Hillary or Bernie?

[musashisamurai]

Hillary Clinton belongs in prison. That's where thousands of non-celebrity-first-lady-American civil servants with security clearances would be right now if they had put classified information on the open internet for their own convenience - especially under the current administration which has doggedly punished such people whether they were being careless or were whistle blowers.

Well, one of the points Clinton supporters are making is that what Clinton did--[url]what she actually did[/url], not the wildly distorted summary you just gave--while unwise and a violation of at least the SPIRIT of government regulations, presented neither a security threat nor an actual crime, and the only reason this is a big deal is BECAUSE she's a celebrity First Lady.

I tend to concur here. The woman has enemies. If an actual specific security threat had emerged from the email hullabaloo, I'm pretty sure that that's all we would have been hearing about for the past year.

That said, I think Jack Sullivan her policy adviser won't walk away from this happy. Whereas whatever the others may have felt, known, or intended, Sullivan is on record ordering a subordinate to take the header off a document and email it unsecured (in guess what, an email).

Hillary has enemies, yes, but the Clintons also tend to make their scandals worse than they actually, or by set them up. Like, about those Wall Street speeches-whichever aides or advisers didn't tell her that would be a bad idea before she ran (She was already making her superpac that year) is so horribly incompetent that they should be fired on the spot.

[Keirador]

Yeah. Deeply flawed candidate. But I'd argue no politician has been under as much scrutiny since Nixon. The fact that nothing has ever stuck means she's either innocent or like the most effective and influential evil genius in American history and if so like ok fine be president.

[musashisamurai]

Or its also because of the incompetence of the other side.

I mean, while Bill and Hillary are easily two of the smartest politicians of the last two or three decades, they've made some mistakes and they've been involved in some extremely shady business. Hell, they got one of the main conservative character assassins to go work for them and now he (David Brock) runs two or three of their pacs (Used to be three. Then the Feds pointed out that even though her superpac wasn't officially coordinating, having one guy run everything meant they pretty much were coordinated). "I did not have sex with that woman." Cattle futures and stock. Travelgate. To name a few.

But you can't lie and say the right are pretty incompetent with their attacks. Look at the Beghazi committee. Its like they wanted her to succeed after that. Even their handling of the email controversy, the latest one, has been pretty awful if they want to use that to end her-then again, given all the Republicans are even older and even less technically competent, I'm suprised if they understand what email is. You know, because its not in the Bible-but maybe the Koch Brothers send their orders via email?

You may think I'm conservative or liberal, btw. The truth is, I'd rather think for myself, and thus I'm just cynical since both sides are pretty scummy, care only for themselves, and idiots. I'm just afraid that vthe Republican Party's self-destruction will lead to essentially a one-party system for awhile-or just as bad, a system where its the Democrats and Teabaggers, and the Democrats are too fractured to do anything.

[ruffdove]

Hillary Clinton belongs in prison. That's where thousands of non-celebrity-first-lady-American civil servants with security clearances would be right now if they had put classified information on the open internet for their own convenience - especially under the current administration which has doggedly punished such people whether they were being careless or were whistle blowers.

Well, one of the points Clinton supporters are making is that what Clinton did--[url]what she actually did[/url], not the wildly distorted summary you just gave--while unwise and a violation of at least the SPIRIT of government regulations, presented neither a security threat nor an actual crime, and the only reason this is a big deal is BECAUSE she's a celebrity First Lady.

I tend to concur here. The woman has enemies. If an actual specific security threat had emerged from the email hullabaloo, I'm pretty sure that that's all we would have been hearing about for the past year.

Um... no. Not even close. I mean yeah, I get that Clinton supporters are trying to make the point that what she did was just a foolish but honest mistake, and you can choose to believe them if you like, but all the evidence indicates that she deliberately took classification markings (and ordered her subordinates to remove classification markings) from classified information and then put it on the Internet. I find it impossible to believe--after all her years in Washington--that she was ignorant of the fact that such actions were illegal. And if you think worker bees wouldn't be prosecuted for that, then you haven't been paying much attention.

The only assumption I'm making is when I give her the benefit of the doubt that she did it out of an arrogant sense of entitlement to convenience and not as a deliberate attempt to make classified information available to those unauthorized to see it.

[ruffdove]

Yeah. Deeply flawed candidate. But I'd argue no politician has been under as much scrutiny since Nixon. The fact that nothing has ever stuck means she's either innocent or like the most effective and influential evil genius in American history and if so like ok fine be president.

Perhaps no politician since Nixon has deserved such scrutiny. Nixon was brought down by the media exposing what he did, and the media gleefully (and, I'll say, rightfully so) went about that business with a gusto. Most of the media today is actively apologizing for Hillary. Sure, a couple of outlets are talking about the e-mail and other stories, but with most of the outlets blowing it off, that just looks like an attack job. Look through the opinion--all the Hillary supporters you trust so much--to the facts of the case.

Personally, I think your Nixon comparison is an apt one in more ways than just the scrutiny.

[musashisamurai]

The only assumption I'm making is when I give her the benefit of the doubt that she did it out of an arrogant sense of entitlement to convenience and not as a deliberate attempt to make classified information available to those unauthorized to see it.

Thats why the law is so iffy here, because the Espionage acts were made to prosecute people deliberately sharing top sect information. Gross incompetence isnt a route they want to go on either

Personally, I think your Nixon comparison is an apt one in more ways than just the scrutiny.

Well, shes just as paranoid for starters, and also probably keeps a list of enemies, real or imaginary.

[ruffdove]

Thats why the law is so iffy here, because the Espionage acts were made to prosecute people deliberately sharing top sect information. Gross incompetence isnt a route they want to go on either

The laws governing the mishandling of classified information were made to dissuade people from mishandling classified information (and failing that, to punish them so as to dissuade others in the future). Why the information was mishandled should, of course, have a bearing on sentencing, and even the nature of the crime one is charged with, but breaking the law is breaking the law. Should Clinton be charged with espionage and given a sentence comparable to an Ames, a Hansen, or a Montes? Certainly not. But she should be charged with mishandling classified information, and, if convicted, punished. It happens, though only lower ranking officials ever actually get charged. Bill Clinton's own Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutsch, mishandled classified information in much the way Hillary did and retired from public life in disgrace (I forget if Clinton pardoned him or just leaned on the Justice Dept not to prosecute). Kind of illustrates how unevenly the powerful apply the law in this country, which should dismay people from all points on the political spectrum.

As for gross incompetence/ignorance, I'm not buying that defense - especially when you consider the Clintons had experience with a situation pretty much exactly like this with Bill's own DCI. While I don't think Hillary was trying to give the information away (there are frankly easier and less traceable ways of doing that), I think a sense of entitlement and a rules-don't-apply-to-me attitude is what's to blame here. After all, she braved sniper fire in Bosnia for this country - why should she have to wait until she's in a secure area to access classified information?

[gsmx]

Can't you just do it the Canadian way and choose your leader based on their core strength and impressiveness of their party tricks? Makes politics so much simpler.

[Keirador]

Hillary Clinton belongs in prison. That's where thousands of non-celebrity-first-lady-American civil servants with security clearances would be right now if they had put classified information on the open internet for their own convenience - especially under the current administration which has doggedly punished such people whether they were being careless or were whistle blowers.

Well, one of the points Clinton supporters are making is that what Clinton did--[url]what she actually did[/url], not the wildly distorted summary you just gave--while unwise and a violation of at least the SPIRIT of government regulations, presented neither a security threat nor an actual crime, and the only reason this is a big deal is BECAUSE she's a celebrity First Lady.

I tend to concur here. The woman has enemies. If an actual specific security threat had emerged from the email hullabaloo, I'm pretty sure that that's all we would have been hearing about for the past year.

Um... no. Not even close. I mean yeah, I get that Clinton supporters are trying to make the point that what she did was just a foolish but honest mistake, and you can choose to believe them if you like, but all the evidence indicates that she deliberately took classification markings (and ordered her subordinates to remove classification markings) from classified information and then put it on the Internet. I find it impossible to believe--after all her years in Washington--that she was ignorant of the fact that such actions were illegal. And if you think worker bees wouldn't be prosecuted for that, then you haven't been paying much attention.

The only assumption I'm making is when I give her the benefit of the doubt that she did it out of an arrogant sense of entitlement to convenience and not as a deliberate attempt to make classified information available to those unauthorized to see it.

Ruffdove it's fairly clear we're not working from the same understanding of the facts, or perhaps we're working with different "facts" entirely. I don't understand what you mean when you say she "put [classified information] on the Internet." Quite apart from an argument about what constitutes "classified information," I don't understand what you mean by "put it on the Internet." If anything the opposite is true: Clinton's emails were being stored and handled by a private server that she had installed in her home in 2008. The primary objection is not that her emails were insufficiently secure, but rather they were too secure: Clinton herself controlled ultimate access to her emails, and this violates at least the spirit if not the letter of the law regarding government record-keeping. You can't edit what records you pass on to the government and what you keep to yourself. If her emails had been handled by the State Department through a .gov server, she would not have had exclusive access to her own records. Now the Clinton camp has contended that they eventually turned all e-mails over to the State Department, the exact truth of that we shall likely never know, but the fact that she had unusually exclusive control over her own records is indisputable.

It's also, in my opinion, very clear that this was a "mistake." How would that even work? "Whoops, I accidentally had a private server installed in my basement, haha, crazy things can happen!" But what's not at all clear is what law this would be breaking. It does violate State Department protocol and record-keeping requirements, AT LEAST in spirit if not a technical violation of the language of the requirement. Part of what's at issue here is that Clinton's camp did eventually comply with these requirements by turning over the emails in question. . . but again, my understanding is that we basically have to take the Clinton camp's word that they turned over everything necessary. Even if they held something back, however, this would be a violation of protocol but not a criminal act nor even necessarily a technical breach of regulation. It would be NOW: in 2014, Congress amended the Federal Records Act to require that government business performed on private email accounts MUST be turned over to an official account within 20 days of the transmission of the communication. But Hillary Clinton was a private citizen by 2014.

As for managing classified information, so far every email found to contain classified information has been classified retroactively, meaning the information was not classified at the time it was sent, or not marked as classified. There've been around 2,100 of those. Colin Powell himself and members of Condi Rice's staff with high security clearances are all also "guilty" of using personal emails that contained information that was later determined to be classified, or should have been marked classified but was not at the time. Still waiting to find a single Clinton email that was marked as classified at the time it was sent. If one is found, that will be a big deal and a clear violation of policy. That is what the FBI is investigating now.

It's also been alleged, primarily by Clinton's political enemies, that her system was far less secure than a government server would have been. Maybe so. To date there has been no evidence, however, that her system was ever successfully hacked into. The one confirmed instance of hacking Clinton communications, in this case an email sent from her to Sidney Blumenthal, was hacked from Blumenthal's side, meaning it would have made no difference if Clinton were using a government email account because it was the recipient who got hacked, not her.


TL;DR, it's pretty clear that Hillary Clinton's use of private email was highly unusual and didn't comport with established practices, would have been a violation of the Federal Records Act if it had occurred after the 2014 amendment, and went right to the edge of what was technically allowed under regulations that existed at the time. As far as security is concerned, to date there is no evidence that any unauthorized person was able to access information from Clinton's private server.

If your understanding of the facts diverges from my understanding, please point out where and how, with evidence.

[Keirador]

Yeah. Deeply flawed candidate. But I'd argue no politician has been under as much scrutiny since Nixon. The fact that nothing has ever stuck means she's either innocent or like the most effective and influential evil genius in American history and if so like ok fine be president.

Perhaps no politician since Nixon has deserved such scrutiny. Nixon was brought down by the media exposing what he did, and the media gleefully (and, I'll say, rightfully so) went about that business with a gusto. Most of the media today is actively apologizing for Hillary. Sure, a couple of outlets are talking about the e-mail and other stories, but with most of the outlets blowing it off, that just looks like an attack job. Look through the opinion--all the Hillary supporters you trust so much--to the facts of the case.

Personally, I think your Nixon comparison is an apt one in more ways than just the scrutiny.

But with Nixon, we found evidence of wrong-doing. With Hillary Clinton, about a third of the country is JUST SURE SHE'S CROOKED and if there isn't any actual evidence, well the lack of evidence is just evidence of how deep the corruption goes.

As for the media, there's just more of it today than there was in Nixon's time, and reporting standards are different as well. I mean part of the reason people hate the Clintons is Bill's tawdry personal life, and "the President is having an affair!" would have been considered sleazy and not news-worthy a few decades ago. Yeah, some media outlets are friendly to Clinton. Others are rabidly, aggressively, relentlessly hostile to her. Fox News has billions to throw around in investigatory reporting. Hell, the GOP Congress threw together a Select Committee whose stated purpose was to hurt Hillary's poll numbers. Why haven't they found evidence of a crime?