Well, it seems as if this story about Hillary Clinton’s emails has caused quite a commotion. (As it should.)
From Jim Geraghty’s morning newsletter (my emphasis):
The primary feature of Hillary’s “home-brewed’ system was that it could destroy e-mails completely and permanently — no backups or third-party records that you get with Yahoo or Gmail. It would be particularly odd to build a special e-mail system with this “permanent destroy’ capability and never use it.
On Greta Van Susteren’s show last night, ABC News political director Rick Klein said he was at a loss to come up with an innocuous explanation for Hillary’s “home-brewed’ system. There is no innocuous explanation. The whole point of it was to create an e-mail system that Hillary and her team would control completely, that would be beyond the range of federal record-keeping rules and laws and beyond the range of FOIA requests. If any message seemed embarrassing, politically inconvenient, or incriminating, she could erase it, and rest assured it was gone forever, beyond the reach of any investigator, FOIA request, or subpoena.
Of course, it wasn’t particularly secure from hackers and/or foreign spies. And let’s face it, if you’re the Russians or Chinese — heck, maybe the Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, or other regimes — if you’re not trying to hack into the e-mail systems of American officials, you’re not earning your paycheck.
We don’t know if foreign intelligence services ever cracked the (apparently flawed) code and got to read Hillary’s private e-mails. We do know that we would be fools to assume they hadn’t. This prospect makes a lot of Obama’s first-term foreign policy look a little different in retrospect. Was there any particular time when a foreign power seemed one step ahead of our policies? Did Moscow, Beijing, or other foreign capitals seem to know what we were thinking in our negotiations before we began? Any of our spies get burned, or sources of intelligence dry up? Was Hillary Clinton’s e-mail effectively a leak all along?
(By the way, in the interim, every imaginable White House official should be brought before Congress and asked why it didn’t seem unusual to them that Hillary Clinton never used a state.gov address, ever, at all, in a four-year span. Her use of a private e-mail was not secret within the administration.)
The answers to these questions are above my pay grade and security clearance. But if foreign spies were reading the e-mail of the Secretary of State for four years, it represents nothing less than a catastrophe, and one that is entirely the fault of Hillary Clinton herself.
No doubt there are those who will rise reflexively to Ms. Clinton’s defense — why, we may even be acquainted with one or more of them — and will see all of this as nothing more than partisan political warfare. And I’m hardly impartial myself: this thoroughly loathsome woman is a political target that I, and many others, would very much like to see reduced to rubble (if not gravel). In a perfect world, Hillary Clinton would never again occupy any public office anywhere in the land. (Well, not quite: in a perfect world, she would never have risen to public office, or even the public’s attention, in the first place.) But wherever your sentiments lie, this is, beyond all argument, a beautiful Clintonian trifecta: secrecy, damage control, and a belief that rules are for little people.
I’ve said for some time now that I do not believe this woman will be the next president, or even the next Democratic nominee. I think the odds just got even better; the mood even on the Left seems suddenly to have shifted. (Why is this? Perhaps it’s that, because this issue falls on nobody but Hillary, and doesn’t affect anybody else in the party, influential players on the Left now see a long-awaited chance to scrape off the baggage-laden Clintons in favor of, say, Elizabeth Warren, without any collateral damage to other Democrats.)
Of course, any gloating over here on the Right must be tempered by the fact that, as Mr Geraghty said, “if foreign spies were reading the e-mail of the Secretary of State for four years, it represents nothing less than a catastrophe.” And there can be no doubt that our foreign policy under Ms. Clinton’s stewardship was, indeed, a catastrophe. But as far as the fate of the nation is concerned, even that catastrophe pales in comparison to the appalling prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. So on balance I have to see this as a positive development, however cynical that may seem.
20 Comments
My apologies to female dogs the world over …
No need to apologize to female dogs: their worth and honor is so far above this kakist slave of her money masters she will not even qualify as a bitch… [Rest of comment deleted in the interest of decorum – Eds.]
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2015/03/hillarys-e-mail-problem.html
Sorry, ol’ coyote, but this is a family-friendly blog.
Hillary is really counting on her gender to be a band aid over everything. If she should win the nomination, the off limits questions from the media will astound. She is a true Modern Democrat–a criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party.
They don’t need Hillary for her sex anymore, now that they have Liz Warren — who must, today, be one heap happy squaw.
Ahh, Princess Running Bare.
What makes you think Princess Tiger Lilly would be less of a catastrophe as president than Hillary? And how could either of them top the catastrophe of the current maladministration?
djf,
I don’t have any good reason to believe that Elizabeth Warren would be less of a disaster than Hillary, and I don’t suppose either of them could possibly be worse than the current administration (except in the sense that by building on the existing catastrophe, they could make things even worse than they are now).
But I do know how bad a Hillary Clinton presidency would be, so anything that makes that less likely is fine with me. I really can’t think of any politician at all that I wouldn’t vote for against Hillary.
I’d sooner vote for a Yellow dog Democrat (even if it was a female).
Blue dog Democrat Henry?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition
Hillary is one of the more vile people of the early 21st century. And I agree she is just way too much damaged goods for a nomination. She will run on gender, and get a lot traction. But you can only get so far riding on your vagina.
I happen to think that Warren is a light-weight, and is unlikely to get the nomination.
So my question then, is who does get the Democratic nomination? The democrats have a weak bench.
Not far at all, considering the suction would lock you in place.
Nope. I really meant Yellow dog Democrat, JK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_dog_Democrat
Henry.
You are a bad boy. Using an English riding saddle will help.
Troy, my money would be on something rare in the Democrat party…an actual Democrat, like Jim Webb. The Dems might have a weak bench, but they have a corrupt media on their side.
Email Eruption: Hillary Hidden Emails Multiply By Ten
http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2015/03/05/email-eruption-hillary-hidden-emails-multiply-by-ten/
@ The Big Henry. Thanks for that image.
Anyway, this Clinton candicy is gonna be hoot. Every thing this cretin has done in the last 20+ years is gonna resurface. Every “what difference does it make at this point.” Every, “I flew in under sniper fire.”
She is going to be spending more time stamping out fires than campaigning.
And I can’t wait for the first Jezebel.com article snarking that everyone who can’t stand this human is a raving misogynist.
Troy,
That’s not likely to happen in this salon, however, because, you know, we are all clear-thinking adults. That sort of mindless outburst is typically outgrown after junior high school.
Some detailed information here.
Would you buy a used car from this person?
[img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T9PHy5Ey610/VPsCiE96ECI/AAAAAAAAfqQ/-zU_0UgKtcI/s1600/1.jpg[/img]