Recoverin_Republican
Recoverin_Republican's JournalThe Real Clinton Email Scandal: Our Ridiculous Classification Rules
The Real Clinton Email Scandal: Our Ridiculous Classification Rules
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/the-real-clinton-email-scandal-our-ridiculous-classification-rules-121507
Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account for official State Department business was a mistake, but the revelation that Clinton’s emails contain upwards of 305 messages with potentially “classified” information is far less scandalous than the headlines make it appear. The most troubling part of this story involves the rules governing official secrets, not Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State.
As a former Department of Justice official who regularly dealt with classified information, I am glad a team of officials from the FBI, the intelligence community and other agencies is not currently reviewing every email I sent and received while I worked in government. If they did, they would likely find arguably classified information that was transmitted over unclassified networks—and the same thing is undoubtedly true for other senior officials at the White House, the State Department and other top national security agencies.
The sheer volume of information now considered classified, as well as the extreme, and often absurd, interpretations by intelligence officials about what is and is not classified, make it nearly impossible for officials charged with operating in both the classified and unclassified worlds to do so without ever mixing the two.
From the intelligence community’s perspective, the border between these two worlds looks like a brick wall. Many intelligence officials spend their entire day working inside so-called Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, designed to be impenetrable to eavesdropping, and using only separate, classified email systems to communicate with others in government. In these hermetically sealed environments, there is no need to ever sort through the differences between classified and unclassified information.
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/the-real-clinton-email-scandal-our-ridiculous-classification-rules-121507#ixzz41hAZIjd0
due to Sanders supporters enthrallment with GOP propaganda: The Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn't
Bernie supporters are completely enthralled with the GOP's anti-Hillary propaganda that she MUST have done something illegal with her emails, the following heretical information is provided...
[font size="+1"]The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t [/font]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-hillary-clinton-e-mail-scandal-that-isnt/2015/08/27/b1cabed8-4cf4-11e5-902f-39e9219e574b_story.html
Does Hillary Clinton have a serious legal problem because she may have transmitted classified information on her private e-mail server? After talking with a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers, I think this “scandal” is overstated. Using the server was a self-inflicted wound by Clinton, but it’s not something a prosecutor would take to court.
“It’s common” that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information, said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information.
“There are always these back channels,” Smith explained. “It’s inevitable, because the classified systems are often cumbersome and lots of people have access to the classified e-mails or cables.” People who need quick guidance about a sensitive matter often pick up the phone or send a message on an open system. They shouldn’t, but they do.
“It’s common knowledge that the classified communications system is impossible and isn’t used,” said one former high-level Justice Department official. Several former prosecutors said flatly that such sloppy, unauthorized practices, although technically violations of law, wouldn’t normally lead to criminal cases.
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[font size="+1"]Powell and Rice received classified emails in personal accounts[/font]
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/268228-report-colin-powell-and-condoleezza-rice-staff-received-classified-emails-on
[font size="+1"]Bush White House lost millions of emails which were held in a private account controlled by the Republican National Committee ....
FLASHBACK: When Millions Of Lost Bush White House Emails (From Private Accounts) Triggered A Media Shrug [/font]
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/03/10/flashback-when-millions-of-lost-bush-white-hous/202820
Even for a Republican White House that was badly stumbling through George W. Bush's sixth year in office, the revelation on April 12, 2007 was shocking. Responding to congressional demands for emails in connection with its investigation into the partisan firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the White House announced that as many as five million emails, covering a two-year span, had been lost.
The emails had been run through private accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee and were only supposed to be used for dealing with non-administration political campaign work to avoid violating ethics laws. Yet congressional investigators already had evidence private emails had been used for government business, including to discuss the firing of one of the U.S. attorneys. The RNC accounts were used by 22 White House staffers, including then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who reportedly used his RNC email for 95 percent of his communications.
As the Washington Post reported, "Under federal law, the White House is required to maintain records, including e-mails, involving presidential decision- making and deliberations." But suddenly millions of the private RNC emails had gone missing; emails that were seen as potentially crucial evidence by Congressional investigators.
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[font size="+1"]Flashback: Rove Erases 22 Million White House Emails on Private Server at Height of U.S. Attorney Scandal – Media Yawns[/font]
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2015/03/18/flashback-rove-erases-22-million-white-house-emails-on-private-server-at-height-of-u-s-attorney-scandal-media-yawns/
Now that they’ve taken control of Congress, Republicans are wielding power much the same way they did in the Clinton era and for the six years afterward when they controlled the White House and Congress under George W. Bush: ineptly — ex. 1, 2, 3, etc.
RELATED:
Jeb Bush broke Florida’s “Sunshine Laws” by deleting at least 300,000 emails.
Then as now, it’s clear that the only thing Republicans do very well is inflame the media with bogus scandals — which is a handy way to distract attention from their ineptitude. They are doing this with their usual aplomb, and considerable success, in the matter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to send emails.
Clinton has said she deleted about 50,000 emails that dealt with personal matters, citing her daughter’s wedding and her mother’s funeral as examples. All the correspondence pertaining to official business was turned over to archived by State. The deletion of the emails, though perfectly legal, has excited House Republicans, including Speaker John Boehner, who has announced plans to deploy House committees to investigate what might aptly be called Servergate.
Never mind that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, has said he used a system similar to Clinton’s — and never mind that in 2007 Karl Rove deleted 22 million emails from a private server in the Bush White House — a matter about which the Beltway media said little and Republicans in Congress, like Rep. John Boehner, said nothing.
Here is a brief refresher on the White House email scandal:
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[font size="+1"]22 Million "lost" White House Emails "found" - AFTER Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility and the National Security Archive sued the Executive Office of the Presidency to produce the emails as required by law[/font]
http://www.wired.com/2009/12/22-million-emails-found/
White House computer technicians have found 22 million e-mails that were believed to have been lost during President George W. Bush’s administration, according to the Associated Press.
The discovery was announced Monday by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, which filed lawsuits against the Executive Office of the President, or EOP, over the e-mails in 2007.
The two groups had initially filed a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails in the wake of a scandal involving the Justice Department, which had fired U.S. attorneys around the country in an apparent political bid to rid the department of prosecutors who didn’t adhere to the White House’s conservative agenda. The missing e-mails were also potentially crucial to the investigation into the Valerie Plame–CIA leak scandal.
The groups eventually filed lawsuits after the EOP revealed that it had lost about 5 million e-mails from its servers between January 2003 and July 2005, because the e-mails had not been archived properly per the Presidential Records Act. Among other things, CREW sought records about the EOP’s e-mail management system, about retained and missing e-mails, and about any audit reports that might have revealed potential problems with the e-mail system.
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excellent! I left the GOP after the Trickle Down disaster, but I had been growing disatisfied with
different things over there for several years before that. One in particular was after the Gingrich attitude that politics should be conducted like war, the GOP became more obdurate and obstructionist. There also was a much stronger attitude that everybody should march in unison ("you're either with us, or against us."
. That to be a "good" Republican you had to speak words from the approved doctrine. There was even less tolerance for any variation from the 'approved' script, than there had been in previous years.
Finally, I realized I had been a Republican Sucker for too many years and realized I had become a democrat in my thinking, so I became a Democrat by party affiliation. One thing I really liked about being with Democrats was the healthy debate of issues and how to best go about achieving Democratic objectives. This was so much better than the Republican tendency towards uniformity of speech and thought.
It is more than a little ironic to me, now that I have become an enthusiastic Democrat that in the last several months I have noticed a change. With the rise of Bernie supporters, I am now confronted with the same intolerance of different opinions. Also, just like the Right Wingers, Bernie supporters are so quick to ascribe wicked motivations to anyone who would dare question their candidate or the effectiveness of his policies. Just like right wingers they demonize those who disagree with them - not always - but very frequently.
It's just striking to me how much the Bernie supporters are like the Right Wingers who I fled. Here I was, I felt I had escaped a 'snake-pit' of intolerance and faithfulness tests only to find much the same thing rearing it's head in the Democratic Party. I guess because of my previous experience, I am sensitive to any indications of intolerance and especially to those who are inclined to demonize those who disagree with them.
I do not, however, think this is a long term condition. I think it's the result of the severe damage done to our economy and society by Right Wing tax policies which have lead to concentration of wealth like we haven't seen since the days of the Great Depression and moribund job growth both of which has hurt the Middle Class. There will be disagreements as to how to proceed. This is not unexpected in difficult times when facing problems that so often do not have simple, or quick, solutions. I think, we in the Democratic Party will find the solutions to the problems we face - if the GOP will let us!
Varieties of Voodoo: Bernie Sanders needs to get real about his economic program - Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opinion/varieties-of-voodoo.html?action=click&contentCollection=opinion&module=NextInCollection®ion=Footer&pgtype=article&version=column&rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugmanOn Wednesday four former Democratic chairmen and chairwomen of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers — three who served under Barack Obama, one who served under Bill Clinton — released a stinging open letter to Bernie Sanders and Gerald Friedman, a University of Massachusetts professor who has been a major source of the Sanders campaign’s numbers. The economists called out the campaign for citing “extreme claims” by Mr. Friedman that “exceed even the most grandiose predictions by Republicans” and could “undermine the credibility of the progressive economic agenda.”
That’s harsh. But it’s harsh for a reason.
The claims the economists are talking about come from Mr. Friedman’s analysis of the Sanders economic program. The good news is that this isn’t the campaign’s official assessment; the bad news is that the Friedman analysis has been highly praised by campaign officials.
And the analysis is really something. The Republican candidates have been widely and rightly mocked for their escalating claims that they can achieve incredible economic growth, starting with Jeb Bush’s promise to double growth to 4 percent and heading up from there. But Mr. Friedman outdoes the G.O.P. by claiming that the Sanders plan would produce 5.3 percent growth a year over the next decade.
Even more telling, I’d argue, is Mr. Friedman’s jobs projection, which has the employed share of American adults soaring all the way back to what it was in 2000. That may sound possible — until you remember that by 2026 more than a quarter of U.S. adults over 20 will be 65 and older, compared with 17 percent in 2000.
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Time reporter choked and slammed to the ground at Donald Trump rally
http://theweek.com/speedreads/609311/time-reporter-choked-slammed-ground-donald-trump-rallyDonald Trump's rallies aren't known for being peaceful affairs, from the forcible removal of protesters to all-out altercations. The candidate himself has threatened from the stage to throw a punch. The latest instance of violence out of Trumptown is pretty brutal, however, as Time reporter Chris Morris was reportedly choked and thrown to the ground by a security guard at the GOP frontrunner's rally in Radford, Virginia, on Monday. An attendee captured the confrontation on video and posted it to Instagram, but has since deleted the clip; luckily, Mashable captured a GIF from the video in which, near the bottom of the frame, a man in a suit (the security guard) can be clearly seen grabbing another man (Morris) by the throat and throwing him to the ground:
(see video at link: https://media.giphy.com/media/xT9DPC6VftJUgNtYmk/giphy.mp4
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