The US Constitution gives the power to ratify international agreements and make them law to the US Senate alone. The State Dept. and the US President are only able to create temporary agreements with no lasting legal authority. That was the gist of the open letter.
The main reason some contests are only available in Quebec is that they are special 'Quebec only' versions of contests that already exist in the rest of the country but other provinces didn't require extra hoops to be jumped through and more importantly, extra fees to be paid to get licensed. That is not a good thing since it creates a barrier that a lot of smaller contest holders just won't bother with. Quebec residents usually lose out more than they gain from these extra requirements.
And 99% of the reason such regulations exist is Quebec likes to pretend at being their own country. So while Quebec has ALWAYS been the #1 recipient of equalization payments from the federal government (receiving over half of all money paid since they began in the 50's) they still like to duplicate federal services and add unneeded regulations just to show they have the power within their borders.
They will have no shortage of advertisers for a Top Gear like show with Clarkson at the head.
Car manufacturers may be the primary goto guys for ad space but when a show is watched by 350 million people and pulls in a profit of 40-50 million pounds/year (not that whatever show he starts up, if he does will necessarily pull those numbers) everyone from cell phone companies to children's toys will be clamoring to buy available commercial slots.
Even a lot of car companies don't view negative reviews on Top Gear as a bad thing. Some use it as a challenge to do better next time and others are just happy to have their cars seen.
Manufactures like Ferrari, Maclaren, Pagani aren't really going to be spending money on 30 second commercials for a car show anyway but Ford, GM, Honda, Kia etc will and for them having their 8 thousand dollar family car reviewed poorly against a F40 isn't a real showstopper.
They talk about how much gas super cars use all the time, even sometimes mentioning that they are only capable of x laps before refueling. It's usually just a interesting tidbit they throw in while talking back and forth because it's not a major testing hurdle. Besides track tests watch any of their road trips and it will almost certainly be mentioned if one of their cars requires fueling more often than the others and that's when it only takes less than 5 minutes to refuel and get going again, as opposed to 3.5+ hours for a Tesla (at the time) so it's a MUCH bigger deal if your Tesla run out of juice.
It becomes a focus of the review simply because it is a major weakness in the design which is true for all pure EVs. If they had a battery swap option then it probably wouldn't have even been brought up except for a one liner about "we had the swap the batteries ever x laps".
I think this was a contract year for all the Top gear presenters so he would have been free to leave anyway, this just gives him the ability to do so without any bad feelings from his fans.
True Clarkson fans won't be surprised he over reacted and hit a producer and got himself fired , he's gotten close enough to that several times in the past, but they may have seen it as a betrayal if he just announced out of the blue that he was leaving the show to do something else. As long as the producer that was hit wasn't seriously hurt, which all reports say he wasn't, then fans will write off almost any action by Clarkson as Jeremy being Jeremy.
I'm not saying this was all planned out in advance but I do think this was one of the best outcomes for Clarkson if he was looking to leave TG.
Clarkson was the one to report the assault so if anyone was looking for an excuse out of re-upping a contract it was probably Clarkson. This way he can leave without carrying any of the baggage simply quitting the show would have given him.
Jeremy will be fine. He knows that every other channel has been trying for years to poach him away from the BBC and once he sold his interest in the show to the BBC a year or so ago his income was no longer tied to how well Top Gear itself did.
There have been several FOIA requests made for her emails over the years essentially none have really been fulfilled. People and the press have been complaining about it for a long time, it was just that once it came up during a relatively high profile case it became big news.
The Logan act wouldn't apply to Senators anyway since it does not differentiate between any of the co-equal branches of government. Thus, a senator is just a permitted to speak on international relations as the President and the reason Pelosi wasn't charged with violating it when she flew to Iran during Bush's tenure directly against the executives wishes.
Nancy Pelosi flew to Iran directly against State dept. (President Bush's) request. Ted Kennedy was in contact with the USSR requesting and offering aid to oust a sitting President (Reagan).
And according the the constitution, Senators are the only officials in the US government able to actually to codify a treaty between nations into law so not only are they allowed to speak their mind on the subject of international relations, they are uniquely empowered to act on it.
Several people, including Rice herself I believe, have already stated she doesn't like email and never used it. She did have a.gov address though.
Powell used a personal account but claims to have cc'd state on every work related email. A terrible archiving system but one that was listed as acceptable at the time.
You know, the whole fact that she knows she must turn over all those communications eventually?
That's the problem isn't it, she knows she doesn't have to turn them all over. No one outside of the Clinton camp has ever had access to the server(s) or their contents, and investigators only get bits and pieces given to them by the Hillary's team and even then only in physical form and not even the original digital copy with header information. From what's been received thus far there are already reports of months long gaps.
She's already admitted to deleting tens of thousands of email but claimed they were all personal, a number between her and Bill. One problem is Bill is on record just recently stating he never uses email and has only ever sent 2 in his life, both while President.
While the Bush email was a problem and dealt with at the time, Senators, Congressman, Governors and all other state level politicians are not subject to a Federal law about Federal employees so there is no reason to bring them up except to try and create political cover for Hillary.
Jeb Bush, Sarah Palin, Scott Walker etc.. did not violate the federal laws requiring them to archive their official records because there is no federal law concerning them on that matter. There is one for the Secretary of State however.
The was no law restricting her from using a private email as long as she NEVER sent or received classified emails on it (a separate law prevents that) although State dept. guidelines in place before Obama even took office strictly prohibited it.
There is and always has been a law requiring all federal records (her emails as SoS are by definition federal records) be sent to national archives. The 2014 amendment didn't add or change that requirement in any meaningful way (except change the time limit you had to comply). We only have her word she complied with that law and then it was only under subpoena, but large gaps in her email chains make that highly doubtful.
Powell claims to have cc'd people at State on all of his official emails. While a terrible way to do things at the time that was considered an acceptable means of archiving.
It's always been illegal (since the 50's or so). Changes to the law have been more about imposing timelines and clarification (under Obama a 20 day time limit before outside records had to be submitted was added) but not about the requirement for archiving of federal records (which all SoS emails are by legal definition).
She was legally allowed to have a private server and legally allowed to use it for work (as long an no classified information was ever stored there - different law) but she was never legally allowed to withhold those emails from the national archives.
We don't preserve other communication media completely, I see no reason why email should somehow be special.
In the US you do and it isn't.
All federal records must be archived for later FOIA requests of retrieval for other reasons. A federal record is essentially anything that someone does while working at a federal level job for the purposes of that job.. The form of the archive isn't important (hence why it was not illegal for HIllary to send over 55,000 pages of email instead of a simple thumb drive with the digital copies) but the fact they must be preserved is.
There are guidelines within the law that allows for some records to be destroyed but they are clearly spelt out and generally are done by the archivist and not the subject/creator of the record.
1) It is NOT against the law to use external email for official purposes. It's is against federal guidelines but those don't carry the same weight as an actual law and usually only involve workplace sanctions, not legal ones.
2) It is against the law to store classified information on external servers.
3) It is against the law to hid or destroy federal documents which all SoS email are. Violation of this law carries a 3 year sentence and is one of the only laws I've ever heard of that also specifically states that violators can never hold public office in the US ever again.
Her defense for #2 is she claims that as SoS she never handled any classified emails ever, an almost impossible tasked but at least its a claim. She is most certainly in violation of the retention laws for #3 however but depending on whether they can show she is only in violation of the hiding/withholding portion vs the destruction portion will most likely determine if anyone bothers to actually charge her or not.
They already have emails from other sources showing her having email discussions about semi-work related intel gathering with non-state employees. They may skirt the definition of official record enough for her to get away with not having retained those but if they find anything else on some third party server (say any foreign diplomat she exchanged emails with) but cannot find a corresponding copy on her server then she's done for.
Her use of private email was perfectly legal during her tenure but has been against State dept guidlines that existed before Obama even took office.
That being said, it's not really her use of private email that makes this a legal case, it's her failure to transfer over her emails to the national archives. Regardless of the medium used to create, transmit or store federal records (which all SoS emails are according to the legal definition) since the 1950's all records MUST legally be sent to the national archives for storage.
There have been several changes to the original act to clarify storage methods and timelines (the latest under Obama set a 20 day max on when records had to be sent to archives) but the general purpose of the original act has always been the same.
Colin Powell admitted to using private email (not one on a server he owned and controlled) but claims to have cc'd a State department address on all his correspondence. At the time that was considered an adequate policy with regards to federal retention laws.
Through hacks of other peoples emails we already know of some emails between Clinton and outside persons concerning some work at least somewhat related to her work as SoS. Those emails had no cc's to other state dept. officials so only exist on Clintons server as well as the server used by the other person. Also,at least 2 of her direct underlings also have accounts on her server meaning any communication between the 3 of them would be wholly contained on Clinton's server.
Republicans did no got to Iran to undermine anything (you might be confusing them with Nancy Pelosi who actually DID travel to Iran against executive wishes or possible Ted Kennedy who actually did write letters to the Soviets asking for help to oust a sitting president). 47 (not 57) senators wrote a letter (effectively a press release) about potential treaties with Iran. As a co-equal branch of government and the ONLY branch that can pass international treaties into US law that was well within not only their legal right but was effectively exercising a right granted only to them by the constitution.
Inviting a sitting head of state to speak to congress might be rare but became a large poke in the White House eye mostly because of the reaction of the White House and fellow legislators. Their refusal to meet with the PM or attend his speech made it an event. If the President had just made an appointment to meet with the Israeli PM and Dem legislators just went to the speech it would have hardly been a blip on the news radar.
Destruction or attempting to hide federal records (which all SoS emails are) has always been illegal (since the 50's or so). The more recent law changes were more to clarify how records were to be archived (set a max 20 day limit on external records being transferred to your agencies official archiving system for example).
Her use of a private email account is also not illegal although it violated a State policy in place before she took office, but even when using private email all records are required to be turned over for archiving.
So she's not in violation of the 20 day law, since it was passed after her time in office, but she is in violation of the original law requiring all records be archived. Her only defense was that it took her team 2 years to finalize their archiving plan and they were just about to start when they happened to get subpoenaed. So far she has not shown any archiving plan was ever in place.
Federal retention laws have been in place for decades. The change that took place after her time a State was merely to set a 20 day limit on how long you had to send any outside documentation (emails from private addresses for example) to your agencies retention facility for transmission to the national archives. It did not create the requirement, merely set a limit on how long you could delay acting on it.
That's true for her time as a Senator. Senator's work emails are subject to the laws of the state they represent and are usually considered private.
The problem is by printing 55,000 pages of work emails from her time at State (with months of holes) she has shown that she has violated the FEDERAL retention laws by storing federal records on her system with no known plan to transmit them to the national archive as required by federal law. By law those documents are federal property and do not belong to her.
It's possible that by her own actions (showing she has emails she did not send to archives) she may already have committed a felony under the federal law. The mere concealment of federal records (her emails while at state) is a felony that can carry a 3 year sentence and is one of the few I've heard of that actually legally bars anyone convicted of from ever holding public office in the United States.
Though charges are unlikely, if the investigative panel looking at her emails manages to show even 1 email missing that they have access to through an outside source (not another federal employee) I'm sure there are enough people out for her blood that would consider filing.
The laws requiring the retention of all work records from federal agencies has been in place a very long time (1950's or so). There have been modifications to those laws over the years but they still stand in basically the same format as original.
The change made under Obama basically set a 20 day time limit on how long a person had to ensure any official record (external emails for example) was properly stored in the national archives for later retrieval and FOIA requests. These changes did not create the requirement for those documents to be retained, they merely set a time limit for their retention.
Under retention laws it was perfectly legal for a federal employee to use personal email for official use, but regardless of the server being used those emails were ALWAYS required to be retained and transmitted to the archives.
Each agency had the ability to dictate their own policies on external email usage and most, including State while Clinton was Secretary, had policies in place to discourage any outside email usage for official business. The rules in State were so strict that people were removed from office during Clinton's time there for using personal emails for work.
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The US Constitution gives the power to ratify international agreements and make them law to the US Senate alone. The State Dept. and the US President are only able to create temporary agreements with no lasting legal authority. That was the gist of the open letter.
The main reason some contests are only available in Quebec is that they are special 'Quebec only' versions of contests that already exist in the rest of the country but other provinces didn't require extra hoops to be jumped through and more importantly, extra fees to be paid to get licensed. That is not a good thing since it creates a barrier that a lot of smaller contest holders just won't bother with. Quebec residents usually lose out more than they gain from these extra requirements.
And 99% of the reason such regulations exist is Quebec likes to pretend at being their own country. So while Quebec has ALWAYS been the #1 recipient of equalization payments from the federal government (receiving over half of all money paid since they began in the 50's) they still like to duplicate federal services and add unneeded regulations just to show they have the power within their borders.
my kingdom for a mod point!
They will have no shortage of advertisers for a Top Gear like show with Clarkson at the head.
Car manufacturers may be the primary goto guys for ad space but when a show is watched by 350 million people and pulls in a profit of 40-50 million pounds/year (not that whatever show he starts up, if he does will necessarily pull those numbers) everyone from cell phone companies to children's toys will be clamoring to buy available commercial slots.
Even a lot of car companies don't view negative reviews on Top Gear as a bad thing. Some use it as a challenge to do better next time and others are just happy to have their cars seen.
Manufactures like Ferrari, Maclaren, Pagani aren't really going to be spending money on 30 second commercials for a car show anyway but Ford, GM, Honda, Kia etc will and for them having their 8 thousand dollar family car reviewed poorly against a F40 isn't a real showstopper.
They talk about how much gas super cars use all the time, even sometimes mentioning that they are only capable of x laps before refueling. It's usually just a interesting tidbit they throw in while talking back and forth because it's not a major testing hurdle. Besides track tests watch any of their road trips and it will almost certainly be mentioned if one of their cars requires fueling more often than the others and that's when it only takes less than 5 minutes to refuel and get going again, as opposed to 3.5+ hours for a Tesla (at the time) so it's a MUCH bigger deal if your Tesla run out of juice.
It becomes a focus of the review simply because it is a major weakness in the design which is true for all pure EVs. If they had a battery swap option then it probably wouldn't have even been brought up except for a one liner about "we had the swap the batteries ever x laps".
I think this was a contract year for all the Top gear presenters so he would have been free to leave anyway, this just gives him the ability to do so without any bad feelings from his fans.
True Clarkson fans won't be surprised he over reacted and hit a producer and got himself fired , he's gotten close enough to that several times in the past, but they may have seen it as a betrayal if he just announced out of the blue that he was leaving the show to do something else. As long as the producer that was hit wasn't seriously hurt, which all reports say he wasn't, then fans will write off almost any action by Clarkson as Jeremy being Jeremy.
I'm not saying this was all planned out in advance but I do think this was one of the best outcomes for Clarkson if he was looking to leave TG.
Clarkson was the one to report the assault so if anyone was looking for an excuse out of re-upping a contract it was probably Clarkson. This way he can leave without carrying any of the baggage simply quitting the show would have given him.
Jeremy will be fine. He knows that every other channel has been trying for years to poach him away from the BBC and once he sold his interest in the show to the BBC a year or so ago his income was no longer tied to how well Top Gear itself did.
There have been several FOIA requests made for her emails over the years essentially none have really been fulfilled. People and the press have been complaining about it for a long time, it was just that once it came up during a relatively high profile case it became big news.
Wrong on so many levels. Bill is on record stating he does not use email and he's only ever sent 2 in his life, while President.
This server was set up and registered by Hillary as she was going through the process of being named SoS.
google "pelosi" and "iran"
The Logan act wouldn't apply to Senators anyway since it does not differentiate between any of the co-equal branches of government. Thus, a senator is just a permitted to speak on international relations as the President and the reason Pelosi wasn't charged with violating it when she flew to Iran during Bush's tenure directly against the executives wishes.
Nancy Pelosi flew to Iran directly against State dept. (President Bush's) request.
Ted Kennedy was in contact with the USSR requesting and offering aid to oust a sitting President (Reagan).
And according the the constitution, Senators are the only officials in the US government able to actually to codify a treaty between nations into law so not only are they allowed to speak their mind on the subject of international relations, they are uniquely empowered to act on it.
Several people, including Rice herself I believe, have already stated she doesn't like email and never used it. She did have a .gov address though.
Powell used a personal account but claims to have cc'd state on every work related email. A terrible archiving system but one that was listed as acceptable at the time.
You know, the whole fact that she knows she must turn over all those communications eventually?
That's the problem isn't it, she knows she doesn't have to turn them all over. No one outside of the Clinton camp has ever had access to the server(s) or their contents, and investigators only get bits and pieces given to them by the Hillary's team and even then only in physical form and not even the original digital copy with header information. From what's been received thus far there are already reports of months long gaps.
She's already admitted to deleting tens of thousands of email but claimed they were all personal, a number between her and Bill. One problem is Bill is on record just recently stating he never uses email and has only ever sent 2 in his life, both while President.
While the Bush email was a problem and dealt with at the time, Senators, Congressman, Governors and all other state level politicians are not subject to a Federal law about Federal employees so there is no reason to bring them up except to try and create political cover for Hillary.
Jeb Bush, Sarah Palin, Scott Walker etc.. did not violate the federal laws requiring them to archive their official records because there is no federal law concerning them on that matter. There is one for the Secretary of State however.
The was no law restricting her from using a private email as long as she NEVER sent or received classified emails on it (a separate law prevents that) although State dept. guidelines in place before Obama even took office strictly prohibited it.
There is and always has been a law requiring all federal records (her emails as SoS are by definition federal records) be sent to national archives. The 2014 amendment didn't add or change that requirement in any meaningful way (except change the time limit you had to comply). We only have her word she complied with that law and then it was only under subpoena, but large gaps in her email chains make that highly doubtful.
Powell claims to have cc'd people at State on all of his official emails. While a terrible way to do things at the time that was considered an acceptable means of archiving.
It's always been illegal (since the 50's or so). Changes to the law have been more about imposing timelines and clarification (under Obama a 20 day time limit before outside records had to be submitted was added) but not about the requirement for archiving of federal records (which all SoS emails are by legal definition).
She was legally allowed to have a private server and legally allowed to use it for work (as long an no classified information was ever stored there - different law) but she was never legally allowed to withhold those emails from the national archives.
We don't preserve other communication media completely, I see no reason why email should somehow be special.
In the US you do and it isn't.
All federal records must be archived for later FOIA requests of retrieval for other reasons. A federal record is essentially anything that someone does while working at a federal level job for the purposes of that job.. The form of the archive isn't important (hence why it was not illegal for HIllary to send over 55,000 pages of email instead of a simple thumb drive with the digital copies) but the fact they must be preserved is.
There are guidelines within the law that allows for some records to be destroyed but they are clearly spelt out and generally are done by the archivist and not the subject/creator of the record.
Try not to conflate the two issues at play here:
1) It is NOT against the law to use external email for official purposes. It's is against federal guidelines but those don't carry the same weight as an actual law and usually only involve workplace sanctions, not legal ones.
2) It is against the law to store classified information on external servers.
3) It is against the law to hid or destroy federal documents which all SoS email are. Violation of this law carries a 3 year sentence and is one of the only laws I've ever heard of that also specifically states that violators can never hold public office in the US ever again.
Her defense for #2 is she claims that as SoS she never handled any classified emails ever, an almost impossible tasked but at least its a claim.
She is most certainly in violation of the retention laws for #3 however but depending on whether they can show she is only in violation of the hiding/withholding portion vs the destruction portion will most likely determine if anyone bothers to actually charge her or not.
They already have emails from other sources showing her having email discussions about semi-work related intel gathering with non-state employees. They may skirt the definition of official record enough for her to get away with not having retained those but if they find anything else on some third party server (say any foreign diplomat she exchanged emails with) but cannot find a corresponding copy on her server then she's done for.
Her use of private email was perfectly legal during her tenure but has been against State dept guidlines that existed before Obama even took office.
That being said, it's not really her use of private email that makes this a legal case, it's her failure to transfer over her emails to the national archives. Regardless of the medium used to create, transmit or store federal records (which all SoS emails are according to the legal definition) since the 1950's all records MUST legally be sent to the national archives for storage.
There have been several changes to the original act to clarify storage methods and timelines (the latest under Obama set a 20 day max on when records had to be sent to archives) but the general purpose of the original act has always been the same.
Just to clarify:
Colin Powell admitted to using private email (not one on a server he owned and controlled) but claims to have cc'd a State department address on all his correspondence. At the time that was considered an adequate policy with regards to federal retention laws.
Through hacks of other peoples emails we already know of some emails between Clinton and outside persons concerning some work at least somewhat related to her work as SoS. Those emails had no cc's to other state dept. officials so only exist on Clintons server as well as the server used by the other person.
Also,at least 2 of her direct underlings also have accounts on her server meaning any communication between the 3 of them would be wholly contained on Clinton's server.
Republicans did no got to Iran to undermine anything (you might be confusing them with Nancy Pelosi who actually DID travel to Iran against executive wishes or possible Ted Kennedy who actually did write letters to the Soviets asking for help to oust a sitting president). 47 (not 57) senators wrote a letter (effectively a press release) about potential treaties with Iran. As a co-equal branch of government and the ONLY branch that can pass international treaties into US law that was well within not only their legal right but was effectively exercising a right granted only to them by the constitution.
Inviting a sitting head of state to speak to congress might be rare but became a large poke in the White House eye mostly because of the reaction of the White House and fellow legislators. Their refusal to meet with the PM or attend his speech made it an event. If the President had just made an appointment to meet with the Israeli PM and Dem legislators just went to the speech it would have hardly been a blip on the news radar.
Destruction or attempting to hide federal records (which all SoS emails are) has always been illegal (since the 50's or so). The more recent law changes were more to clarify how records were to be archived (set a max 20 day limit on external records being transferred to your agencies official archiving system for example).
Her use of a private email account is also not illegal although it violated a State policy in place before she took office, but even when using private email all records are required to be turned over for archiving.
So she's not in violation of the 20 day law, since it was passed after her time in office, but she is in violation of the original law requiring all records be archived. Her only defense was that it took her team 2 years to finalize their archiving plan and they were just about to start when they happened to get subpoenaed. So far she has not shown any archiving plan was ever in place.
Federal retention laws have been in place for decades. The change that took place after her time a State was merely to set a 20 day limit on how long you had to send any outside documentation (emails from private addresses for example) to your agencies retention facility for transmission to the national archives. It did not create the requirement, merely set a limit on how long you could delay acting on it.
That's true for her time as a Senator. Senator's work emails are subject to the laws of the state they represent and are usually considered private.
The problem is by printing 55,000 pages of work emails from her time at State (with months of holes) she has shown that she has violated the FEDERAL retention laws by storing federal records on her system with no known plan to transmit them to the national archive as required by federal law. By law those documents are federal property and do not belong to her.
It's possible that by her own actions (showing she has emails she did not send to archives) she may already have committed a felony under the federal law. The mere concealment of federal records (her emails while at state) is a felony that can carry a 3 year sentence and is one of the few I've heard of that actually legally bars anyone convicted of from ever holding public office in the United States.
Though charges are unlikely, if the investigative panel looking at her emails manages to show even 1 email missing that they have access to through an outside source (not another federal employee) I'm sure there are enough people out for her blood that would consider filing.
The laws requiring the retention of all work records from federal agencies has been in place a very long time (1950's or so). There have been modifications to those laws over the years but they still stand in basically the same format as original.
The change made under Obama basically set a 20 day time limit on how long a person had to ensure any official record (external emails for example) was properly stored in the national archives for later retrieval and FOIA requests. These changes did not create the requirement for those documents to be retained, they merely set a time limit for their retention.
Under retention laws it was perfectly legal for a federal employee to use personal email for official use, but regardless of the server being used those emails were ALWAYS required to be retained and transmitted to the archives.
Each agency had the ability to dictate their own policies on external email usage and most, including State while Clinton was Secretary, had policies in place to discourage any outside email usage for official business. The rules in State were so strict that people were removed from office during Clinton's time there for using personal emails for work.