Again, you're not giving me any reason to trust anyone in the chain. If the information did come from Russia, they could have tampered with it. The Russians have shown themselves good at such things in the past. The Manning leak was edited to remove the really harmful parts, yes, but that doesn't mean it wasn't tampered with.
Deutch did agree to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge, which Clinton pardoned. The Attorney General had declined to prosecute, suggesting that Deutch had been offered a deal whereby he'd plead guilty to a misdemeanor and the investigation would be dropped.
Before I go on, as I understand it, not being a lawyer, is that criminal intent is a matter of intentionally doing something that is a crime. What the defendant actually meant to do after committing a crime doesn't matter. This seems to be the dividing line as to who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, and Clinton is on the "doesn't" side of the line. There's no evidence that she intentionally did anything to get classified information on her server.
Petraeus deliberately handed over classified information against the rules. Kristian intentionally took a picture that would be classified. I'm not familiar with Martin's case, but taking classified documents home sure sounds like a deliberate action that violates the law. Van Buren was apparently not charged with anything, much like Deutch. Nishimura deliberately got classified material onto his own equipment.
A little googling got this article, which has other names. In all cases, negligence was not prosecuted, and deliberate violation of the law didn't necessarily carry a prison sentence.
So, yes, these names don't qualify by my stated criteria, and nobody's provided me one counterexample to show that criminal prosecution of Clinton would not be unprecedented.
That's not how it works. Everybody's speeches get cherry-picked. If Trump can't say what he means, that's a real communication problem. (And cherry-picking in this sense is picking a sentence or phrase out whole, not messing with words. "Trump was unfairly treated" is not something you can pull out of my post. You could cherry-pick that Trump may be treated unfairly, I suppose, but that doesn't change my meaning.) What you seem to be saying is that, if Trump says something outrageous, we should carefully examine the context and interpret it in a way that favors Trump, and that simply doesn't happen to anyone, especially not to politicians.
Besides, it's real hard to interpret the quote behind the latest furor as not meaning "I commit sexual assault with impunity."
Every rating of truth-telling that I've seen that includes some investigative work says that Clinton is unusually honest for a politician (admittedly not a really high bar), and that Trump is unusually dishonest for a politician. Some people say it's biased, but the best sources normally provide references for the statement and why it's right or wrong. Sure, Clinton lies. Trump lies more. If we're selecting between them based on honesty, Clinton is the obvious choice.
You then list a lot of things you think she's guilty of without evidence. Some of those things are attitude, which suggests that you're likely cherry-picking quotes out of context. The evidence that Trump is a criminal is at least as good, considering fraud charges about Trump University.
As far as the rape case goes, this is a real problem. Clinton was assigned to defend the rapist as a public defender, and the judge wouldn't excuse her. The crucial question then is whether Clinton should have done her best to defend her client, or punted because she thought he was guilty. Since you think the Clintons should be held without bail while a formal investigation goes on to determine whether there was illegal activity, you probably aren't big on due process and "innocent until proven guilty", but I do believe in those things. Clinton's client was Constitutionally entitled to legal counsel, and I really don't want due process trampled just because someone looks guilty.
At that time, properly defending an accused rapist when it was not clearly forcible including trying to slut-shame the victim, so the jury would have reasonable doubt that the sex might have been consensual. There have been advances in how we treat rape victims in court (I've seen some of that attributed to Clinton), but not doing that at the time would mean denying the accused part of the benefit of counsel and not allowing him a fair trial. Blame Clinton for that if you don't believe in the US legal system, due process, and fairness in court.
An unfriendly government is apparently hacking into US systems. That's the important thing here, particularly if you follow the old saying "Politics stops at the water's edge". They did the DNC in the hope of influencing a US election. They could easily do banks, in the hope of disrupting the US economy by facilitating industrial-scale identity theft. They hack into a US enterprise, they release information. This is an act of war, although it's in nobody's interest to start shooting physically, and that doesn't depend on whose political party it benefits.
As far as I can tell, we're not starting a cyberwar. That's already underway, and we have a choice between ignoring it, taking pathetically ineffective security measures (are we going to harden every US server in a way that will stop a state-sponsored attack?), or participating.
Sure, pay attention to the emails. There isn't anything that damning in them. Pay attention to the Clinton Foundation. It is, as far as anybody's been able to find, a very good bona fide charity. But pay attention to the Russians as well. They don't mean us well, and they have a lot of resources.
Is it so far-fetched that this is exactly what it seems to be? That government investigators don't publish all their evidence? Some of you seem to be absolutely sure that this is a false flag operation, on no evidence that I can see.
Door locks help against the incompetent and impulsive burglars. They won't slow down a good one. We deal with burglaries by getting the police to retaliate so that it doesn't seem worth it.
Isn't the CIA the exact outfit that should be determining these things? I get that you don't trust it, which is reasonable, but what else would you expect?
Which DNC staffer are you talking about? The one that was murdered while in a not really good part of DC at night with no evidence linking the crime with the DNC?
even *think* about the long term consequences of this kind of action.
Personally, I think the long-term consequences of letting this go are probably worse. I'm willing to discuss this, and I might of course be wrong, but only with someone who hasn't already made up his mind about it. I'm sure Obama has thought of the long-term consequences, and disagrees with you. He disagrees with me sometimes, too.
Hardening every bloody server in the US to resist state-backed attacks is simply not going to happen. It would be nice, but let's be realistic. Our options are to roll over and take it, or do something unfriendly to them.
Okay, what does count as an attack in your mind? Is it OK with you if Russians hack into every financial institution you do business with and release the information? Your name, Social Security number, bank account identifiers, credit card numbers (including the security code on the back), just because they didn't have a Spetnatz (is that still the name?) detachment shoot you?
Why do you think a political party has to be entirely democratic? Why do you want people like Goldwater, McGovern, and Trump nominated just because they're more popular with the ideological fringe?
There are people in the government whose job it is to come up with what a proportional response should be. They may be wrong, but I expect them not to do too horribly badly. Given that we're dealing with Putin, I think we're better off erring on the harsh side. He's not going to start a war with NATO over a retaliation.
The majority of the posts against Clinton contain unfounded allegations. The majority of the posts against Trump report (not necessarily fairly) something he's actually said or done. That may be one reason for the different moderation.
I'm taking the position that Corney recommended the same treatment that others who did much the same thing got. Indicting her would be going beyond anything that's been done to people negligent with classified material, and would clearly be a political act.
Ah yes, the "there's got to be plenty of evidence there somewhere" offense. For the bribery charge, you'd have to show that there was a pattern of people who hired Bill to speak or donated to the Clinton Foundation and got unusually favorable treatment. If it happened over and over again you certainly must be able to find a few cases we can examine in detail.
Lack of intent is why she's not being prosecuted. Prosecuting her would be unprecedented in the literal sense.
The contractor you mention had criminal intent, meaning that he intentionally performed an act that was criminal. Every other person who's been criminally prosecuted for taking classified material has done so intentionally. Those who have been negligent with it have been dealt with administratively. You may think this shouldn't be the case, but the fact is that Clinton did nothing that has historically warranted criminal prosecution.
Give me the name of one person who faced criminal prosecution (more than a misdemeanor charge later dropped) for doing what Clinton did. One goddam name. I've been asking for one for weeks, maybe months, and tracking down what I've been given.
I'm still waiting. You Hillary-haters are real good at making loudmouth generalizations and exaggerations, and real bad at coming up with actual evidence.
Name the crimes. Name something Hillary Clinton did that is normally considered worthy of criminal prosecution, as opposed to things you dislike? I'm not holding my breath.
Okay, who in the US should be protected from unwarranted hostile action by foreign powers? The answer looks to be pretty obvious to me: every US citizen and organization. What's your list of who's worthy of protection and who isn't?
Trump is still in the election because a candidate is sacred from the moment of convention, and must be carried to term.
Seriously, when was the last time a major party Presidential candidate was pulled from an election because he was a thorough jackass who was unelectable and dragging the rest of the party down? It didn't happen to Goldwater and it didn't happen to McGovern. The majority of conservatives are realizing with horror what Candidate Trump actually is, and are busy distancing themselves from him.
What's so disastrous about US foreign policy? Immigration? (Most of our terrorists are home-grown.) Crime is generally coming down, and is at historically low rates. Since 1960, the deficit has generally gone down under Democratic Presidents and up under Republicans, and Obama has cut the deficit by a trillion dollars a year since taking office.
You're right about the disenfranchisement, but in my opinion sadly naive about what would happen. It would be good to have realistic campaign reform and to abolish the Electoral College (I'm less fond of term limits, for various reasons), but revolutions are normally a LOT uglier than that.
Also, Wikileaks is doing very little editing. They might be selective on what they are releasing when, but they leave the archives untouched to the point that it does endanger some lives and still contain malware.
And you know that how? Because Assange says so, and Assange would never tell a lie? Because he was careful to get a faithful copy making sure that the Russians didn't make any changes from the original? Because the Russians are blithering incompetents at modifying computer data?
At my age, it's depressing to realize that I haven't become sufficiently cynical.
I'm a private person with no links to the US government other than citizenship. The US does have an interest in defending me from unwarranted hostile action from foreign governments. It has an interest in defending private institutions from foreign state-sponsored attacks, including cyberattacks.
The fact that you're blaming the victim and saying the government shouldn't intervene in foreign attacks on US soil seems to be related to your politics.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you're not giving me any reason to trust anyone in the chain. If the information did come from Russia, they could have tampered with it. The Russians have shown themselves good at such things in the past. The Manning leak was edited to remove the really harmful parts, yes, but that doesn't mean it wasn't tampered with.
Yeah, the DNC should have held its collective knees together. Similarly, if Russian commandos shot me, it'd be my fault for not wearing armor.
I've seen no evidence that the Target leak was a state-sponsored attack. If you find such evidence then, yes, the US should do something about it.
Okay, let's go through the list.
Deutch did agree to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge, which Clinton pardoned. The Attorney General had declined to prosecute, suggesting that Deutch had been offered a deal whereby he'd plead guilty to a misdemeanor and the investigation would be dropped.
Before I go on, as I understand it, not being a lawyer, is that criminal intent is a matter of intentionally doing something that is a crime. What the defendant actually meant to do after committing a crime doesn't matter. This seems to be the dividing line as to who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, and Clinton is on the "doesn't" side of the line. There's no evidence that she intentionally did anything to get classified information on her server.
Petraeus deliberately handed over classified information against the rules. Kristian intentionally took a picture that would be classified. I'm not familiar with Martin's case, but taking classified documents home sure sounds like a deliberate action that violates the law. Van Buren was apparently not charged with anything, much like Deutch. Nishimura deliberately got classified material onto his own equipment.
A little googling got this article, which has other names. In all cases, negligence was not prosecuted, and deliberate violation of the law didn't necessarily carry a prison sentence.
So, yes, these names don't qualify by my stated criteria, and nobody's provided me one counterexample to show that criminal prosecution of Clinton would not be unprecedented.
In which case it should be no problem for you to pick two or three of those many, many cases. I want to thrash this out in public.
That's not how it works. Everybody's speeches get cherry-picked. If Trump can't say what he means, that's a real communication problem. (And cherry-picking in this sense is picking a sentence or phrase out whole, not messing with words. "Trump was unfairly treated" is not something you can pull out of my post. You could cherry-pick that Trump may be treated unfairly, I suppose, but that doesn't change my meaning.) What you seem to be saying is that, if Trump says something outrageous, we should carefully examine the context and interpret it in a way that favors Trump, and that simply doesn't happen to anyone, especially not to politicians.
Besides, it's real hard to interpret the quote behind the latest furor as not meaning "I commit sexual assault with impunity."
Every rating of truth-telling that I've seen that includes some investigative work says that Clinton is unusually honest for a politician (admittedly not a really high bar), and that Trump is unusually dishonest for a politician. Some people say it's biased, but the best sources normally provide references for the statement and why it's right or wrong. Sure, Clinton lies. Trump lies more. If we're selecting between them based on honesty, Clinton is the obvious choice.
You then list a lot of things you think she's guilty of without evidence. Some of those things are attitude, which suggests that you're likely cherry-picking quotes out of context. The evidence that Trump is a criminal is at least as good, considering fraud charges about Trump University.
As far as the rape case goes, this is a real problem. Clinton was assigned to defend the rapist as a public defender, and the judge wouldn't excuse her. The crucial question then is whether Clinton should have done her best to defend her client, or punted because she thought he was guilty. Since you think the Clintons should be held without bail while a formal investigation goes on to determine whether there was illegal activity, you probably aren't big on due process and "innocent until proven guilty", but I do believe in those things. Clinton's client was Constitutionally entitled to legal counsel, and I really don't want due process trampled just because someone looks guilty.
At that time, properly defending an accused rapist when it was not clearly forcible including trying to slut-shame the victim, so the jury would have reasonable doubt that the sex might have been consensual. There have been advances in how we treat rape victims in court (I've seen some of that attributed to Clinton), but not doing that at the time would mean denying the accused part of the benefit of counsel and not allowing him a fair trial. Blame Clinton for that if you don't believe in the US legal system, due process, and fairness in court.
An unfriendly government is apparently hacking into US systems. That's the important thing here, particularly if you follow the old saying "Politics stops at the water's edge". They did the DNC in the hope of influencing a US election. They could easily do banks, in the hope of disrupting the US economy by facilitating industrial-scale identity theft. They hack into a US enterprise, they release information. This is an act of war, although it's in nobody's interest to start shooting physically, and that doesn't depend on whose political party it benefits.
As far as I can tell, we're not starting a cyberwar. That's already underway, and we have a choice between ignoring it, taking pathetically ineffective security measures (are we going to harden every US server in a way that will stop a state-sponsored attack?), or participating.
Sure, pay attention to the emails. There isn't anything that damning in them. Pay attention to the Clinton Foundation. It is, as far as anybody's been able to find, a very good bona fide charity. But pay attention to the Russians as well. They don't mean us well, and they have a lot of resources.
Is it so far-fetched that this is exactly what it seems to be? That government investigators don't publish all their evidence? Some of you seem to be absolutely sure that this is a false flag operation, on no evidence that I can see.
Door locks help against the incompetent and impulsive burglars. They won't slow down a good one. We deal with burglaries by getting the police to retaliate so that it doesn't seem worth it.
Isn't the CIA the exact outfit that should be determining these things? I get that you don't trust it, which is reasonable, but what else would you expect?
Which DNC staffer are you talking about? The one that was murdered while in a not really good part of DC at night with no evidence linking the crime with the DNC?
Personally, I think the long-term consequences of letting this go are probably worse. I'm willing to discuss this, and I might of course be wrong, but only with someone who hasn't already made up his mind about it. I'm sure Obama has thought of the long-term consequences, and disagrees with you. He disagrees with me sometimes, too.
Hardening every bloody server in the US to resist state-backed attacks is simply not going to happen. It would be nice, but let's be realistic. Our options are to roll over and take it, or do something unfriendly to them.
Okay, what does count as an attack in your mind? Is it OK with you if Russians hack into every financial institution you do business with and release the information? Your name, Social Security number, bank account identifiers, credit card numbers (including the security code on the back), just because they didn't have a Spetnatz (is that still the name?) detachment shoot you?
Why do you think a political party has to be entirely democratic? Why do you want people like Goldwater, McGovern, and Trump nominated just because they're more popular with the ideological fringe?
There are people in the government whose job it is to come up with what a proportional response should be. They may be wrong, but I expect them not to do too horribly badly. Given that we're dealing with Putin, I think we're better off erring on the harsh side. He's not going to start a war with NATO over a retaliation.
The majority of the posts against Clinton contain unfounded allegations. The majority of the posts against Trump report (not necessarily fairly) something he's actually said or done. That may be one reason for the different moderation.
I'm taking the position that Corney recommended the same treatment that others who did much the same thing got. Indicting her would be going beyond anything that's been done to people negligent with classified material, and would clearly be a political act.
Ah yes, the "there's got to be plenty of evidence there somewhere" offense. For the bribery charge, you'd have to show that there was a pattern of people who hired Bill to speak or donated to the Clinton Foundation and got unusually favorable treatment. If it happened over and over again you certainly must be able to find a few cases we can examine in detail.
Lack of intent is why she's not being prosecuted. Prosecuting her would be unprecedented in the literal sense.
The contractor you mention had criminal intent, meaning that he intentionally performed an act that was criminal. Every other person who's been criminally prosecuted for taking classified material has done so intentionally. Those who have been negligent with it have been dealt with administratively. You may think this shouldn't be the case, but the fact is that Clinton did nothing that has historically warranted criminal prosecution.
Give me the name of one person who faced criminal prosecution (more than a misdemeanor charge later dropped) for doing what Clinton did. One goddam name. I've been asking for one for weeks, maybe months, and tracking down what I've been given.
I'm still waiting. You Hillary-haters are real good at making loudmouth generalizations and exaggerations, and real bad at coming up with actual evidence.
Name the crimes. Name something Hillary Clinton did that is normally considered worthy of criminal prosecution, as opposed to things you dislike? I'm not holding my breath.
Okay, who in the US should be protected from unwarranted hostile action by foreign powers? The answer looks to be pretty obvious to me: every US citizen and organization. What's your list of who's worthy of protection and who isn't?
Trump is still in the election because a candidate is sacred from the moment of convention, and must be carried to term.
Seriously, when was the last time a major party Presidential candidate was pulled from an election because he was a thorough jackass who was unelectable and dragging the rest of the party down? It didn't happen to Goldwater and it didn't happen to McGovern. The majority of conservatives are realizing with horror what Candidate Trump actually is, and are busy distancing themselves from him.
What's so disastrous about US foreign policy? Immigration? (Most of our terrorists are home-grown.) Crime is generally coming down, and is at historically low rates. Since 1960, the deficit has generally gone down under Democratic Presidents and up under Republicans, and Obama has cut the deficit by a trillion dollars a year since taking office.
You're right about the disenfranchisement, but in my opinion sadly naive about what would happen. It would be good to have realistic campaign reform and to abolish the Electoral College (I'm less fond of term limits, for various reasons), but revolutions are normally a LOT uglier than that.
And you know that how? Because Assange says so, and Assange would never tell a lie? Because he was careful to get a faithful copy making sure that the Russians didn't make any changes from the original? Because the Russians are blithering incompetents at modifying computer data?
At my age, it's depressing to realize that I haven't become sufficiently cynical.
I'm a private person with no links to the US government other than citizenship. The US does have an interest in defending me from unwarranted hostile action from foreign governments. It has an interest in defending private institutions from foreign state-sponsored attacks, including cyberattacks.
The fact that you're blaming the victim and saying the government shouldn't intervene in foreign attacks on US soil seems to be related to your politics.