I do, but I have one in the regular universe too. That means I’m normally the evil twin, doesn’t it?
Ha!
You don’t think that maybe, just maybe, he’s retroactively defending the previous administration? And maybe, again just maybe, hoping for a few hypocritical views to be expressed here by certain posters?
Or maybe I’m just too cynical.
It’s everywhere. Over here, Shodan and Bricker arguing against a Republican court challenge to an Arizona voter initiative that takes district-drawing power out of the hands of the legislature, and liberal posters are taking the Republican side (to a degree; none of us think the challenge will succeed.)
Here, liberals and conservatives alike are rolling their eyes at the Homan Square “scandal” in Chicago.
Questions:
Were there any other cabinet members in Obama’s first term who also did this? I don’t think Bush precedents mean all that much. I would imagine standards in this area are changing rapidly and the Wikileaks releases of 2010 would have lead to a major tightening of procedures.
Secondly has Clinton offered to send all her work emails as Sec State to the official archives ?
It’s already proved. Some of her staff picked through her personal account and turned over more than 50k emails related to State Department business.
You don’t see a small conflict of interest there?
I have never been Secretary of State, but the last place I worked doing company business on a personal e-mail account was a big No-No, subject to things up to and including termination.
That having been said, I would hope desperately that whatever e-mail she was using was as secure as it should have been. If it was, well, it was dumb but understandable. I doubt she was trying to hide anything - she just didn’t want to bother with converting to a new account.
Overall, meh. Bring it up on “Areas of Improvement” at her next performance review, unless it leads to anything real.
Was it Hilary who Wikileaks published bad-mouthing some foreign jerk or other?
Regards,
Shodan
Among others, but those were State Department cables rather than e-mails.
Thanks.
Regards,
Shodan
There seems to be highly conflicting information about this. Some say it’s “unprecedented” for a high level official to use personal email like this. Others (including the State Department, IIRC) say that John Kerry was the first to routinely use a .state.gov email. In any case “unprecedented” seems wrong since as already noted the Bush minions were doing it.
Anyway here’s the solution: vote for Jeb – The Smart One in the Family™! All his emails are posted on the interwebs – “in the spirit of transparency”. 
They’re all there – every last one. Jeb says so.
(WARNING! If you click on that link, you will be presented with a very large image of Jeb’s grinning mug – it may haunt you for days! It’s the price of access to his emails.)
Apparently Jeb uses Outlook, and the actual PST files are available for download. My question is: is anyone on the planet so insufferably bored and have so much time on their hands that they’ve actually done so?
Are you kidding? The Democratic Party in Texas is going thru them with a fine-toothed comb looking for spin.
Regards,
Shodan
Jeb’s from Florida. If the Bushes really are that interchangeable even to Republicans, that’s a reason to disqualify him.
Mainly what’s been found to be concerned about is private citizens’ identities, even SS numbers, all through the database. Not spin material, actual things that cause actual damage to actual people. Let that sink in before your usual mode of reply, okay?
There are two interpretations available here, at least it seems that way to me.
#1. Clinton didn’t know that she had a business email (or it was never created) and that is was the proper email to use for, ya know, business.
#2. Clinton knew but didn’t care because, well, stuff.
For option 1 to be true, the State Department/White House IT guys would have to not create the account when they created her network account. Or not tell her about it. As a network admin, I find that exceedingly unlikely.
“Hey, I am creating the SecState network account. Does she get an email?”
“Nope, we are cutting down on expenses so all top executives in the U.S. Government will use personal email from now on. We will just call up Yahoo tech support if there is an issue. It worked for Powell. Plus, we all know that those accounts are absolutely secure!”
Option 2 is that the White House/Sec State IT guys did create the account and Clinton decided to use her own because, well, Powell did it so that makes it ok. This is not acceptable.
Regardless of whether it was under Bush or Obama, this kinda shit has to stop. I don’t buy the precedent excuse as anything other than that. An excuse that Clinton and everyone else in the White House can hide behind, especially considering how everyone was crowing about how tech savvy the Obama White House is supposed to be. Their tech guys know better.
It is standard business practice everywhere to archive email. This isn’t some new fangled thing that just popped up. Hell, FISMA, the Federal Information Security Act of 2002 covers these types of things including email archiving. Having not too long ago gone through a FISMA assessment at work, I can tell it is pretty damned through. And since the F in FISMA stands for Federal, well, you get the idea.
Additionally, after the IRS clusterfuck, one would think that the White House would stop and think for a minute. “Hey, part of that gigantic clusterfuck over at the IRS included an issue with official emails disappearing. Maybe we ought to ensure that all our systems for this type of thing are in place and that everyone is using them”.
If we are going to pass laws requiring our government officials to obey certain document retention requirements, then give them a pass when they bypass those requirements, we might as well just say ‘Fuck it, do what ever you want. We trust you absolutely!’.
I doubt there is any smoking gun in Clintons emails. But the fact is that she should have known better, the White House should have known better and we ought to demand better. Government officials ought to follow the highest standards.
Additionally, Bricker said:
Bricker, prove that she sent governement business emails to her staff on their state.gov accounts and not their personal accounts. You can’t since we know that Clinton bypassed the proper method. So, therefore, we cannot know what she sent to whom. Note, I don’t believe that Clinton did anything nefarious. However the problem is that when the SecState does this sort of shit we cannot know what was done.
The standards are out there and yes, people ought to be pissed when the highest officials in the country do not apply those standards to themselves.
And I won’t even bother going into the security issues…
Slee
In Florida, all government e-mails are a matter of public record anyway (with a very few exceptions.) So Jeb is essentially just making it easier for people to see what’s already out there.
I am, always, driven by principles. I analyze the facts of every situation by applying the principles, and the result is what the result is.
If this were a Republican SoS, I would be saying the same thing, and (presumably) you’d be arguing or at least silently believing that my defense of the Republican was partisan, and that if a Democrat were involved I’d have a different take on it.
Here, a Democrat IS the principal actor, and I don’t have a different take on it.
Looking back on my nearly sixteen years of membership here, you cannot find a single issue that I’d analyze differently if the players’ political parties were reversed. On the issue of e-mail use and retention, there’s no ideological valence in play, and you are seemingly surprised when I don’t adopt a position that supports my favored players – but that’s never been what I do. I always go where the principles take me; because I favor conservative principles, of course, I often support conservative players. But my actual support is reliably predictable: conservative positions, NOT partisan actors.
It seems that the person accusing Mrs. Clinton of wrongdoing should shoulder the burden of proof.
Assuming that destroying the Democratic party is among your principles, I agree. 
It’s not.
I disfavor most of the Democratic party’s core platform items, though, so it’s not too surprising that I most often argue against proposals favored by Democrats.
Since using personal email for official business as against federal policy, and it’s already been acknowledged she did so, what further accusations are necessary? Just the fact of doing it, whether she’s selling official secrets or trading cake recipes, IS wrongdoing. It’s quite a big scale, I’ll admit.