SECRECY IS THE ROOT OF THE CLINTON EMAIL SCANDAL

SECRECY IS THE ROOT OF THE CLINTON EMAIL SCANDAL
Paul Mirengoff, Powerline

The Washington Post has published a lengthy article by Robert O’Harrow, Jr. called “How Clinton’s Email Scandal Took Root.” Much of the article covers ground familiar to those who are following this saga. However, the story is still worth reading.

For one thing, it illuminates Clinton’s motive for using a private device. O’Harrow writes:

The scandal has pitted those who say Clinton was innocently trying to find the easiest way to communicate against those who say she placed herself above the law in a quest for control of her records.

I doubt that, for purposes of determining whether Clinton violated the law, it matters whether her motive was convenience or a quest for control of her records. However, O’Harrow’s piece, without saying so, shows that her motive was control, not mere convenience. It makes this clear in two ways.

First, O’Harrow shows that security officials emphasized to Clinton and her staff on multiple occasions the security risk associated with using her BlackBerry. For example, not long after Clinton became Secretary of State, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell wrote: “Any unclassified Blackberry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving e-mails, and exploiting calendars.”

Clinton told Boswell that she “get[s]” this. However, she continued to use her private BlackBerry.

Clinton also continued to use her private BlackBerry and her home brew server after she issued a June 28, 2011 memo urging State Department employees to “avoid conducting official Department business from you own personal email accounts.” The memo was a response to reports that Gmail accounts of government workers had been targeted by “online adversaries.”

Because Clinton and her top staff were well aware of the serious risk of using private email accounts, it seems unlikely that they assumed these risks for a reason no more substantial than convenience. To do so would be wanton even for Hillary Clinton.

Second, Team Clinton’s response to the idea of the Secretary getting a government-issued BlackBerry linked to a government server leaves little doubt that Clinton’s main motive was secrecy. In an email to key Clinton aide Huma Abedin, State Department official Stephen Mull wrote:

We are working to provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued Blackberry to replace personal unit, which is malfunctioning (possibly because of her personal email server is down.) We will prepare two version for her to use — one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests).

(Emphasis added)

Abedin replied: “let’s discuss the state blackberry. doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

A government-issued BlackBerry would have been as convenient to use as a personal one. That’s why Clinton requested one. However, it would have been subject to FOIA requests. That’s why, once this became clear to Team Clinton, the idea didn’t “make a whole lot of sense.”

Based in part on this email exchange, Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, has said in open court that legitimate questions have been raised about whether Clinton’s staff was trying to help her to sidestep FOIA. Use of private email was an important part of that scheme.

It seems clear, then, that Clinton wasn’t using a personal BlackBerry tied to a private server for reasons of convenience or because she and her staff were “BlackBerry addicts.” She was using the device to keep her records secret.

This is the root of the Clinton email scandal.

Fed Up With Politically Correct Anti-Semitism

Fed Up With Politically Correct Anti-Semitism

Col Mike Walker, USMC (retired)

All,

Apartheid, the policy of segregation and discrimination directed against a class of people pioneered in South Africa, is part and parcel of the Palestinian state ruled by Hamas. 

The key difference between Hamas and its white South African predecessor is the degree to which Hamas is willing to use violence to establish an apartheid-based Palestinian state.

Under Hamas, the major targeted populations are Shi’a Muslims, Christians and Jews. While the Shi’a and Christians are and will continue to be largely be delegated to the status of Blacks in apartheid South Africa, Jews are slated complete ethnic cleansing up to an including mass extermination.

Hamas is not simply anti-Israeli or even anti-Zionist, it is infected with a full-blown strain of anti-Semitism that would make Hitler’s Nazi adherents beam with delight.

When I reflect on the racism of the Hamas Palestinian regime while hearing its supporters scream and shout about the so-called apartheid policies of Israel at so-called institutes of higher learning in the United States, I realize just how dishonest and disgusting these hate-speech mongers really are.

(and in the interest of full disclosure, I am Roman Catholic of primarily Irish descent)

Mike

Free Public College Tuition Is Bad Policy

Free Public College Tuition Is Bad Policy

Col Mike Walker, USMC (retired)

Five Reasons Why Free Public College Tuition Is Bad Policy

(or Sander’s State Universities Suck)

A. It Economically Punishes the Less Well Off to Enrich the Better Off

In the United States, Washington politicians always claim that large-scale programs can be done on the cheap and they have a tax plan to pay for it. They never do. Costs always exceed the projections and the taxpayer is left holding the bag.

So if we listen to “The Bern” where we will windup is with a huge government expense that economically benefits the college graduates that make up 24% of the work force and which, on average, already makes more money than non-college graduates (people in their late 20s and early 30s working in jobs that require a college degree make about $17,000 more per year).

Think about the social injustice of that: Government taxation to redistribute money from less wealthy hard working families, the majority of Americans, to give that money to a wealthier class of citizen.

That is shameful!

B. It further destroys the essential distinction between citizens’ needs and wants 

I believe it was Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson of MIT who opined that the heart of economics is to try to wisely allocate scarce resources in order to satisfy unlimited human wants. Free public tuition ignores that concept.

If students have no skin in the game – no sense of cost – they are stripped of the economic knowledge critical in identifying what they need. There will be no governor or brake on the college cost engine. What students need will become invisible and all that will be left is their wants.

This will end with rising costs driven by people who, at the time that costs are being incurred, will be recklessly shielded from the consequences of their choices. 

C. It will further exacerbate the Oversupply of College Graduates

Given that current studies show that as many as half of all recent college graduates are filling jobs THAT DO NOT require a 4-year degree then a free college education as a “right” is wrongheaded. 

It punishes individuals and damages our nation’s economic health. 

From undergraduate degrees to law school diplomas, America is producing too many graduates. Encouraging even more students by creating a perverse incentive of no cost is a profound disservice to our students and society as a whole.

Think of the immense waste. While it is true that on a macro or national level, immense resources were misallocated, the real damage was done on individual level. 

The average college graduate incurs about $30,000 in debt. If they are among the millions who will land in a job that does not require that degree, they have paid a stiff price but that is only part of the cost. 

They also forewent the opportunity of having gotten that job four years earlier and in the act, lost four years of making a salary while running up a big debt. Just to rub salt in the wound, they also forfeited fours years of experience that would have made them a more attractive worker and open to possible promotions and salary advancements.

It is patently stupid, irresponsible and economically suicidal to intend for every American to go to college. That is a misguided “want” no society should pay for.

History is replete with examples of emerging nations that over produced college graduates. They became economically stunted and often were unstable. On the other hand, developing nations that made high school graduation the priority became politically stable accompanied by growing standards of living.

A high school diploma provides for an essential education. It creates the workforce that gets the job done, that makes America go, that opens the door to a productive life.  That should be our focus.

D. It will destroy Private Religious Colleges and Universities

Many if not most socialists agree with Marx that an ideal society is one purged of religion. The socialist Sanders has hit upon an ideal way to advance that objective. Think about it:

Why pay +$100,000 to graduate from Notre Dame when Purdue is free?

Why pay to go to USC when you can go to UCLA without charge?

Why go into debt for Duke or Wake Forest when UNC costs nothing?

Who needs SMU or Rice or Baylor when you can get a free ride at UT or A&M?

This is a twisted policy. Some of our best schools (not just in America but also in the world) will be given a death sentence.

(BTW, public universities are the prime driver in overproducing graduates. Private colleges do a better job.)

E. Say goodbye to local control over public colleges and universities 

As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, sooner or later politicians in Washington will start to tinker with the system. It's the new golden rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules. 

If you like the unbounded expansion of Title IX then you will love Bernie Sanders State Universities. The politicians may first start with curriculum or admittance rules and will expand and expand and expand their meddling. That is the way of Washington.

Mike

Bush Did Not Lie About Iraq's WMD

Bush Did Not Lie About Iraq's WMD
Col Mike Walker, USMC (retired)

All,

If you really have the guts to hear the truth then watch this:

https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/did-bush-lie-about-iraq

I was assigned to a CIA-directed group working on Saddam's WMD and deployed to Iraq in 2003. We were always trying to keep one step ahead of Judith Miller who arrived in Baghdad almost as fast as our troops liberated the city.

Everything she says is true.

And if you want my take based on those experiences then read the attachment:

Minimus Opus

Semper Fi,

Mike