Hilary Clinton and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Personal E-mail Account

Great Debates
761

Yes, true. However it is trivial other than it shows that Clinton didn’t keep her server up to date.

There are multiple issues. One is the security of government servers. One is the security and wisdom of the SecState setting up her own server.

I have no doubt that a large portion of government servers are insecure. There is ample evidence that they are behind on securing their systems. I would guess (and certainly hope) that State has the systems for high ranking officials under tighter security than the run of the mill systems that the worker bees use, the whole classified vs. unclassified thing. Now, my guess could be absolutely wrong. If so, then that is another failing which has absolutely nothing to do with Clinton setting up her own server unless she did so specifically to have better security. Since she didn’t claim that was the reason she used her personal email, I think it is safe to say security wasn’t one of Clinton’s concerns.

Clintons email server had SSlv2 when the story broke this year. Now, maybe she was following industry best practice regarding pen testing, system updates and all the rest when she was SecState and stopped later. Either that or she wasn’t doing it at the time she was SecState. I highly suspect that it was the latter. However she should have never put herself in the position of having to secure the systems in the first place. If she was unhappy with States I.T. security well, she was in a position to do something about it.

And Gyrate, this is different that what her predecessors did in that they used email hosted by companies like Gmail. Those companies have dedicated security teams. Are they perfect, no. Nothing is perfectly secure. But at least there is accountability and logging.

At the same time, using Gmail or something similar clears up the intermingling of personal and work email. If she had used a Google account, the subpoena would have gone to Google and Google would have given up all the email even if she used it for personal reasons. Letting the target of an investigation pick and choose what information the investigators get to see is just fucking silly.

Whether the investigation is justified is a political issue. How the investigation is carried out is a process issue. Clinton effectively controlled the process for this investigation by using her own email server. And that is troubling.

Now, a couple people have posted before I finished writing the above so I will add.

[QUOTE=Bricker]
No longer do we heard accusations about the law, since the narrative has already been crafted. Now it’s more subtly about “transparency,” and “political consequences.”

In other words, false and misleading accusations were used to stir up public opinion. It’s absolutely disgraceful.
[/QUOTE]

That applies if, and only if, one looks at this through a public opinion lens. If one looks at it from an ethical and smart perspective, things change.

Yes, the original accusation that this was illegal was incorrect. Not because the law didn’t exist, but because the law didn’t exist at the time she did this. The law came later. That isn’t a defense of Clinton, it is an indictment of the law. The law was behind the times.

Ethically it is questionable as the laws and rules are put in place to specifically stop this kind of shit from happening. So, yes, from a legal standpoint Clinton is in the clear. From a ethical standpoint it is shaky as hell because she knew this was wrong.

Quote from Hillary:

Now I am sure you will go all lawyer and say her account wasn’t secret. Yet, from a transparency perspective, it is the same in that the investigators cannot access all the information. A well known email account in which Clinton controls what is released is the exact same as a hidden account that no one knows about.

This is stupid because Clinton should have known that a) setting up her own email after castigating others for similar behavior was a stupid thing to do and b) her and Bill have a long history of being attacked for not being transparent. I have no idea how Clinton would have thought that this was a good idea.

FTR, I don’t like Clinton. I also don’t like any of the 'Pubs either. They all pretty much suck.

Slee

P.S. Hanlon’s Razor ought to be updated to:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Unless a really smart person is doing it. Then check for malice.

762

Whew. I never would have supported those lies and misleading statements before but since I see that something good came of them, well, doggie! I’m on board?

Or something to that effect?

How about the proposition that the requisite goals can be accomplished without lying to the public?

Cripes, I reguarly lambast the Left for taking the apparent position that they know best, and their willingness to deceive the public for the public’s “own good.” How disappointing to see the willingness to sacrifice principles for results is alive and well on both sides.

763

We don’t know best, we just know better. It’ll do.

764

The requisite goals could be accomplished without lying to the public, if we lived in a perfect world. But we don’t. Politics ain’t tiddlywinks (a child’s game). This isn’t a newly discovered situation. Telling the truth, or lying about, political opponents pre-dates the creation of the U.S.A…

I suppose that a Congressional committee could politely request that everyone who has Sec. of State, or State Dept., emails relating to Benghazi, to please bring them to:
*U S Congress
130 Cannon Hob Office Building,
Washington, DC 20515

(ask for Darrell)*

I don’t believe such a request would garner much of a response.

765

Unlike the seven others before it?

They already are, friend. They aren’t what you want, no, but they are.

You know very well that isn’t what’s happening. Please acknowledge that fact.

766

You may know that isn’t what’s happening??? I just want Ol’ Hillary and her Ol’ State Dept. to fully cooperate with the Congressional investigation.

My position is clear. Your opinion of my position has been wrong, but it’s only your opinion.

767

Yeah, well, people in Hell want ice water.

768

Here she is, doing just that, over a year ago. Maybe you didn’t hear about it?

769

Couldn’t hear it over the sound of hard drives being erased.

770

Almost everyone’s heard about it. It’s one of Hillary’s most quoted speeches. And it proves that Hillary has a problem with that words vs deeds thing.

According to Hillary’s testimony -

…WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, THE FACT IS WE HAD FOUR DEAD AMERICANS. WAS IT BECAUSE OF A PROTEST OR WAS IT BECAUSE OF GUYS OUT FOR A WALK ONE NIGHT DECIDED TO GO KILL SOME AMERICANS. WHAT DIFFERENCE AT THIS POINT DOES IT MAKE. IT IS OUR JOB TO FIGURE OUT WHAT HAPPENED AND DO EVERYTHING WE CAN TO PREVENT IT FROM EVER HAPPENING AGAIN, SENATOR. NOW, HONESTLY, I WILL DO MY BEST TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS…

Hillary can certainly talk-the-talk, but she’s proven that she won’t walk-the-walk. What did Hillary actually mean when she said, “It is our job to figure out what happened and do EVERYTHING we can to prevent it from ever happening again”? EVERYTHING must not mean fully cooperating with Congressional investigations.

The Congressional investigators have been trying to figure out what happened. The State Dept., WH, and the former Sec. of State have been very reluctant, when not outright refusing, to release documents pertaining to the actions of the State Dept. and Sec. of State.

Hillary never bothered to inform the investigators that she was storing government documents off-site on her personal server. When it was finally discovered that the documents stored on Hillary’s private server had never been part of the investigations, Hillary’s fanboys made the media rounds to scoff at the investigators attempt to recover government documents. After all, what difference at this point does it make. Right?

The only way Hillary, and friends, can stop investigations if for the voters to elect her to a position of authority that comes with the Power of Executive Privilege. Then no one will ever know what Ol’ Hillary has been up to.

771

Thing is, when you hire somebody to be Secretary of State, you are hiring them to lie. “White” lies, mostly, like meeting and greeting the Supreme Leader of Bongobongo and pretending that you give a shit about their strategic reserves of jute. Lying for your country is not as stern a duty as maybe dying for it, but its still necessary.

Transparency is all very well, but if that means that we need to know that Hillary thinks the President of Pakistan is a puffed up sack of shit…well, maybe not. Leastwise, maybe we don’t want* him* to know that.

772

(post shortened)

Who cares what the President of Pakistan thinks? I would think that most voters are more concerned about what’s happening in the U.S.A…

Executive Privilege is a surefire cure for transparency.

773

Ah, they’re still flogging the out-of-context quote, I see. Don’t you people ever feel any shame?

774

A-hem. I included the context, and I included a link to her entire testimony. It’s a shame you chose to ignore that.

775

No, it’s in context there, technically. But it’s still out of context because you choose to interpret it in an entirely different way than the context shows she meant it. It was flung all over right-wing hate radio and Faux “News” as if she was saying the fact that four people died was no big deal, which is ABSOLUTELY and OBVIOUSLY false.

ETA: Edited out because I’m tired of getting warnings for entirely understandable frustration with…people…some people…

776

(post shortened)

Then it wasn’t an out-of-context quote.

777

You don’t understand what she said, perhaps because you’re so misinformed and outraged by RW media misinformation and polemics that you’re having trouble processing it?

She didn’t say anything evil. She said something very, very reasonable. The only way to be outraged by it, is to not understand it.

I’ll spell it out for you, her meaning, which is obvious: *Is that the attack being an outgrowth of a protest, or a random Jihadi spur-of-the-moment idea, or a mustache twirling evil plot, is largely irrelevant, the motive matters less than getting the douchebags responsible. *

778

I understand what she said.

Hillary said, “*It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator. NOW, HONESTLY, I WILL DO MY BEST TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS…” *

Your spelling is impeccable but doesn’t change the fact that Hillary has not been doing everything she can to figure out what happened, nor has Hillary been fully answering Congressional investigators questions, and Hillary still refuses to turn over all of the government’s documents that she’s kept hidden on her personal, off-site, server.

779

You see, it’s not that there’s nothing there to find. It’s just that she’s an evil, manipulative bitch who’s been hiding the emails hammering out the deal to allow the extremist group to attack the consulate with no opposition and kill the ambassador and his staff. That’s all.

ETA: We’ll find that pony if we have to dig through every pile of crap in this town!

780

That is, he said uncomfortably, an absolutely correct point. Apart from wishing I could direct this praise elsewhere, it’s correct to observe that “transparency” is not an unmitigated good.

Regardless, I think it’s been made reasonably clear that Secretary Clinton’s Congressional questioners are not as interested in transparency as they are in embarrassing Secretary Clinton.