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Obama: The Word 'Classified' Means Whatever We Need It To Mean (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader writes: During an interview with Fox News, President Obama said "There's classified, and then there's classified" when trying to answer questions about an ongoing investigation about Hillary Clinton and her emails. Techdirt writes, "Clinton sent, received and stored classified info on a private email server. But some classified info is more equal than others. It all depends on who has it and how the current administration feels about that person. Clinton playing fast and loose with classified info is subject to an entirely different standard than the large number of whistleblowers the Obama administration has prosecuted over the years." President Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that while Hillary Clinton had been careless in managing her emails as secretary of state, she would never intentionally do anything to endanger the country. Obama says, "There's stuff that is really top-secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source." Basically, classification means all things to all people, as long as it allows officials and agencies to control narratives and disrupt public accountability.
I agree that this is posturing for a likely "decline to prosecute", just the beginning of the spin cycle.
Equal prosecution under the law isn't in the constitution. (but, maybe it should be)
>> "She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy"
Obama is quite the wordsmith in his own right. That quote is the nicest way I've ever heard anyone say either, "she's so fucking stupid she wouldn't know if she put America in jeopardy," and/or "she's so focused on her own wealth and power that putting America in jeopardy isn't even on her radar when she makes decisions."
Yes, that is established fact. It is also on record where Hillary was having trouble receiving classified information via secure methods. She specifically instructed one of her staff members to remove the classification markings and send the material to her in an unsecured method.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01...
This is probably the worst thing I've seen in this discussion that has some factual basis, because it's willful removal of markings.
One of the problems I have with this is that it's not clear sometimes. For example, you said that she 'was having trouble receiving classified information', but the article doesn't say that, it says whether or not it was classified is unknown.
For some reason, people think that I'm trying to defend her, but i'm trying to understand what exactly she did and how bad it was on a scale from 1 to 10. I keep getting the impression that Fox thinks it's a 10 (purposefully handing marked TS/SAP info to the Chinese) and her campaign saying it was a 1 (she got an email that the classified coffee maker was broken). Does it matter? I think so. It doesn't help that people are simply wrong when they say things like the above ('classified information' versus 'sensitive information').
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
On my road they lowered the speed limit to 25. Then they set up personalized speed traps for people they're after. They pull over and set up the trap as the person nears, then only point the gun at that one car. As soon as its gone, the cop drives away. Seen it 4 times in the last month and a half (they're after flagged "dangerous drivers" that they track with the states license plate scanners).
Bullshit. Clinton is the Beltway-insider-status-quo's best hope for the Presidency. The Left's best hope for the Presidency is Sanders, and failing to prosecute criminal sociopath Clinton is nothing less than a conscious effort to sabotage him.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes, that is established fact. It is also on record where Hillary was having trouble receiving classified information via secure methods. She specifically instructed one of her staff members to remove the classification markings and send the material to her in an unsecured method.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01...
Apparently “Turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” translates as "Make a version without the sensitive information and send that over unsecured communications" and is a common and accepted practice.
I stole this Sig
First off, reduce the number of laws that pertain to non-violent and victim-less crimes. That would include drug laws, which should be health issues, not legal issues. How many laws are on the books? Obviously too many, and a significant percentage are for behaviors that don't affect society or other citizens. Meanwhile, other activities that severely hurt society are not even against the law (e.g., off-shoring billions of dollars to avoid taxes, increasing the tax burden on everyone else). Further, we have a for-profit prison system that needs to fill beds to make a profit. Right there you clearly have a conflict of interest. So you could also get rid of all for-profit prisons. The are a number of changes that could be made that would reduce the number of people charged, while appling the law much more evenly across society.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Mod points are needed. This is almost good enough for me to log into one of my old accounts.
Hillary, for whatever one might be inclined to say about her, still hasn't leaked the documents. She even surrendered the email server in a manner where they wouldn't be leaked, instead of handing it over to the Benghazi commission (which from that commission's past and current behavior would have definitely leaked anything that served it's ends).
We are talking about an official in charge who has clearance who took steps to assure that information didn't get into the public domain, and for that there's a group that wants her in prison because she didn't value the rules over her duties.
This is ridiculous. I'll take a person who gets the job done over one who doesn't because they have to follow the rules.
Were was the GOP when they stonewalled every bill (some rightly so, I imagine, but every bill tells me many were wrongly stonewalled)? Were they "following the rules" which permitted them to do so, or were they "getting things done"?
The entire argument that Hillary is a criminal comes from people wearing the robes of nonsense as traditioned by Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Inghramn, etc. Basically because someone thinks it up, and is in front of a (carefully crafted) agreeing audience, a lot of public will think it's real. It's not. These guys do poorly with a different crowd in front of them, and it's just plain stupid to think the Secretary of State is going to prison over classified documents that aren't leaked, were needed to perform her duty, and might have been classified after the fact.
A co-worker at my lab was visiting the Pentagon for a meeting with one of his research sponsors. He visited the restroom at the same time as another guy with a stack of papers in his hand. He said hi and went in a stall, the other guy used a urinal. When he got out of the stall, he noticed the stack of papers on the sink. He called security and turned the papers over. They interviewed him briefly to get a description of the guy. As he was walking to his meeting, he passed by security escorting the guy out of the building, presumably to a waiting police car.
That's what happens and how quickly they happen when you mishandle classified materials. If you're not a favored politician.