams of paper message copies instead of just turning over the digital originals….like she apparently did on a thumb drive to her lawyer. She must think everyone is an idiot and clueless about communications today and how and why they are linked digitally. The way she and her “people” have handled this has made the investigation similar to knocking over a large ant hill or trying to herd 100 cats. Whatever information she has or had is now spread amongst multiple people and places, marked or otherwise. Now wiping off a classification annotation in an email is fairly simple for a sender, and a felony to do so. One way is manipulation of the paper copy method she at first chose to use. That is also criminal because when you do it, you remove the necessary encryption process for emails marked “classified”…a second step in handling classified emails. I’d not know this with any certainty if I had not been part of it for some time.
BTW…when “Geraldo” (aka born “Gerald”) expounded on this subject he got every single bit of the information he uttered 100% wrong. I fault Fox News for not vetting his nonsense before allowing him to expound. Sadly way too many of us regular folks get our information from sources such as Geraldo. Makes herding those cats that much harder. Never the less I do believe that Hilary’s “blue dress” is closing in on her…as it should.
Aridog – it is your fault listening to Gerald Green to begin with.
lisaN
From the Guardian
After more than a month of haggling over recounts and the intervention of the supreme court, George Bush was declared winner of the presidential election in Florida by 537 votes.
The report says the tiny margin was overwhelmed by the numbers of disproportionately minority voters denied the right to vote by the flawed database of felons, and the widespread use of outdated voting technology in black and Hispanic districts, where the resources to correct mistakes were scarcest.
In an extract quoted by the Washington Post, the report says: “Despite the closeness of the election, it was widespread voter disenfranchisement and not the dead-heat contest that was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election.”
The felons list was put together by a private company, Database Technologies (DBT), which has conceded that it was riddled with mistakes but says it warned the Florida authorities to check it before using it.
Ms Harris’s office said that was the responsibility of elections supervisors in the state’s 67 counties, but many local officials said they lacked the means to verify it.
Some opted not to use the list at all, which allowed some ex-convicts to cast votes illegally. But in counties where the list was used, many voters with clean records found themselves barred from voting because they shared a name with a convict.
The commission found that poor counties with high minority populations were more likely than wealthier white ones to use inefficient voting systems which rejected a higher percentage of ballots.
Some Hispanic and Haitian voters were not given ballots in their native languages or provided bilingual assistance.
The report criticises Ms Harris’s decision to reject a budget proposal to spend $100,000 on educating voters.
The Florida attorney general’s office said it was investigating the allegation of civil rights violations and would give “due consideration” to the commission’s report.
The commission is expected to call for a US justice department inquiry.
“The report underscores officially what most of us have known all along,” Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, told the Washington Post.
Barbara Arnwine, who runs the Lawyers Committee of Civil Rights Under Law, said the report confirmed her organisation’s findings.
“I was absolutely shocked by the scale of voter denial and the disenfranchisement of black voters.” The action of the state authorities was “a violation of the fundamental trust that we all give to state-elected officials to protect our right to vote”.
And you want Jeb Bush to be the next President. Hillary doesn’t even make the cut here, in this game of manipulation, arrogance, and treason.
Lisa
These all could be lies. If you are a Republican, that’s where you start.
Floridagate
The Presidential Election of 2000 was stolen by the Bush-Cheney Campaign and the Florida GOP, Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, County Election Officials, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Media, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The list below documents all of the crimes that were committed to steal the election. These were not isolated instances of carelessness – they were deliberate election fraud. We believe these crimes are so serious that they should be given a name: FLORIDAGATE.
FLORIDAGATE is the nation’s biggest scandal since Watergate. So why isn’t the mainstream media reporting the story? Because the media – especially the huge broadcast networks – were participants in the crime, and are now participants in the coverup. So is Attorney General John Ashcroft, who should be investigating these crimes. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in Washington are afraid to demand a thorough investigation, because they know they would be viciously attacked by the Republican propaganda machine.
Read the Boston Statement detailing how Bush stole the presidency.
Bush-Cheney Campaign and the Florida GOP
Absentee ballot law (FL GOP)
The Florida Republican Party sent a letter with Jeb’s signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots. But Florida law (which was made even stricter in 1998) is not a “vote-by-mail” system – voters must have a valid reason for voting by mail. The Republican Party was thus encouraging Republican voters to break the law.
Florida’s absentee ballot laws were tightened because of the 1997 Miami absentee ballot scandal that resulted in the voiding of ALL absentees and the overturn of the election. The man who engineered that massive fraud – Mayoral candidate Xavier Suarez – played a key role in the GOP absentee effort in 2000.
Absentee Ballot Law, Voting Rights Act (FL GOP, Seminole County, Martin County)
With the active assistance of GOP Election Supervisors, FL GOP officials sent GOP operatives to illegally alter over 2,500 defective Republican absentee ballot applications, while at least 550 Democratic applications were ignored.
Conspiracy to Interfere with the Lawful Count of the Votes (Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris)
When the TV networks called Florida for Gore, Bush campaign spokespeople (Rove, Matalin, etc.) went on TV to declare the results were wrong and would soon be changed. Was there already a plan to use state and local government powers to interfere with the lawful counting of votes?
FL Absentee Ballot Law
Pressured canvassing boards in Republican counties to violate Florida’s election laws and count clearly illegal overseas Republican absentee ballots, while fighting to prevent Democratic counties from counting similar absentee ballots
14th Amendment, Voting Rights Act
Forced hand counting of heavily Republican absentee ballots that the machines couldn’t read – while delaying and blocking hand counting of poll-cast ballots in heavily Democratic counties that the machines couldn’t read, thus treating ballots differently and discriminating against black voters
GOP Stalling Tactics in Palm Beach
Legal ethics
Urged courts to block hand counts in Democratic counties in FL while urging courts to conduct hand counts in NM
Interference with Administration of Elections; Assault (Rep. John Sweeney, Congressional staff, etc)
On 11/21, organized a riot in Miami/Dade County that intimidated the canvassing board into stopping its hand count, and then assaulted Joe Geller, chair of the Dade County Democratic executive committee. This riot was paid for by the Bush recount committee.
Abuse of Congressional office for partisan politics; politicization of active-duty military (Rep. Steve Buyer, Rep. Tillie Fowler, Michael Higgins, Rob Carter)
On 11/22, Rep. Buyer gave the Pentagon a list of active duty sailors whose ballots had been rejected as invalid, which was provided by Florida Republican operative Rob Carter. Buyer demanded their e-mail addresses immediately. Buyer’s aide Michael Higgins then contacted the sailors and put them in touch with Carter, who enlisted these sailors in a propaganda campaign to attack Vice President Al Gore as anti-military, and to pressure county officials to count invalid ballots. Carter also supplied Rep. Tillie Fowler with stories from service members, which she used to denounce Gore at a rally.
FEC Disclosure
Failure to disclose how the $8 million the Bush campaign raised for its Florida recount effort
IRS Disclosure
Failure to disclose the occupation and employer of thousands of recount donors
Governor Jeb Bush
Absentee Ballot Law
Letter sent by Florida Republican Party with Jeb’s signature and the Florida state seal urged Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballot, regardless of whether they had a valid legal reason for doing so.
Abuse of State Seal
Letter sent by Florida Republican party with Jeb’s signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots
Abuse of Office for Partisan Purposes; Interference with Administration of Elections
Jeb and his staff made 95 phone calls made to Bush/Cheney Presidential campaign after Jeb said he’d recused himself; he visited the Bush/GOP headquarters in Tallahassee; he participated in at least 1 Bush strategy conference call; 6 of the 95 calls were on the day GOP thugs stopped the Miami-Dade recount
Abuse of Office for Partisan Purposes
Called special session of legislature to intimidate county officials and judges
14th Amendment (Florida Legislature)
2001 Election Reform law perpetuates the election problems that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to be in violation of the 14th Amendment.
Secretary of State Katherine Harris
Voting Rights Act Section 5 (Bucky Mitchell, Michael Cochran, Elaine Baxter)
Misrepresentation of the felons list statute, failure to provide available documents directly relevant to the pre-clearance review
Voting Rights Act Section 5 (Clay Roberts, Bucky Mitchell)
Knowing failure to obtain pre-clearance for significant changes in policies and procedures pursuant to the implementation of the felons list law which resulted in the removal of legal voters from the registration rolls in at least one of 5 pre-clearance counties in Florida
Disenfranchisement of Legal Voters
Knowingly purged felons from states where voting rights were automatically restored upon release, contrary to clear court rulings. Knowingly included non-felons in its purge through its “wide net” policy (accepting a 90% name-match in 1999, and an 80% match in 2000).
Ballot Design Law
Sent out a sample ballot design to county elections supervisors that split the 10 Presidential candidates on the ballots onto 2 pages
Uniform Administration of Election Law: Assistance to Voters
Failure to oversee training of poll workers to ensure proper assistance to voters
Americans with Disabilities Act (Jeb Bush, Counties)
Failure to make voting machines fully accessible to the handicapped
Mandatory Machine Recount Law
20 counties never did the mandatory machine recount as required by state election law.
Overseas Absentee Ballot Law
Allowed illegal overseas absentee ballots to be counted and included in the certified total
Uniform Administration of Election Law
Coordination (conspiracy) between Harris lawyers and Bush/GOP lawyers; Deliberate misinterpretation of the law for partisan purposes
Uniform Administration of Elections: Hand Recount Law
Inconsistent application of hand count law: accepted manual recounts from some counties, but denied Palm Beach permission to conduct hand count
Use of Government Office for Politics
Allowed Republican operatives Andrew Goodman and J.M. Stipanovich to use her state computers and offices during the recount; Communications Director Donald Tighe admitted writing partisan speeches during the campaign.
These political activities were found on Harris’ computer. 1) On 1/29/00, a speech written for a Republican meeting that declared: “We are READY TO LEAD!” 2) On 3/14/00, a set of campaign talking points for George W. Bush. 3) On 11/14/00, an examination of the campaign finances of FL Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente – who was reviewing important election cases. 4) A list of contributors to Harris’ 1998 Democratic opponent, Karen Gievers (undated).
Harris claims Stipanovich and Goodman were “volunteers,” but Goodman billed Harris $12,000 for his work, and Harris initially approved the bill (Palm Beach Post, 8/23/01)
Abuse of Discretion in Violation of Florida Supreme Court Order
The Florida Supreme Court ordered Harris to accept the Palm Beach recount until 9 a.m. on 11/27; she refused to accept them after 5 p.m. on 11/26
Conflict of Interest; Use of Office for Political Gain
While overseeing the recount, Harris expressed interest in appointment as Ambassador under Bush
Public Records
Reinstalled Windows and erased files on state computers used by Republican operatives Andrew Goodman and J.M Stipanovich
County Election Officials
Voter Registration Law and Voting Rights Act
Failure to process thousands of voter registration forms before the election, including many from historically black colleges
Absentee Ballot Law (Okaloosa)
Sent hundreds or thousands of absentee ballots to voters who did NOT request one
Absentee Ballot Law (Bay)
Republicans turned in “handfuls” and in one case a suitcase-full of absentee ballots in defiance of a law that provides people may submit no more than two absentee ballots other than their own or that of a family member
Ballot design law (Palm Beach)
Butterfly ballot
Sample ballot law (Duval)
Sample ballot differed significantly from actual ballot – sample ballot listed 10 candidates on 1 page, while actual ballot spread candidates over 2 pages
Voting Rights Act
Substandard voting machinery in predominantly minority precincts that produced ballot spoilage up to 40%; Failure to provide voter assistance in Spanish (Osceola County) and Creole (Miami-Dade); reports of intimidation of minority voters
Voting machine law (Punch Card)
Failure to properly maintain machines, including misalignment and accumulation of chads
Election Day law
Closed polling places without notice; Turned away voters who were on line at 7 pm when polls closed
Voting machine law (Miami-Dade)
Use of malfunctioning voting machines
Voting Machine Law (Optiscan)
Failure to provide machine-readable pens
Voting Machine Law (Palm Beach)
Misaligned ballots, as described by Rabbi Yellin; Use of malfunctioning voting machines in county elections office
Miami Herald 8/28/01: Democratic State Representative Calls for Criminal Investigation of Teresa Lepore
Negligence (Palm Beach)
Failure to respond to complaints about confusing ballot and voting mistakes
Intent of the voter
Nearly all counties failed to count machine-unreadable votes where the intent of the voter was clear. This includes “write-in overvotes” that must specifically be counted by law.
Palm Beach Canvassing Board rejects dimpled ballots
Mandatory machine recount law
20 counties never did the mandatory machine recount as required by state election law.
Racial Discrimination (Escambia)
Disabled optiscan technology that prevents errors on poll-cast votes, but “duplicated” (fixed) absentee votes with errors.
Different Treatment of Machine-Unreadable Ballots
Various Republican counties hand-counted absentee ballots that could not be machine-read (thus favoring Republicans), but refused to hand-count poll-cast ballots that could not be machine-read (thus harming Democrats)
Ballot tampering fraud (Escambia and other Northern counties)
Estimated 7,100 ballots were destroyed in 11 counties
Ballot tampering; Open meetings law (Optiscan)
Secret duplication of 10,000 optiscan-unreadable absentee ballots in 26 heavily Republican counties in central and north Florida. These ballots favored George W. Bush by more than 2 to 1.
Fraud (Duval)
Republican elections supervisor John Stafford lied about the number of under and overvotes to the Gore campaign during the 72-hour window for requesting a recount, telling the Gore campaign there were only 2-300 votes disqualified, when there were actually 27,000.
Recount law (Miami-Dade)
Refusal to conduct hand count
Absentee Ballot Law (Orange)
Refused to count stateside absentees postmarked before Election Day, while counting overseas absentees with no postmark or date
Public Records Law (Palm Beach)
Destruction of computer records of 2000 Presidential vote
U.S. Supreme Court
Conflict of Interest
Four members of the Supreme Court majority in Bush v. Gore had conflicts and should have recused themselves: O’Connor, Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist. In August 2001, three Justices recused themselves from the case of Napoleon Beazley, who was sentenced to death for the murder of the father of J. Michael Luttig, a well-connected federal appeals court judge.
US Law on Emergency Injunctive Relief
Granted emergency relief to George W. Bush to stop the manual 4. Count of 60,000 uncounted votes as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, on the theory that counting all of the votes would cause “irreparable harm” to Bush.
14th Amendment
In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court declared the the 14th Amendment prohibited variations in vote counting by county officials, contrary to all precedents – and explicitly refused to set a precedent for future cases. In the same ruling, the Court accepted 2,490 overseas absentee ballots that were counted without any consistent standard and produced a net gain of 630 votes for Bush – greater than his 537-vote margin of victory.
Presidential Elections; Appointment of Electors (3 USC Chapter 1 Section 5)
On December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court intentionally misrepresented the law as saying that Electors had to be chosen by December 12, when the true deadline was December 18.
Media
Corporate Contribution to Federal Campaign (FOX)
George W. Bush spoke by phone with his cousin John Ellis at FOX News shortly before FOX incorrectly projected Bush as the winner at 2 a.m. on Election Night, which prompted Al Gore to temporarily concede and defined him as the presumptive loser.
Corporate Contributions to Federal Campaign; Broadcast License Requirement to Serve the Public Interest (FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS)
The broadcast networks consistenly ignored Bush’s flaws and inconsistencies, while scrutinizing Gore’s flaws and inconsistencies
Corporate Contribution to Federal Campaign; Violation of Broadcast License (NBC/Jack Welch)
On Election Night, GE CEO Jack Welch reportedly ordered the network to call Florida for Bush, even though the results were too close to call.
Rep. Henry Waxman’s Repeated Requests for Videotapes Promised by NBC News President Andrew Lack
Attorney General John Ashcroft
Failure to Investigate
DoJ has received THOUSANDS of complaints, but is investigating only 12. Complaints include serious allegations of fraud, such as pre-punched ballots in heavily African American and Democratic precincts in Miami/Dade and Broward Counties
The Republicans are the party of old white males. Bernie Sanders, Al Gore, Jerry Brown and Joe Biden.
Issac – Does this info come from any news source other than archive.democrats.com ?
I bet you also believe that George HW Bush also arranged for the assassination of JFK too.
And let’s not forget how George W Bush fixed it, so JFK Jr would fly his plane into the sea? 😂😂😂😂😂
The duopoly cult mantra is “lesser of evil.” The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one.
Where was all this outrage when Jeb Bush arranged Florida for his brother. Jeb Boy made over 40,000 black voters ineligible by tagging them as felons. It turned out they were not felons and were eligible to vote but too late. The margin between Gore and the midget cowboy was approximately a fifth of these votes. It was openly understood that these votes would have been predominantly for Gore.
Now, compare and contrast and then review the results of that treason. Yeah, Clinton is dangerous, but nowhere near as dangerous as the Republican party.
davidm2575
You seem to be anchored in a model of the ideal family structure where men have a specific role and women a specific role and perhaps even some roles that are shared. This is quasi religious in some ways. You devote yourself to ‘nature’.
Structures are important. However, more important are the ingredients that make or break any structure, regardless of how conservative or liberal. Over the past few decades we have seen the results of several structures with varying degrees of the essential ingredients necessary for a child to make it in this world. By far the worst combination has been the traditional structure, the one to which you refer, lacking in part in the essential ingredients. There are few more tortured upbringings than that of a child that is gay growing up in a structure where the parents believe such as you have illustrated you do. On the flip side, a child growing up in a family of two men or two women who are intelligent, caring, thoughtful, and loving is far better off than if that child were to grow up in a conventional family structure with fewer of these ingredients.
Regardless of the size of the hammer, you can’t pound a square peg into a round hole without doing damage. I understand your position. It is the easiest one to have. The perimeters are tight, there is little if any reason to think about stuff, and it comes down primarily to discipline. Calling it nature’s law, usurping religiously all that should be for all that you are and all that you are for all that you should be is a tidy circle.
However, outside your perfect world life does continue to go on with all of its facets, ingredients, and successes. Your position is not too different than the positions taken by those of the past, those who one still has trouble understanding. Nature has often been the reason for stuff like: slavery, female subservience, feudal states, dictators, etc. Nature is a lot more diverse than you make it out to be.
Once you open this door it will lead to the really good stuff – Bush Administration emails – can’t wait!
I guess the statement or wordage that the State Department flagged the emails as possibly classified means that they were not classified or labeled as classified when they were sent but are not tagged so that someone else can decide if they should be classified now. And if they are classified then we out here in the public can not see the content but will just be told that they are classified and that will sully Hillary. What a great way to throw dirt on someone. Hillary was emailing her sister about dirty toilets in the embassy and this gets flagged as classified and Hillary is off he ticket.
” What a great way to throw dirt on someone.”
Of course if Clinton had just segregated her work product from her personal emails and turned the work product over there would not be a problem – now would there?
Who created the dirt and pretended to be dressed in Teflon?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they copied the files to a brand-new hard drive and installed that into the server. With a new hard drive there will be no latencies of deleted files to find. But what is going to be interesting is not necessarily going to be the lack of suspect emails, or that the server was “clean” but that there are going to be an absence of things that should be present that are not there. Such as having no swap or temporary files that a computer will usually have just in ordinary processing. It will be the evidence of destruction of evidence that will also likely come out.
Hopefully what could happen is the FBI could interview the Mom & Pop computer store employees and lean on them. They will crack like eggs. They are not going to protect anyone when this comes to a head. But it is more likely that some persons closer to the Clintons went in with high levels of expertise and did strong level measures to clean out this computer. If the FBI can determine who these actors are the entire house of cards is going to collapse on Hillary Clinton with regard to the server.
She was the person who instigated the personal email server to happen. She knowingly sent these emails that were classified. She was responsible for the classified email going to the mom and pop computer store. And she was the one responsible for deleting the email and arranging for someone to make the server squeaky clean. And when it came to a head she delayed, denied, and delayed some more, just to buy time to fix the situation to her favor.
This is not going to end well for her.
Over at the WAPO we have an interesting article about Clinton’s position on the emails and server:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/18/hillary-clinton-wont-say-if-her-server-was-wiped/?hpid=z5
Here, I think, is a key quote:
““Look, my personal emails are my personal business. Right?” she told reporters, when asked if the e-mails were wiped from the server. “So we went through a painstaking process and through 55,000 pages we thought could be worth relating. Under the law, that decision is made by the official. I was the official. I made those decisions.””
At think these remarks by Clinton get right at my concern with Clinton’s handling of the whole email/server business.
She seems to claim that her privacy interest for her personal email prevents detailed scrutiny of how she handled all those emails that were the product of her work. I don’t think so – not in my opinion.
She clearly withheld her work product and commingled her work product with her personal emails. It seems to me she forfeited any right to privacy that she might reasonably claim if she had segregated her personal and work emails.
Finally we get to the essence of her claim: ” Under the law, that decision is made by the official. I was the official. I made those decisions.” Clinton seems to be claiming that she had no obligation to turn over the emails in a timely fashion because she decided she did not have to.
To me that is about a comforting as the bank president claiming there is no embezzlement because he signed each and everyone of the withdrawal slips.
Clinton had an obligation to turn over her work product in a timely manner – immediately – because the emails were agency documents that the agency – by law – had to control. Clinton had an obligation to protect classified information. She failed utterly and intentionally at both of those vital tasks.
Her claim that it was all OK because she decided it was OK doesn’t wash with me. At the very least it is not clear to me that a department Secretary has the authority to decide to mishandle classified material. CIA Director Patraeus certainly did not have the authority to circumvent standards for classified material and he paid a clear legal penalty for doing so.
Can we expect any less from Clinton. I think not. Not by me. Not in my book.
where is jack wheeler?
David: “Nature determines what is life or not.”
Here, we agree. What the real question should be is: “Does a person own his or her body?”
If not, if a society owns someone’s body, then the society should be responsible for the care and feeding of every body from the instant it is born until it dies of natural causes.
If a person does own his or her body, then he or she should be able to do whatever he or she wants to do with it, as long as it does not hurt someone else or their property. “Someone else” should be defined as a living person, and their “property” would need to include the body they own. No personal injury, murder, theft of or damage to things owned by someone else should be allowed. But beyond that, you can do whatever you want with your own body, which is yours.
If a woman does not want to allow her body to be an incubator for a fetus, for whatever reason, then she should be legally allowed to have the fetus removed. What the legal consequences should be are simple: If she has the fetus removed and it lives (with or without medical assistance), then it is a living person. She has committed no crime. Before it is removed, the fetus is a part of her body. At that point, it is her choice to have it removed from her body or leave it attached. If it does not live when it is removed from her body, then it is not a living person, anymore than a tumor would be, and she still has committed no crime.
It’s a simple answer: Let Nature determine what a living person is. The courts currently have reasonably defined when viability occurs. Reality provides the final judgment.
Whether a high government official should be able to own his or her email server privately is another matter. If an ordinary citizen were to endanger the security of the nation, they would be imprisoned. If a high official of the government, particularly someone as important as Hillary Clinton does it, then she gets to run for president, since that proves how important she is.
The Donald is doing better each day. Where is this going? He might win. Then we wont have a Hillary or a Jeb in office. I wonder where he is on the gay marriage topic. I wonder if The Donald would approve of HumpinDog getting married to Betty Lou Thelma Liz the human female.
Love child, not lovechild.