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Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email At State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules
HughPickens.com writes: The NY Times reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, according to State Department officials. She may have violated federal requirements that officials' correspondence be retained as part of the agency's record. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act. "It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business," said attorney Jason R. Baron. A spokesman for Clinton defended her use of the personal email account and said she has been complying with the "letter and spirit of the rules."
This seems indicative of sense that the rules do not apply to me.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So exactly what shady deals has she been concocting with her rich chums then? And leaving no email trail?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Do you know what will happen to her? Not. A. God. Damn. Thing.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Sorry but "the shitstorm will be her punishment" isn't acceptable.
The rules are there for data retention and accountability purposes.
Didn't we learn ANYTHING from the whole Lois Lerner debacle?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
From the 'liberal' media of CNN, the Washington Post and Huffington post this morning.
Now I'm no fan of the Clintons, but if you don't see a coordination job then you're either a Fox news watcher or a Lotus eater ;)
Unlike poor Karl Rove who is rotting in jail for doing the very same thing, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy
Who will apply the law to her? Her political allies in the DOJ? Who will look into it? Her political allies in the press?
When someone can never be held accountable, aren't they above the law?
Tomorrow: Everyone who wants her to follow the rules: sexists. They just don't like women in power.
The Bush White House email controversy surfaced in 2007 during the controversy involving the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an email server not controlled by the federal government. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Hatch Act. Over 5 million emails may have been lost or deleted. Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove lost emails, leading to damaging allegations. In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been deleted.
The administration officials had been using a private Internet domain, called gwb43.com, owned by and hosted on an email server run by the Republican National Committee, for various communications of unknown content or purpose. The domain name is an acronym standing for "George W. Bush, 43rd" President of the United States. The server came public when it was discovered that J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, was using a gwb43.com email address to discuss the firing of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas. Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com (registered to "Bush-Cheney '04, Inc.") and rnchq.org (registered to "Republican National Committee"), but, unlike these two servers, gwb43.com has no Web server connected to it — it is used only for email.
The "gwb43.com" domain name was publicized by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who sent a letter to Oversight and Government Reform Committee committee chairman Henry A. Waxman requesting an investigation. Waxman sent a formal warning to the RNC, advising them to retain copies of all emails sent by White House employees. According to Waxman, "in some instances, White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications." The Republican National Committee claims to have erased the emails, supposedly making them unavailable for Congressional investigators.
On April 12, 2007, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that White House staffers were told to use RNC accounts to "err on the side of avoiding violations of the Hatch Act, but they should also retain that information so it can be reviewed for the Presidential Records Act," and that "some employees ... have communicated about official business on those political email accounts." Stanzel also said that even though RNC policy since 2004 has been to retain all emails of White House staff with RNC accounts, the staffers had the ability to delete the email themselves.
So no trial, just execution of punishment? No thought into if the emails were actually stored or not, just punishment because you dont agree with her politics?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Well, if anybody else in government did this, they'd get fired, lose their pension, and possibly face criminal charges.
When the people at the highest levels of power decide that the law doesn't apply to them, nothing at all happens.
So, on behalf of the rest of the world ... when the political leaders ignore the law and face no consequences, the rest of us want to send a big collective "fuck you".
This has nothing to do with her politics. If Bush or Cheney had done this, we'd want them prosecuted as well.
Laws which are selectively applied are crap. Assholes in power who believe the law doesn't apply to them need to be punished.
These laws exist so there is a public record of activities, not some place where you can sidestep that and conduct business elsewhere away from oversight.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You are glad that someone as seasoned at breaking the rules in technology is doing so? That sounds like a great thing to me. Here we go, here are more Government idiots who know how to use technology and will make sure that they have zero accountability! I am glad that the monkeys at the top finally learned the basics of interwebz 101 and know how to cover their tracks. We wouldn't want our Government officials to be held accountable now, would we?
Since the CIA monitors government email and the NSA monitors private email, I don't really think this is a security issue.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"RULES?" Come on. If I kill someone I'm not "breaking the rules," I am breaking the LAW.
Likewise, this is Federal Law.
At least the apologists at the NY Times are out in force here to minimize it.
Yes, today Nixon would still have to resign for two reasons:
1. He's a Republican and ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and all of the other liberal Democratic Party allied new media outlets would scream bloody murder how horrible this all was.
2. Just like in the 70's Republican voters are by and large don't wink at dishonesty in their ranks, but actually hate it. It's part of the conservative personality. So they would not support him.
Of course, if the exact same scandal occurred with Obama he would not have to resign for two reasons:
1. He's a Democrat and ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and all of the other liberal Democratic Party allied new media outlets would scream bloody murder how horribly racist people are who criticize Obama and how "good people" are able to rise above such racism.
2. Democrat voters by and large wink at dishonesty in their ranks and actually admire it. When a Democratic President like Clinton or Obama lie and everyone knows they are lying you see most of the liberal media wink and nod at how "savvy" a politician he is.
Then there is the whole Fucking Common Sense thing about Government Employees using Government emails to discuss Government business.
Seems like it's a good opportunity to create a new, well deserved law that any correspondence about government business, policy or even what color you want your office painted needs to be done on a government email account.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
AND remember the liberal democrat cries about Sarah Palin's alleged use of private email for public use (until it was hacked and nothing was found) ??
Yeah, the same people who were screaming lunatic mad about that, are the same ones suddenly silent here. Those people need to be "named and shamed".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So releasing secure documents to someone outside of government is not "illegal"?
You really believe that?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.