I forget who, but someone in comments was complaining the other day about Hillary Clinton’s failure to apologize for eGhazi. Well, now she has: Clinton apologized for using a private email server during an ABC News interview last night. She also posted the following statement on her Facebook page:
I wanted you to hear this directly from me:
Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.
It’s important for you to know a few key facts. My use of a personal email account was aboveboard and allowed under the State Department’s rules. Everyone I communicated with in government was aware of it. And nothing I ever sent or received was marked classified at the time.
As this process proceeds, I want to be as transparent as possible. That’s why I’ve provided all of my work emails to the government to be released to the public, and why I’ll be testifying in public in front of the Benghazi Committee later next month.
I know this is a complex story. I could have—and should have—done a better job answering questions earlier. I’m grateful for your support, and I’m not taking anything for granted.
I understand that you may have more questions, and I am going to work to keep answering them. If you want to read more, including my emails themselves, please go here:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/emails/
Will this make her most vociferous detractors happy? Haha, no! If her goal is to please them, nothing short of dousing herself with kerosene and striking a match will do.
Basically, her position hasn’t changed — she’s still saying what she did was legal at the time, but now she’s sorry she did it. Earlier in the week, media outlets were jumping all over a CIA report that claims some of the emails were highly classified, but Clinton says the State Dept. and CIA often address the same issues and classify the same items differently, so she’s sticking to her original contention that none of the emails she sent or received were classified at the time.
Clinton has been dealing with wingnuts and otherwise politically affiliated haters for long enough to know an apology won’t change their minds, so what’s the point? I guess to lay down a marker for the media, which was starting to make the non-apology “a thing.” But certainly she knows the issue isn’t going away anytime soon, not with an upcoming guest appearance on Gowdy Doody Time on the schedule.
I am not now and never have been a huge Hillary Clinton fangrrrl, but I still think eGhazi is a nothingburger. However, as with all media chew toys (see Gore, Al), the substance of the accusation is irrelevant.
The question is whether the Beltway press can continue the scandal drumbeat well into 2016 in a way that sandbags Clinton’s candidacy. My guess is no, but I’m not 100% confident about that. What do you think?
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
Christie bridge scandal investigation ripples lead to airline resignations
Rachel Maddow explains how the resignation of the United Airlines CEO and two other senior officials is connected to Chris Christie’s George Washington Bridge scandal and the investigation into a special flight route nicknamed “the chairman’s flight” for the David Samson, the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and appointee of Chris Christie.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/christie-bridge-scandal-still-making-waves-521701443991
Belafon
The way the Right deals with things like this is to attack the press, not sit there and allow something they consider irrelevant to be brought up over and over.
This might be one of those rare times where we need to follow their lead.
raven
Joe and Mika continued to rail about the, Mika actually is more disgusting than Joe IMHO. Finally Heilman (sp) said that regular voters don’t really give a shit about this whole deal. Not a word that I heard was about Trump and his sorry ass military school bullshit.
rikyrah
Lawrence Lessig to campaign on sole issue of campaign finance reform
Rachel Maddow reports that Lawrence Lessig has reached a fundraising milestone to allow him to enter the Democratic primary, in which he will run on the sole issue of campaign finance reform. Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray discusses how pollsters take campaigns like Lessig’s into account in polls.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/lessig-to-campaign-on-campaign-finance-only-521727043749
Belafon
@rikyrah: Of which he said he’d resign and let his VP take over after campaign finance reform is solved.
I hope the debates allow him on so that Clinton, Sanders, O’Malley, Webb, and Chafee tear him apart. Does he think the presidency works that way?
1. Get elected president
2. Propose campaign finance reform
3. ???
4. Resign
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: It’s hard to overstate how important campaign finance reform is — just about everything else depends on prying democracy out of the plutocrats’ hands. That said, I don’t really get why Lessig thinks he’s the only one who can put this issue forward. Sanders is doing a damn good job (IMO) of raising awareness of it and possibly even pushing Clinton to the left a bit. Lessig, whom I mostly admire, seems superfluous. But I missed Maddow. Maybe she ‘splained?
Germy Shoemangler
White America’s Emotionally Abusive Relationship with Black People
Another interesting Chauncey Devega essay.
Ryan
Doesn’t matter. If she had used separate work and private email addresses, the Benghazi committee would be demanding the release of the private emails to prove she wasn’t hiding classified information, the location of Vince Foster, and god knows what else in a private system.
mtiffany
She’s done herself no favors: any apology will be spun as an admission of guilt on her part. I can just hear the Fox ‘News’ outrage fiction machine now, “If she didn’t do anything wrong, then why did she apologize?”
Sherparick
I speculate that Hilary Clinton decided to use her private server because of her fear of scandal hunting, that if she used her Government e-mail to send a private message or address personal issue, she would be accused of “misappropriating Government assets.” Having everything on her own private e-mail account was, as she said more convenient. I still don’t see the “scandal,” as opposed to Walker taking campaign contributions and then awarding his contributors big Government gifts like $250 million dollars to build a sports arena. Now that’s a scandal.
Germy Shoemangler
I turned on broadcast TV this morning (local news followed by CBS this morning) and the CLINTON APOLOGY! was all over the place. They treated it like it was Nixon resigning and waving from a helicopter.
gene108
I hate our media.
Clinton did the same thing her predecessors did.
At least she did not delete her e-mails like the Bush Administration did and is making them public.
I think the media is sticking with this so doggedly because they hope there’s an e-mail Hillary sent that bitches about the Obamas, but so far the e-mails are pretty boring and they are getting angry that they get nothing to gossip about that could damage Hillary directly from her e-mails.
Amir Khalid
If that was Hillary’s misjudgement, not having work and personal email on separate servers, it’s not a big one and certainly doesn’t disqualify her from the presidency. The released emails show nothing remotely scandalous. There will be no criminal prosecutions resulting from the enquiries into this nothingburger. It’s a misjudgement only because the media insists on seeing a scandal where there isn’t one.
bemused
Satisfied? Nah, MJ crew was very disappointed Hillary’s sorrys were just so damn flat,
Emma
It won’t go away, not only because of the conservatives, but also the liberals that want Clinton scalps. Every time the Republicans pull something they go all mealy-mouthed and start posts with ” I wish I didn’t have to talk about this” or “I hope to God there’s nothing in it” and then proceed to drip poison.
wilfred
She’s not competent. Whether it was being on the wrong side of the Iraq war, her husband’s incarceration opus, the health care fiasco, and now this, she’s incompetent. My personal favorite, her on Obama during the primaries: “He cannot win”.
She can’t. She’s been in the public eye for more than 20 years and they’re still trying to find ways to make her look more human. Fuck off.
Sanders, for this faults, is a much stronger progressive candidate – just like Obama was.
Capt Seaweed
Hillz should have done this 6 months ago. This is one of those times where she’s her own worst enemy. She can really be a terrible politician…
Emma
@wilfred: And if he wins the nomination he’ll get the 24% of the country that identifies as progressive. All the Republicans will have to do is point at “Socialist” after his name and the salt of the earth will go bonkers. You think what they did to Clinton or Kerry was bad? Wait and see.
gene108
@Sherparick:
That’s not a scandal. That’s how our betters roll. We are just too stupid to appreciate how our betters get things done.
Betty Cracker
@mtiffany: True, but they were covering it wall-to-wall anyway. I don’t watch Fox News at home (only see occasional clips here and there), but I was recently providing tech support (HA!) to a senior citizen relative who had Fox blaring as background noise. I shit you not, for hours and hours, it was one guest expert after another about Hillary’s email, and this when there was no real news event to prompt the wild speculation.
There were breaks to discuss other topics, but then it was back to all-Hillary-email-all-the-time — the kind of focus saner networks reserve for wars and major natural disasters. Just absorbing that tsunami of bullshit by osmosis for a few hours, I expected to see Hillary clapped in irons before the week was out. It is Bizarro Cuckooland at Fox.
Emma
I wish, I wish we so-called liberals would go after our enemies the same way we go after our own.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Sherparick:
Apparently, every Secretary of State since the invention of e-mail has used something other than a .gov email address while in office, for job-related communications. According to the stories that came out over the weekend past, Clinton’s first thought on being appointed was “I’ll need an e-mail server.” Maybe there is something about being SecState that makes you want to be in charge of your own e-mail security or something.
OzarkHillbilly
Betty, they’ll keep banging the drum, it will just be a different beat. After all they’ve been banging it since 1992.
Patrick
@raven:
He is right. Just like with Benghazi, the voters don’t care about issues such as these. It doesn’t impact them, thus they don’t care.
The media needs something to talk about and the Republicans are desperate to find anything.
As I recall, George W Bush declassified classified information to promote his disastrous Iraq war. Nobody complained much then. So why is it an issue now?
BTW – I’m not a Hillary fan. But the more the Republicans go after her, I find myself becoming a Hillary voter.
Gian
as each bunch of “cleared” emails is released with some salacious tidbit about how one of Hillary’s buddies thinks (insert person) is (cool, not cool) it will rocket back to the headlines.
the only way it goes away is when only Fox and hate radio bothers to cover Sid Blumenthal’s review of the latest at the time Kardashian ass pic.
Belafon
@wilfred: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/01/12/barack-obama-has-apologized-more-often-than-you-might-think/
Remember when Obama apologized for the IRS investigation “scandal” that we all know wasn’t one?
bemused
Watching msm preoccupation with Hillary breaking news apology, I tried to visualize any other prez candidate, even the Dem candidates with email or similar issue and I couldn’t picture any of them getting this kind of obsessive infatuation from msm.
Eric U.
the CIA is very much wired for republicans. It bothers me that they are so partisan. There is plenty of classified info floating around in the public domain, and plenty of public domain information in classified documents. Just because some analyst at the CIA classifies it doesn’t make the classification legitimate.
JMG
Instead of an apology, she should have done TV interviews in which she defended herself using a lot of F-bombs and challenged interviewers to say just what problem they saw in the whole thing. The resulting non-answers would have been most illuminating.
The country’s political media is intellectually corrupt, possessed of more self-love than Trump, and pretty stupid. Everyone of all ideologies knows this. Why don’t Democrats just say so?
boatboy_srq
“Hillary sends email” is the new “Al Gore is fat.” There will no doubt be Beltway VSPs in and around the MSM who will attempt to use this as BSDI defenses for Teahadi misdeeds. The only ones that will really care will be the shrieking Reichwing fringe, and there’s no real hope of reaching those people anyway.
ETA: it’s significant that even as Fauxnooze begins to accept that there’s a step Rightward they’re not entirely prepared to take (viz. the recent SSM flap in KY), the True Believers among the Reichwingnuts are beginning to denounce Faux as Liebrul Media sellouts to godless IslamoFascoSoshulism; even if Faux decides to accept HRC’s word here and begin downplaying eGhazi (love the term BTW) there’s another wingnut Wurlitzer further to the Right that’ll keep on playing.
jharp
Hillary will make a terrific President.
rikyrah
Scott Walker’s new mission: Convincing voters he is still viable
By Jenna Johnson September 8 at 6:57 PM
ROCHESTER, N.H. — As Scott Walker traveled through New Hampshire’s 10 counties this weekend on a rented Harley-Davidson Road King, the 2016 presidential candidate kept getting questions like these: Are you worried? Are you going to be okay? What about Donald Trump?
Walker has plummeted in early polls, falling from being one of the front-runners to registering as yet another Republican hopeful with single-digit support far behind Trump. His decline has been especially pronounced here in New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation primary, where his polling averages resemble a ski slope — dropping from a 20 percent peak in April to just 5 percent now.
During his two-day tour here pegged to Labor Day, Walker sought to show off his average-guy side — wearing a T-shirt and jeans while riding a motorcycle — and to tout his success in weakening unions in Wisconsin, where he is governor.
But he instead spent a good chunk of the weekend addressing his viability as a candidate. He talked about former front-runners who never became president. He compared competing in the presidential race to running a half-mile track event in high school, sticking with the pack until the finish line is close. He also likened his strategy to skeet shooting, aiming the gun at the spot in the sky where the clay pigeon is headed, not where it already is. And he said the national media has been focused on the wrong issues, glorifying the wrong candidates and twisting his words.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/scott-walkers-new-mission-convincing-voters-he-is-still-viable/2015/09/08/632243a2-5634-11e5-8bb1-b488d231bba2_story.html
Doug R
@wilfred: It’s easy for us to judge her behind the safety of our keyboardz. She made the same mistakes I did, I just didn’t have the right wing proctoscope on me and my family. Making honest mistakes and admitting them makes her a better person and candidate in my opinion.
Belafon
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
If I had been SoS before the new rules, I probably would have done the same thing. Here’s why: I use one email account at a time. When I’m at work, I use the one at work. When I’m not at work, I use one email. Now, for me, there’s a nice big dividing line between on and off time. Imagine being SoS. When does your job end? It’s like the president. I’m 99.999999999999999999% sure Obama doesn’t have a gmail, yahoo, or hotmail account.
It makes a lot of sense to have a controllable email account. And it will be a lot harder to keep them separate now. Sometimes, I find a piece of information online at work that I want to see later, so I send my other account an email.
MomSense
@Belafon:
3. Profit
Belafon
@bemused: Why haven’t they talked to Powell or Rice about their servers?
JPL
@rikyrah: According to TPM.com
On at least one occasion, August 23, 2013, Chris Christie and David Samson together met with United CEO Smisek to discuss this arrangement. Two months prior to that meeting, and two months after signing of the new lease at Newark, thirteen United executives donated a total of $31,500 toward Christie’s re-election effort.
Mika and Joe can continue to discuss, the fact that Hillary used a private e-mail account, but it appears that their buddy is in trouble. Maybe it’s time to discuss Christie.
SiubhanDuinne
@wilfred:
What am I forgetting here? What incarceration?
Jack Carter
“If her goal is to please them, nothing short of dousing herself with kerosene and striking a match will do.”
Not even that will work. They’ll simply accuse her of polluting the environment or using kerosene and matches not made in America.
Eric U.
@Belafon: ruins the narrative. Of course, they have mentioned this in passing, or we wouldn’t know about it
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’ve said this before in other threads but the fact that they seem to want to bring her down is actually strengthening my support for her, because F those media village assholes and their obsession with Democratic chew toys. They like the Bush clan, including the inevitable JEB? which means their taste in politicians is awful. Exhibit A is they still give Dick Cheney airtime.
wilfred
@SiubhanDuinne:
This:
Getting his own apologies out early. Nice touch at the end.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@boatboy_srq: Al Gore was a chew toy before he got fat. He got fat after the election that he won but lost. The chewing started long before he gained weight.
magurakurin
@mtiffany:
She doesn’t care about the Fox viewers. She needs to get everyone who voted for Obama to vote for he as Obama’s third term. By “apologizing” like this she will appear more than reasonable to this group of voters.
The Goopers pulled the trigger way to early on this, in my opinion. It will be nothing by Nov 2016. But I suppose what they are thinking is that they would rather run against Bernie Sanders and doing this now will help him. I know it will draw the ire of the Bern Brigades, but the GOP will rip into Sanders hard if is the nominee. Socialist this and socialist that….look out your taxes are goin to the Moon, Alice.
SiubhanDuinne
@wilfred:
Ah, thanks. I was (mis)reading the line as if he himself had been incarcerated.
Or something, not sure, haven’t had coffee.
HRA
One of the things I remember about Bill Clinton’s run for office and even after he won was the use of polls. This is not different. Hilary’s drop in the polls is what has generated her “I am sorry…” now. For all of that, it still has “I am sorry but…” attached to it and it lacks being sincere when she continues on to the weak defense we have all heard before.
I, like a lot of other Democrats, have not made up my mind who I would support or vote for.
Peale
@Belafon: even if I knew more about him, the fact that he isn’t interested in staying in office makes me uninterested in learning anything about him.
JMG
I wonder if the Democrats freaking out here and elsewhere about Hillary are the same one who freaked out about Obama in 2012 after the Denver debate. I really think my party would win more elections if its members didn’t spend so much time fretting and moaning.
Germy Shoemangler
@magurakurin:
Which is why the villagers are so eager for Joe Biden to jump in. Not that they want to see him president. They just want to kill her “Obama’s behind me” momentum.
bemused
@Belafon:
Responsible reporting? Can’t have that!
wilfred
@Emma:
Maybe. But if Cole put up some of the threads from the primaries 7-8 years ago you’d see there were precious few people supporting Obama, mainly because people thought Clinton made sense with her histrionic “He cannot win” twaddle.
Obama won twice. Clinton’s campaign is based, again, on fear and manipulation of an essential Democratic and increasingly progressive electorate, buying into a hold your nose campaign. It depends on crushing the spirit.
If Sanders can beat her in a fair contest, she’ll make sure it isn’t, he’d merely be doing what Obama did. That worked out ok.
johnnybuck
@magurakurin:
This. It’s a gesture for the “anybody but Hillary” Democrats, who predictably, are trashing the move anyway. I have no idea why she bothers.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m already scandal fatigued with the Clintons again and she hasn’t even won anything yet. No idea why she is predisposed to actively make this shit worse but I can’t imagine it’s a good trait to carry into the Presidency.
Gin & Tonic
@wilfred: If Sanders is the Democratic nominee he will go down in the general like Goldwater or McGovern.
dedc79
Jonah Goldberg doesn’t want an apology. He wants Hillary’s head on a stake. (Shocking, I know.):
HRA
@JMG:
No, I supported and voted for President Obama early on and in both of his elections.
Mike J
@Gin & Tonic: But you’ll be able to feel pure, and isn’t that worth the loss of 2-4 supreme court seats?
Belafon
@wilfred:
Oh, I know. Pictures of her eating at Chipotle and taking photos with kids. The horror.
Sanders “The economy sucks for you and will get worse if Republicans win” is such an upbeat message.
You’re biases are so bad you don’t even pay attention to what you’re saying.
Morzer
@wilfred:
So, we can put you in the somewhat pro-Clinton camp then?
Seriously, we get that you aren’t a fan of HRC, but the more you try and drag up every conceivable bit of gossip against her, the less convincing your case looks. When you have to appeal to the alleged contents of old BJ threads to “prove” that she’s destined to fail, you come across as just as deranged as any of the Ken Starr mob back in the day.
D58826
@mtiffany: The apology will not be accepted because she did not use the correct format. What is the correct format – whatever form/words that she did not use. When she uses those words the correct format will have changed. In the meantime Chaney is treated like a respected elder statesman.
Debbie
Emails are a lose-lose for Hillary. No matter what she does, they’ll hound her endlessly.
Meanwhile, Glenn Beck has gone full-metal whack job. He says he doesn’t understand how a “Jewish person” could support the Iran deal, and he then singled out Ron Wyden because his parents survived the Holocaust.
He’s giving a speech at the Capitol later today, where he will call the deal and supporters “what it is.”
magurakurin
@wilfred: chief, askew already has the job as fanatical Clinton hater. Leave your name and number, someone will call if there is an opening.
Morzer
@Belafon:
I have it on good authority that they edited Cthulhu out of the Chipotle pics. A man walking his dog told me that he was sure a friend of his knew a woman whose personal aromatherapist had proved by internet chemical analysis there was more green in the “original” pictures.
bg
You nailed it, Betty.
She is this election’s Al Gore
Once again, the media is trying their best to destroy a decent candidate, with b.s. repeated over and over again, so that she can’t talk about substantive issues, on which she genuinely has some good stuff to say.
All the good stuff will get drowned out so they can have their horse race and their memes
Redshift
@HRA:
Yeah, that “truth” stuff is so weak. She should come up with something “stronger.”
D58826
Sorry but Someone will complain about the CO2 emissions and adding to global warming
Morzer
@Redshift:
She should definitely punch Bernie in the neck and skullfuck some Republican kittens.
Elizabelle
Haven’t read your comments, but I wonder if this will backdoor help HRC. I know I’ve got my back up over the appalling treatment of her by the mainstream media, which has gone all Fox News.
The NYTimes and others cannot afford to give away their credibility so cheap. It’s not that long since Judith Miller (shhhh) and Jayson Blair (who?).
As for ABC: they. employ. Jonathan. Karl.
The mainstream media are reminding us why the two most trusted men in television. Were comedians. On a comedy channel.
MattF
One thing that people seem to be skipping over is that all the ‘classification’ brouhaha is over material that is now ‘deemed classified’ by various ‘experts’ but was not classified when it was actually circulated. So, bear in mind, e.g., that there’s a ton of Snowden-related stuff in the NYT and The Guardian that is deemed classified, and that people with clearances are (I guess) supposed to shield their eyes from it and not look at their computer screens if there’s some reference to it.
The whole classification business is a huge bureaucratic mess and it’s administered by people who have a fundamental interest in classifying as much stuff as possible.
benw
@Belafon:
That dastardly Obama! He’s betrayed us liberals too many times.
@JMG:
I think we should leave the Trump approach to Trump. While it sounds cathartic on paper, it would probably look pretty ugly in real life (see, e.g. Trump, Donald). Being cool and composed in the face of anger and DERP has been a pretty good strategy so far (see, e.g. Obama, Barack).
I finally cared enough to understand this particular “scandal”, so I went to the Hillary site. The issue is that she *never* used a .state.gov account, instead doing all her emailing on her own server, right? So we’re expected to believe that all of this would never have been “scandalized” if she’d just done all the same stuff she did, but with a State issued .gov email? Please.
Finally, I haven’t found the answer to the most pressing question, WHAT WAS THE ADDRESS? I bet it was [email protected].
CaseyL
I don’t understand why no one, including HRC, brings up the Anonymous/Wikileaks matter, and how that made using government email and government servers look like a very risky proposition.
Anonymous/Wikileaks was the first thing I thought of when the email story broke: she wanted to make sure that never happened again.
Belafon
What’s really annoying is this: I often apologize for things that really weren’t wrong, and sometimes for things where the outcome occurred because the process I was following was wrong. I do this because talking about the fault doesn’t solve the problem.
Like a lot of things, this apology is saying more about everyone else than it is about Clinton.
Do I think it will hurt her? Not really. Only if Gowdy can drag it out until next year, which he might if Democrats keep being Democrats (except the Democrat on Gowdy’s committe who knows what’s going on, he’s awesome). And even then, I don’t think it’ll do much.
sharl
Regarding the musings upthread about Larry Lessig, I strongly suspect he is at least partially motivated by the suicide of Aaron Swartz. That was felt on a very visceral level by Lessig, who took some responsibility for not mentoring Swartz more.
(Having mentored gifted youngsters myself on one or two occasions – though not as gifted as Swartz* – I’ve encountered the rather unusual challenges posed by that duty. Keeping highly motivated and determined kids out of trouble with the authorities who rule the roost in highly hierarchical organizations requires a certain level of vigilance and knowing the ropes. Swartz didn’t operate in such a hierarchy in the classical sense, but there is a less obvious but much more powerful hierarchy in our nation’s corporatocracy which he did ultimately run afoul of.)
During the time he was doing things that ultimately got him in trouble (via violation of the CFAA and irking the corporations that benefit from that law), Swartz was also very committed to the idea of campaign reform. In a way, Lessig is picking up the banner left when Swartz’s lifeless body was found hanging by its neck in a NYC apartment. Having observed the shock and sorrow of a lot of folks who clearly loved Swartz – and that includes Lessig – I can totally believe that he collected a million dollars rather quickly (though I wonder if a certain amount of that might be “guilt money” from the Silicon Valley crowd, especially those who have benefited directly or indirectly from CFAA).
*He recognized his own socioeconomic privilege – a fact made clear in his own writings in his blog – and decided to use it for what he considered a greater good. Unfortunately, his own naivete blinded him to the potential dangers of his actions. I don’t know how much blame – if any – Lessig deserves for that, but in all the admiration for the young wunderkind from others in the vanguard of the IT entrepreneurial community, no one apparently considered that, for all his technical brilliance and social sensitivity, the kid was vulnerable in very major ways, especially considering the forces he was taking on. I could totally see this as a major motivator of Lessig’s current activities.
Elizabelle
@bg: Re Hillary as this year’s Al Gore. I think so too.
Cannot let that happen. We cannot endure another W, and — Supreme Court.
Never forget how consolidated the media ownership in this country. You see it at Election Time. Obama was such a phenom, he could override it. But look at the midterms.
Media ownership cares more about favorable tax treatment than democracy and a functioning federal state (that works for the working man as equitably as for the wealthy). Do not overlook that.
Morzer
@CaseyL:
I thought of Belichick and the Patriots.
Brandon
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
I have worked with State Dept. staff overseas and my recollection was basically that everyone in the embassy was using Yahoo email accounts. I think they have a few issues, first they don’t like issuing Blackberrys/mobile devices for security reasons and you can only access your official email logged in from a secure State Dept terminal. There are obvious security reasons for it, but that is not how we generally work in the modern age.
Anyway, that is not to say that I think she’s handled this issue extremely poorly.
Germy Shoemangler
NYTImes Washington Bureau Shake-Up Follows Years of Shoddy Clinton Reporting
Betty Cracker
@dedc79: I can tell Goldberg’s heart is not in it. He’s just trying to distract the howling mob of white supremacists (e.g., a significant portion of his readership) whom he offended by dissing Trump. Look! Squirrel!
Ruckus
@Belafon:
His 15 minutes is up and he is just trying to buy another 15.
Shorter, LOOK AT ME!!!!
Is this an important issue?
Of course it is. But stunts aren’t going to make an important issue look important. Especially this lame a stunt.
Iowa Old Lady
Clinton’s E-mail and Benghazi exist with no specifics but a cloud of doubt. To most people, they reinforce the narrative that Clinton is untrustworthy, and that’s their purpose. How much effect that will have is unknown at the moment.
ETA: IOW, it’s not the faux scandals themselves that matter. It’s the knock-on effect.
Emma
@wilfred: No. He won’t. Obama was riding a tide Sanders WILL NOT get. WILL NOT. Americans have been taught to be suspicious of anything that is not CAPITALISM, in large letters. They don’t know s-hit about socialism or communism, but they are convinced they are the creation of the Devil. No matter how many time Sanders explains what he stands for, saturating the airwaves/billboards with ‘He’s a SOCIALIST! OMG!!!” will derail him faster than a bad Amtrak bridge.
Bobby Thomson
@wilfred: your memory is inaccurate. Clinton fans were definitely outnumbered here in 2007 and especially in 2008. Most people have moved on, too.
Morzer
@Emma:
If Sanders did get the nomination, we’d hear an endless series of demands for apologies related to the misdeeds of Stalin, Mao and anyone else who got within a hundred miles of the word “socialism”.
Germy Shoemangler
@Morzer: And of course National Socialism.
I can just see Jon Karl interviewing Sanders if he wins the nomination: “So, are you a Hitler socialist, or a Stalin socialist?”
dedc79
@Betty Cracker: I think you’re right. The Corner’s commenters are in full-on insurrection mode over National Review’s alleged betrayal of the conservative cause. Any distraction will do, but Hillary-related distractions are the best.
D58826
@Emma: I was going to make the same point. The GOP will run a 4 word campaign – ‘Sanders is a socialist’. For way to many Americans socialism = communism = Stalin.
Brandon
@Bobby Thomson: You know, before speculating you could actually just got back in time and read it.
Here is one: https://balloon-juice.com/2008/03/09/he-is-right/
It is hard to judge if it shaded one way or another in terms of numbers, but what I have gleaned is that the pro-Hillary people were just extremely more vocal, obnoxious and did a lot projecting and name calling.
Mark B.
The Clintons have been dealing with this stuff for more than 25 years, since there’s been a well-financed operation to create shit and try to make it fly. This particular one was pretty transparent, keep throwing shit at the wall and running it up the flagpole. If it either sticks or someone salutes it, they go with it. The problem is that, like Pavlov’s dogs, the anti-Hillary partisans start salivating whenever they they hear her name, and they also will eat any anti Hillary shit that can get a hold of and also salute it on the flag pole. [intentionally horrible mixed metaphor]
Most everyone else is so desensitized to this constant crying of wolf [Look! another metaphor] that they’ve tuned it out. There’s so much noise that most everyone just hates politics. Which I think is what the people pushing right wing memes really wanted in the first place. Keep the people angry and ignorant and you can push your favorite demagogue. That’s the Koch family business.
But Trump came along and decided to grab a little of that zeitgeist for himself, which added another layer of chaos to the mix. I think we’re in for a bumpy ride. Since Reagan, I’ve seen America become progressively more ignorant and racist, and divided against itself. Obama tried to bring the country back together and that just increased the rage of the hateful clans on the right. I don’t know where we go from here.
Sorry for the stream of consciousness post. Usually I have a point.
Davis X. Machina
@D58826:
The older, the truer.
The older, the more likely to vote.
srv
What, after a year of non-apology now an apology is OK? After releasing all information, we kept finding out some new thing she hadn’t released?
What part of this behavior and response is Presidential material? I could see her as director of the FBI in the 60s or running a crime syndicate, but President?
Nobody wants to vote for this woman. A lot of democrats will, because they just pull the lever. People can’t wait to vote for Trump.
Davis X. Machina
@Emma: The crime of it is, they hate the label, but love the product.
Improved social provision.
Reining in corporate power.
Co-determination by employees.
Production for use, not profit.
All poll well. But the brand name is lethal. (Less so with younger voters, but that’s the least likely demographic to turn up at the polls.)
benw
@Iowa Old Lady:
You are a wise old lady from Iowa.
@D58826:
Counterpoint: the media and Republicans have been screaming Socialist, Communist, dictator, Stalin, Hitler, fascist, Alinskyite at Obama for so long it’s lost any impact for most Americans except the hard core right wing. But we won’t know unless Sanders can run.
gene108
@magurakurin:
I think Sander’s problem is not so much that he is a Socialist, but he’s gruff. He sounds gloomy. I just don’t get an overwhelming sense of cheery-eyed optimism from him.
Edit: Reagan, Bill Clinton and Obama sold America on hope, as much as technocratic solutions.
Davis X. Machina
@Gin & Tonic: And no one to the left of Bob Casey will get within spitting distance of the nomination again, at least for our lifetimes. Because that will be the lesson drawn…
Patricia Kayden
@raven: Heileman is correct. We don’t give a beep about the email “scandal”. There is no one who was going to vote for Secretary Clinton who changed his/her mind based on the email “scandal”. The media and Rightwingers need to find a steamier scandal.
Villago Delenda Est
The Vermin of the Village, particularly the scum of the NYT, have never let a nothingburger get in the way of a “scandal” that they think they can use to bring down some perceived threat to the 1%.
JMG
It is still overwhelmingly likely that Clinton will win the nomination. This will redouble political media’s efforts to smear her, as they cannot stand to have their power revealed as existing largely in their own minds. But it will also inoculate 45 percent plus of the electorate from the bushwa, as they rally behind their party’s nominee. At this time next year, we’ll all be screaming about something else,God knows what.
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
They kept a boring land deal, from the 1970’s, front and center for most of 1993 and 1994.
@JMG:
See Whitewater above. This is the narrative. The narrative will not go away. It has been set. The e-mails will be with us forever.
Germy Shoemangler
@Villago Delenda Est:
https://balloon-juice.com/2015/09/09/media-culpa/#comment-5471383
I don’t know… Maybe I’m being naive thinking this will make a difference.
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: Sad read. Very true, though. Thanks for link.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Maybe Hilz should take an example from her former boss and just ignore the tard press until they get themselves so worked up they step over the line and ruin themselves.
You gotta admit that nobody is better at that than Obama.
Germy Shoemangler
@Paul in KY: Chauncey Devega speaks some harsh truths. I hope he continues.
dedc79
@srv:
Your candidate’s whole shtick is that he never apologizes for anything, ever. If Trump was driving drunk, swerved off the road onto the sidewalk, and ran over a toddler, he’d find a way to blame the toddler for denting his car.
This “never apologize” plan works great in GOP primary season, but will prove disastrous for him if/when he manages to get the nomination.
Germy Shoemangler
@dedc79: The blowback has already begun, with Trump’s “service” in some military school his parents sent him to because of his borderline personality traits.
I’m disappointed because I was looking forward to him stinking up the GOP for a few more months and months and then possibly running as a third-party “Tribble Party” candidate.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@JMG: Democrats live for a chance to sob, wail, and bemoan their fate. It’s why Obama has proven to be such a disappointment; he’s given us pretty much everything we could have asked for under the circumstances and then some…with no drama attached.
JMG
To reiterate, Clinton is going to be the nominee. If you’re tired of media Clintonmania, too bad.Try defending her for a change, maybe you’ll feel better.
Paul in KY
@HRA: Just vote for whomever the Democratic nominee is in the general election.
Germy Shoemangler
CNN Headline:
Tennis fans boo Donald Trump at U.S. Open
Mark B.
@JMG: Seems likely, even probable, but I wouldn’t call it a certainty yet. I don’t think Sanders can surpass her but he can put up a respectable showing. I like Biden and I think he could do the same, but I hope he decides against entering the race. His family has been through enough already and he won’t win, or contribute much to the race.
Mark B.
@Germy Shoemangler: New Yorkers do not like the guy. That should tell you something.
dedc79
@Germy Shoemangler: But haven’t you heard? He “fixed” the whole military quote snafu by calling on CNN to donate all proceeds from the debate to care for military veterans.
Mark B.
Interesting story on FiveThirtyEight comparing Trump and Sanders. He says that they aren’t really comparable, and also says that a Trump nomination is extremely unlikely. I think Nate Silver’s record is pretty good on this kind of prediction.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-comparing-donald-trump-and-bernie-sanders/
Mike in NC
@Mark B.: You do have a point and I agree 100%. Media in this country is a disgrace, dedicated to vapid infotainment and profits for their corporate owners.
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
To know him is to loathe him. New Yorkers have been dealing with Trump’s shit for forty years and I don’t foresee them bandwagoning to his demented camp.
In the meantime he may continue shitting the Republican bed with my blessings.
trollhattan
@JMG:
Where’s the fun in that? Eating our young comes much more naturally.
beergoggles
And by apologizing she’s admitted to the right wing (and) media that she was wrong and there’s something to attack her for. They’ll be circling her like sharks smelling blood in the water because to those people, apologizing is a sign of weakness. She can now have fun being swiftboated for eghazi.
Sigh, well it was an interesting presidential run while it lasted.
Full metal Wingnut
@Emma: Show me data that says this or fuck off. Seriously. Enough of this self fulfilling prophecy bullshit
randy khan
@srv: “Nobody wants to vote for this woman” is baloney.
I think she’d make a very good President, personally. Although I have nothing against Sanders, I will vote for her over him (and, needless to say, Webb, O’Malley, Chafee and Lessig), and I’d vote for her over Joe Biden. I know a ton of people who feel the same way, particularly progressive women.
Mike in NC
@dedc79: Would love to see Trump visit a VA hospital and be caught on tape sneering at the “bums and losers” with missing arms and legs.
Full metal Wingnut
@Gin & Tonic: Data? Of any kind?
Full metal Wingnut
@Belafon: But that is accurate. The economy does suck and will get worse if the republicans win. If you want to criticize Sanders, try harder
Peale
@HRA: I’ve always had a problem with the idea that politicians shouldn’t follow polls. That complaint about the Clinton administration always seemed so quaint. No No No. Don’t try to determine what will be popular in a democracy…instead listen to your “serious advisors”. Market research is just soooo numbery…let’s reward people who make impulsive decisions “from their gut” and take their “hunches” as fact.
I know the press likes the idea that leaders lead and make “tough decisions” without taking public opinion into consideration and think that makes for wimpy leaders, but I think I actually want someone who is always going to be thinking that they’ll have to face voters eventually rather than all of this insiders rule everything ideal. Especially when you take a look at which insiders the press really likes.
trollhattan
@bg:
Seems to me one enormous difference this go will be PBO will campaign for Hillary while Gore kept Big Dog at arm’s length. The president will shred whichever moron Republican survives the primaries in a fashion she won’t dare.
I cannot wait.
Full metal Wingnut
@Emma: Data or shut the fuck up. I’m tired of this self/fulfilling prophecy that Sanders can’t win so no one should support him in the primary.
Mike in NC
@beergoggles: WaPo and NYT are adding staff to work full time on trashing HRC. David Brooks has hired a couple of interns to help him with the hit pieces he’ll be submitting every week for the next year. Right wing editorial cartoons have replaced Obama with a bone through his nose with Clinton riding on a broom. Why is none of this a surprise?
Mark B.
@Full metal Wingnut: I view Sanders as an unlikely winner for the nomination, but I’ll vote for him in the primaries. In the general, I’ll vote for the nominee. That’s my personal loyalty oath.
Full metal Wingnut
@benw: They’ll call anyone a socialist. It doesn’t matter if Sanders says he is a socialist. They don’t care what the candidate says. If Rush Limbaugh tells them Obama is a socialist, they’ll believe it no matter how much Obama denies it. Facts don’t matter.
And most Dems are smart enough to know that Repubs are racist, misogynistic children. As for “independents” or undecided, there are fewer than you think.
If someone shows me data, like polling, that shows Sanders is unelectable, I will shift my support to Clinton. Until then, I am confident in the fundamentals and will continue volunteering for Bernie.
beergoggles
@Mike in NC: I’m convinced that what we see as being well mannered and polite, those assholes see as weakness. The WaPo and NYT have consistently given voice to racists and bigots in their pages – why should their descent into attacking HRC as a fulltime venture be a surprise?
benw
@Full metal Wingnut: Sounds good. Take action for what you believe in. SANDERS/WINGNUT 2016.
Applejinx
It’s kind of like the Emo Philips joke: he used to think the brain was the most important organ and then he thought, wait a minute, what’s telling me that?
Pretty sure we’re going to see Sanders vs. Trump (or indeed Sanders vs. Bush vs. Trump), which Sanders can win.
I see a lot of posters saying nope! These guys can’t be nominated and can’t win because they’re completely toxic to the American People, who’re going to hate hate hate them (both of them) just as soon as somebody reveals the terrible secret: Sanders isn’t a capitalist, and Trump’s an asshole.
I think those secrets are out and we’ve already seen the results: Trump wiping the floor with the other Republicans, and Sanders filling stadiums and already challenging Hillary where he originally meant to just steer Hillary’s campaign, nothing more.
And pollsters and party loyalists are saying, wait! Just as soon as people discover these non-party-approved ringers, everything will flip and the People will rise up and REVOLT in favor of… the ones pollsters and party loyalists intended to be the anointed, pre-arranged choices!
So yeah: who’s telling us this?
Matt McIrvin
@Sherparick: I don’t think it’s necessary to find any special reason why she used a personal email server. This seems to have been the standard practice for Secretaries of State at the time.
It was weird and not best practice, but I don’t think it’s a mystery that one needs to find hidden reasons for; she was just continuing a State Department practice held over from the early days of email that wasn’t recognized as being broken.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Good heavens.
I loathe Dick Cheney and think he’s the most heinous war criminal since Kissinger, but even I wouldn’t want to watch hours of screeching about the hideous wallpaper he chose for his dining room.
What is the attraction?
Omnes Omnibus
@Full metal Wingnut: Dude, no one is telling you not to support Sanders. People on a blog are offering their opinions that they do not think that he can win. It is a blog; people do that. Calm the fuck down.
boatboy_srq
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Just saying that HRC’s emails are the “fat” the MSM will chew in place of Al Gore’s waistline.
Matt McIrvin
Nate Silver says:
I think this is wrong. If you’re a Republican politician, Trump is an unusual figure. But I think there’s a disconnect between them and the rank and file that Trump is speaking to. Most Republican voters are neither ideological supply-siders nor super-Christians; they’re more Archie Bunker, people who feel as if the world is passing them by and it’s the fault of liberals and minorities and filthy people they hate. That’s what Trump is speaking to, more by his manner than by any stated policy position.
I do think he’s right that Bernie Sanders is well in the mainstream of Democratic primary candidates, the liberal challenger who usually doesn’t get the nomination. Barack Obama’s situation was far more unusual.
Anoniminous
This is why I don’t like Clinton. She’s a jelly fish: floats wherever the drifting sea takes her and lacks a spine.
Applejinx
@Gin & Tonic: So what the Goldwater/McGovern precedent tells us is, don’t run Bernie against Bush’s re-election campaign. Both Johnson and Nixon were running re-election campaigns, Nixon’s during wartime. We ran Kerry, and he sucked, doing worse than Gore (but better than any Republican since)
Goldwater was known for opposing civil rights, which is a thing the Republicans are now re-enacting.
Both Nixon runs and Reagan’s first run, both Clinton runs and Bush’s first runs were against the opposing party plus third party runs. We’re not going to see that from a Sanders run if Obama’s primary victory over Clinton tells us anything: if Sanders gets the nom there will not be a leftwing third party, If anybody but Trump gets the nom on the R side, Trump will run third party for strictly self-interested reasons and might out-pull the eventual R candidate.
Regarding McGovern, everybody expects ratfucking now. It’s even right here on Balloon Juice! Hi guys! :D so all Sanders has to do is continue to be himself, run against Trump or against a party Republican and also Trump, and avoid picking Tom Eagleton as a Veep. The guy was so troubled that the money flow just stopped instantly, which was a major problem to McGovern’s campaign, but really it was running against an incumbent law-n-order President at war which made it so impossible for McGovern. Plus, his policies which are fairly mainstream now were kind of liberal back in the day.
Hence, let’s not run Bernie Sanders in place of Kerry against Bush’s second term, using a time machine.
Got that?
But we’re not running him then. We’re following two terms of a black corporate-centrist President who shoved the Overton window well in Bernie’s direction, at a time of substantial populist uprising (both wise and stupid) against ALL party-machine candidates.
We should be good. Now let’s have no more of this Goldwater/McGovern silliness. Learn to politics :)
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
FYI, the Dave Matthews Band can fill stadiums too. It’s a big country with millions of liberals in it. It’s also a big country with EVEN MORE MILLIONS of non-liberals in it.
J R in WV
Craven as*hole* in the mainstream media will continue to construe every move Hillary has ever made to be related to the cocaine business in Arkansas when Bill was governor there, 30? years ago. Which is exactly as crazy today as it was when the local Republicans tried to make that accusation a thing when Bill Clinton ran for re-election as governor.
Scads of dealers were dead, it must be the Governor’s fault! How is that? I dunno… maybe dealing expensive drugs and being perceived as cheating customers (with guns) was a risky part of the business?
I know that here in W Va most of the shooting incidents are either at 3 or 4 am in an alley behind a bar, drug related or whatever, or domestic violence where some crazed male kills all his relatives because he has a big old sad about his wife/girlfriend/mother.
I blame
Governorformer Governor and now Senator Manchin for not stopping those 3 am back door of the bar shootings by… magix fairy dusts or sumfing like that. Not!! I blame the dealers and their low-life customers!And in Hillary’s case, I blame the terrible culture fostered in the big name news media, where they have to make baseless attacks all the time (for some strange and inexplicable reason), as opposed to digging for facts and publishing those facts, about all the candidates!
But I’m an old, and we doesn’t understand the proper new reasons reporters do what they do (ie what they are told to do by the people communicating the wishes of the ownership – slam any Democrat leading any polls). Grrrrr!
[sic on all the slang used for effect!]
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark B.: Bernie is accomplishing his mission, which is to get the issues he cares about on Hillary’s radar.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Then why are the non-Trump Republicans struggling so badly to put butts in seats? Please show the Cruz/Bush/Walker rallies filling these even-more-stadiums. ‘cos they ARE in fact running for President, and it’s not like Trump isn’t filling up rooms with crazed fans.
Turnout, turnout, turnout. The bane of Democratic midterm elections. It’s not gonna be a midterm election.
Keith G
@Doug R:
Hence, part of the problem. She was and is a lifelong politician and political operative as well as being whip smart. The fact that she would walk into the same type of blunder that you or I would make is a bit disconcerting.
The only thing scandalous about this is the blatant stupidity of it. For years I was a low-level government employee who took great pains to keep any personal communications as far apart from my professional communications as humanly possible.
As far as the apology, yes it is about 6 or 8 months too late. Even if she has nothing to apologize for, we all know it is part of the game. Just another box to be checked off as we move forward. And this is a box that should have been checked off a long time ago.
Zinsky
Betty – the media stretched the Whitewater faux scandal out for eight years, so Hell yes, the media will flog this dead horse for decades. Hillary needs to learn from her enemies and respond by attacking. Call the GOP the “Dirty Tricks Party” and accuse Fox News of being run by degenerate non-citizens from Saudi Arabia and Australia. An apology will never, ever, ever satisfy these vermin.
Omnes Omnibus
@Zinsky: The apology isn’t aimed at the MSM or the right. It is aimed at Dems and leaners who are wondering if there is something there in the eghazi mess. She can point at an apology and move on wrt those people.
brantl
If she had done this, right out of the gate, those bozos would have deflated like Boner’s schlong. This would have been over 6 months ago. She never makes the smart first move, God, that galls me. And she NEVER should have been on a private server, it was just DUMB.
BruceFromOhio
Not even.
“She should have used gasoline instead of kerosene.”
“Look at the pollution she caused! And lieberals are always bitching about the environment.”
“Now someone else has to clean that up. How typical.”
“I suppose she expected the government to put her out.”
“What if someone else had caught fire? How selfish of her!”
It simply does not matter because Reasons, and then there is always Cleek’s law.
Peale
@BruceFromOhio: You forgot “She’s only doing this to distract us from the e-mail scandal.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I agree with that last part, not the first, and if it weren’t this (and I don’t for a minute think Andrea Mitchell*and Jake Tapper and Ron Fournier et al will move on) it would be the Clinton Foundation, and probably will be this time next week.
Heard Mrs Greenspan in the car an hour or so ago asking Tim Kaine the most godawful tendentious question about Syria, the underlying implication being that it was an indisputable fact that if we had been “tougher” on Assad, as Hillary Clinton “acknowledged” things wouldn’t be so bad. Last week she said it was “moving” to watch there spectacle of some weeping idiot in Kentucky getting her martyr fantasy on about the gubmint gonna come for her preacher man if he don’t marry the sodomites.
randy khan
@brantl: Oh, please. If she’d apologized “right out of the gate” it would have made no difference at all to the people who are attacking her, just like it makes no difference today.
Honestly, I sometimes feel like the 8 years of the Clinton Administration and the 6+ years of the Obama Administration haven’t taught people anything about the Republican modus operandi.
askew
At this point, I have to think she is a pathological liar. There were multiple lies in this email she sent out:
She did not supply all of her work-related emails to the State Dept. Sidney Blumenthal’s emails were turned over to the Benghazi committee and in those emails there were multiple emails between him and Hillary on Libya that Hillary did not turn over to State. State confirmed that they did not receive those emails.
There was a rule in place that all email correspondence was supposed to be archived in a timely manner and there was a rule that all employees were to turn over government work when they left State. Hillary did not comply with either rule. She kept her government emails for years until State asked for them.
She said she emailed government officials at their government email address to make sure emails were archived. However, that ignores all the emails she did outside of government that were not archived and it also ignores all the email exchanges she had with government employees who also had personal email addresses on her email server (Huma, etc.).
She only gave the server over to government after it was wiped and the FBI became involved. Prior to that, she refused to turn over her server.
Then there are the standard weseal words that she always uses. It doesn’t matter if a document is marked classified or not. The email is determined classified based on the contents not the markings. Hillary attended training on how to handle and identify classified material and like all State employees had a duty to report breaches of classified material in unclassified systems. She had multiple instances of Foreign Government Information that she sent, received or requested in her emails. FGI is considered classified at birth in the State Dept. and should never have been in an unsecured system. And that doesn’t even address the findings by the IG and CIA/NGIA review finding top secret information in her email which was classified at the time it was sent.
In short, this email will mollify her supporters who have believed her lies for years. It won’t do a damn thing to stop all the questions, investigations and lawsuits into her unorthodox server and disregard for protecting classified material.
Paul in KY
@askew: You need to meet Wilfred. You two could probably work out which anti-Hillary stories to concentrate on. He takes this many, you get that many, etc. etc.
A guy
She commited a crime
Omnes Omnibus
@A guy: What crime? Please cite the code section.
pluege
although wingnuts would love to have the big scandal knockout, they know that is unlikely given that all of their scandals are faux and trumped-up. The strategy then is denting armor and death by a thousand cuts. It’s why they are relentless in face of all contrary evidence, proportion or decency – the goal is to damage, not knockout.
Kay
@askew:
But they can’t forbid that, can they? She can exchange personal emails with people she knows whether they work with her or not, right?
As a person who recently got a letter from the federal government warning me that my entire federal employee record was somehow breached it’s just hard for me to believe there’s this huge wall in place that was foolproof until Hillary Clinton came along. I’ve been hearing about the sancity of medical information nearly my entire adult life- I’ve recently received notice that both my information and my 13 year old son’s information escaped the iron grip of the health insurance industry. I never thought it was “secure” anyway.
askew
Of course she can exchange emails with people outside the government but those emails won’t be archived because Hillary did not use a .gov email address. In her apology letter, she implied that all of her emails would be backed up because she emailed government employees on their .gov email accounts. That means all of the emails with foreign governments, outside consultants (see the odious Sydney Blumenthal) etc. would not be archived.
She’s basically spinning and trying to pretend that her use of private email didn’t create a gap in government records.
Morzer
@askew:
Gosh, the paper clip requisition records might be incomplete! Is the penalty 100 lashes, or are we going to see you demanding that she cut off her own hands?
Kay
@askew:
But why would her emails with the odious Blumenthal be archived anyway? I feel like you’re conflating two issues. Are you upset that she consults with the odious Blumenthal inside or outside the government account?
Because the government account doesn’t make a bit of difference. Obviously she can ask Blumenthal for any advice she wants. She can ask anyone in the world for advice. Until she’s forbidden to talk to any of these people while she’s working for the government I don’t know how they control the whole universe of communication between people. Would it be better if she met with Blumenthal after work and talked to him?
brantl
@randy khan: @Kay: It wouldn’t influence the whackos, it influences the fence sitters, the whackos are a lost cause.