Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Iowa's Governor Terry Branstad Thinks He Doesn't Use E-mail

Posted by timothy on from the bizarro-er-and-bizarro-er dept.

Earthquake Retrofit writes The Washington Post reports the governor of Iowa denying he uses e-mail, but court documents expose his confusion. From the article: "Branstad's apparent confusion over smartphones, apps and e-mail is ironic because he has tried to portray himself as technologically savvy. His Instagram account has pictures of him taking selfies and using Skype... 2010 campaign ads show him tapping away on an iPad. 'Want a brighter future? We've got an app for that.' Earlier this month, the governor's office announced that it had even opened an account on Meerkat, the live video streaming app." Perhaps he's distancing himself from e-mail because it's a Hillary thing.

4 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Might help to look under Branstad by ralphdaugherty · · Score: 3, Informative

    and you'll find:

    "In a court deposition released last week, Governor Branstad acknowledged he has a Blackberry smartphone and receives email on it."

    http://whotv.com/2015/03/25/go...

  2. Re:*sigh* by StevenMaurer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Huh? You can just forward classified material to non-secure servers outside of a classified network? I think not!

    As Secretary of State she would have access to incredibly sensitive material.

    A couple of things, that might set your mind at ease. According to reports:

    1. Ms. Clinton did not "forward" material to her private server. People were just emailing to her at her personal email address at "clintonemail.com".
    2. Those emails she received considered to be official business, her staff forwarded to the State Department for their IT operators to save.
    3. She also produced a huge amount of documents to various Congressional Committees.
    4. None of these emails were classified. They appear to have been sent to her unencrypted
    5. Sensitive material never went through this email system.
    6. Apparently the State Department isn't very good at IT. They only recently were able to figure out how to even just save Secretary Kerry's email; his top staff using the @state.gov address still do not have their email records saved. So by using @clintonemail.com, HRC likely was preserving more email than if she'd saved used an @state.gov address.
    7. Personal emails (and presumably spam) was not sent on. But no law covers that anyway.

    This is much akin to the media breathlessly discovering that Hillary Clinton also has a private phone number, which maybe official calls were received. Except that because this is "email", it's totally different somehow. (By which I mean, as she's the presumptive Democratic nominee, the nutcases and conspiracy loons are going to do their nutcase conspiracy theorizing, which Blogs and FOX will pick up - because it sells eyeballs.)

  3. Re:*sigh* by Dahan · · Score: 5, Informative

    The issue with Obama as it has been stated is that his mother was 18 at his birth and had not lived for five years in the US after she turned 18. So If your mother was under 19 you can't be president. For me, that fucking bogus. An obvious bug, written into the US constitution.

    No, that is not an issue at all. While you have to be 35 years old to be president of the US, the age of your mother when you were born is irrelevant. The text of the US constitution is readily available online for you to see for yourself: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

    You seem to be vaguely referencing the requirements for citizenship at birth for someone who was born outside the US, but that's not an issue with Obama because he was born in the US, and is therefore a natural born US citizen.

  4. Re:*sigh* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    An explanation was provided. That's not a simple photo of the original birth certificate, it's a scanned copy of a re-issued certificate which was produced by Hawaii and has been certified as such by multiple Hawaiian officials, and OCR software often produces those layers.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/29/expert-says-obamas-birth-certificate-legit/

    If you believe that the Hawaiian officials are lying, in particular, Alvin T. Omaka, the state registrar, your avenue to pursue an inquiry into that is in Hawaii's state court system. Perhaps you might even be able to establish your right to examine their files yourself.

    Otherwise, please desist with this waste of time, when you can prove to your own self that your allegations are specious and false. Repeating them only shows your ignorance or willful practice of deceit.