(no subject)

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but Trump.

Also, at this point, I think Hillary is probably more powerful and influential than Bill - he is Christmas past, she is Christmas future. Or at least I hope it's not a Trump future.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I don't think we need to "but Trump" away her actions, here. The Hillary defense is, simply: I didn't violate the law because my actions didn't meet the prerequisite elements of the criminal statute.

The reporting and spin on this has been extraordinarily misleading. People are claiming that Hillary should be in prison because she was grossly negligent with respect to "classified information" - but omitting that that standard applies only to the mishandling of information specifically relating to national defense. You have to intend to compromise classified information to reach the prerequisite standard of guilt for the related more general offense. And then most of the rules and standards she's accused of having violated are internal departmental policies or regulations based on statutes directing agencies to develop rules, etc., etc. - i.e., incredibly arcane, bureaucratic stuff, none of it attaching criminal liability, like failing to file a form in triplicate pursuant to an HR memo.

Never mind that it's only come up in the first place because of a roving Republican commission that started by trying to figure out if Hillary had intentionally misled the public about the cause of the Benghazi attack. We're so far from the original point of the investigation - and now at its apparent terminus after a hostile investigator concluded that he couldn't, despite his best efforts, make the case for her criminal prosecution - that I think we're quite reasonable if we dismiss the whole thing as a huge waste of time and mental effort. No "But Trump" necessary. But nothing. Hillary didn't do anything wrong. Period.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

You don't have to sell me hard. Nevertheless, you don't have to be a partisan Republican to wince over the difference between "extremely careless" and 'intentional'. I think we both see that the Hillary people understand that there is no big problem here, and that the Red Staters see 'Clinton corruption', and the interesting question is how do the swing-voters/independents feel about it. It hasn't looked great, per Wash. Post/ABC poll (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-email-fbi-poll_us_57838e50e4b01edea78e82c3):

A majority of Americans reject the FBI’s recommendation against charging Hillary Clinton with a crime for her State Department e-mail practices and say the issue raises concerns about how she might perform her presidential duties, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. …The Post-ABC poll found 56 percent disapprove of Comey’s recommendation against charging Clinton while 35 percent approve.

Of course, most people also aren't lawyers, and we do tend to take in the media reports, which have been known to be harder on Hillary, harder than they are on Trump, for reasons which I cannot begin to imagine. In the end, it hasn't been a good political card for Hillary to be dealt. She has to swim against that political current. It is along these lines, that one hopes the 'but Trump' argument will help carry the day.

Though, for me, the real issue for this election might be how many Americans want to let out their 'Christian white nationalism' in the voting booth this year, which would render all these secondary issues as just background noise to the real story, at the risk of sounding a little paranoiac.

[liliaeth]

Except that even Comey had to admit that the 'extremely careless' comment wasn't even correct, since the mails in question didn't have the proper heading, and could easily have been missed as classified in the first place.

His 'extremely careless' comment in fact was a partisan attempt at passive aggressively attacking her, when he had to admit, that there was no way he could possibly hold anything criminal against her.

In fact, if you look at what he did, his comments were not only extremely childish, and showing just how partisan he was, they were also against the rules of how these kinds of things are supposed to be handled.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

And we have emails in which Hilary instructs her aids to remove the headings because with proper headings aids were not able to forward the emails to an unsecure server.

[liliaeth]

I've been keeping track of this thing along side fact checking sites and reliable sites. (aka no bernie bro sites, or right wing sites since both of those are filled with lies and bulshit) and that's the first I hear of any such thing.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/hillary-clinton-must-read-emails-217498

[oslo.livejournal.com]

What - really? This is what your earlier assertion was based on? She was having difficulties receiving some talking points, so she proposed a workaround? And no one knows whether the information sent "unsecure" even contained any classified information in the first place?

What a big nothing this all is.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

This is true. I happened to catch C-Span airing some of Comey's testimony.

She *did* have people remove the headers--but they also were instructed to **remove the sensitive information**

There was a security concern and she wouldn't be able to send her emails securely, so, she instructed her staff to remove the classified heading **and the classified information**.

So on that count, she is free and clear.

There is still the problem of the deleted emails, which FBI cannot ever recover, and so we have to *trust* HRC on that one.

I don't know if you've noticed, but poll numbers do not show her to be the most trusted figure in American politics these days.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

*they also removed the classified info from those emails!*

I happened to watch C-Span airing the Comey testimony. Did you?

It was obvious political gamesmanship. Dems defended HRC and continuously pointed out how minor her bad behavior was. GOP's prodded Comey on the details of HRC's false statements (to the media, not necessarily under oath) about the server.

It was quite obvious that it was not about getting at the heart of the matter, but about political posturing.

And frankly, I'm not tepid about HRC because of her emails. It's her policies I'm not wild about.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

All the congressional hearings are done for the political gamesmanship. It's better to show 30 second clip that make public read through redacted emails :)

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I see Hillary denying the 'extremely careless' characterization here (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-fbi-emails.html?_r=0). But I have not seen Comey taking it back, if you know where that is. Incidentally, ,since you are following this closely, Wikipedia has a nice entry on it here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy), if you haven't seen it already.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

My hope is that there are enough news cycles between now and the election, enough opportunities for Trump to embarrass himself and the nation, enough opportunities for Hillary to react calmly and with poise, to make the relevance of her indictment-by-press conference less significant in the long run. We'll see.

I agree that there is a troubling "Christian white nationalism" that seems resurgent right now, but a number of my friends have made the point that Trump has done such a good job of alienating women and minorities that they may well swing the election against the extremely specific demographic that Trump counts as almost his only base of support.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Rall's other cartoons?

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Maybe. I don't follow any cartoonists. Just saw this one in my LJ feed.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

He is radical lefty type. Didn't expect to see you giving him airplay. Shows what I know. I often like Rall myself.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

I usually post cartoons that I either find funny or interesting. Doesn't mean I always agree with them (though most of the time I do since I get them mostly from my carefully curated FB and LJ feeds)

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Just googled him. He has some good stuff

[liliaeth]

Actually the proper equivalent would be that the traffic sign was covered behind a bush, or out of clear sight, so she didn't realize that she was speeding until it was too late. And this after an entire trip through all of the US and further, in which she kept perfectly to the traffic regulations, using her own car, instead of one provided by the government.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

She did then have her own private mechanics undo the mileage fix the car up nice n pretty like.

Comey stated that the evidence points to some of the deleted emails *being work related* and not strictly personal.

We will never know, however.

That said: I am fucking sick, and fucking tired, of hearing about her damned emails.