Posted on 02/04/2016 3:48:42 PM PST by Kaslin
With this week's caucus in Iowa, speculation finally has finally given way to actual voting results in the presidential campaign. That makes it as good a time as any to observe that the Clintons have done it again: They have so degraded our politics that criminality rather than unfitness for office appears to be the only potential disqualifier for Democrats.
Sadly, we must say "potential" because we cannot be confident that even an indictment would cause Hillary Clinton's supporters to abandon her. They'd rather have the Oval Office run out of Leavenworth than have a Republican occupy it in Washington.
The evidence of Mrs. Clinton's mishandling of classified information is mounting. In just the past few days, we've learned that several emails communicated through and stored on the private email system Clinton improperly used to conduct government business contained the most closely guarded categories of national-defense intelligence. They cannot be disclosed even in redacted form without endangering (I should say, further endangering) vital intelligence methods and sources.
Moreover, there is so much classified information strewn through Clinton's thousands of emails that the State Department claims it cannot comply with a federal court's disclosure schedule. Translation: State is carrying water for the Clinton presidential campaign, ensuring that, for the next several weeks, primary voters will go to the polls not knowing what other damaging information may compromise the Democrats' frontrunner before the November election.
In the wake of these developments, the Hillary! campaign has taken a truly breathtaking position, showing yet again what a corruptive force the Clintons are: To salvage her reeling presidential bid, Mrs. Clinton is demanding that the intelligence community set aside its objections to the disclosure of classified information so that her emails can be released.
That is, while desperately seeking the office most responsible for protecting national security, Clinton is audaciously subordinating national security to her political ambitions.
Let's be clear about how cynical this is: Clinton's outrageous demand is theater through and through. Before she was secretary of state for four years, Hillary Clinton sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee for six years while the nation was at war. She knows full well that the intelligence community would never publicize the scads of national defense information she compromised over four years.
Remember, Clinton's reckless handling of classified information occurred during the incumbent Democratic administration and, it is now clear, was known to President Obama and then-Senator (now, Secretary of State) Kerry, both of whom exchanged emails with Clinton through her private, non-secure system. It is a matter of great embarrassment to the administration that Clinton's emails are rife with classified information. The intelligence agencies feel this heat and would like nothing better than to green-light the release of the emails and pretend there is no problem. But they know they cannot do that: Not only would they be revealing vital secrets, exposing critical intelligence-collection programs, and endangering covert intelligence agents. They would also be rupturing intelligence partnerships with foreign governments, whose agreement to share information with the United States is based on the assurance that the information, and its source, will remain confidential.
The Obama administration and the intelligence community are not going to risk all of that in order to protect the Clinton campaign, and Hillary knows that.
She also knows that, were the intelligence community to accede to her demand, it would be a disaster for her campaign. Sure, Clinton would try to run around saying, "See, there was nothing classified here!" But the public airing of the emails would further illustrate how utterly irresponsible she was in systematically conducting high-level government business on a private, unsecured email server. Full disclosure would intensify calls for a prosecution against her.
Thus, because Mrs. Clinton realizes the intelligence services will never agree to release all the emails, she knows there is no downside to making a righteously indignant demand that they do so. It is classic Clintonian spin: allowing Hillary to pretend that the real scandal is the government's classification of too much information that should be publicly available, not her gross negligence in exposing vital intelligence secrets, methods and sources to the high likelihood of hacking by hostile foreign governments.
Let's imagine, though, that Mrs. Clinton actually means for her demand to be taken seriously. After all, she certainly hopes voters will take it seriously.
Think what this means: The intelligence services on which the president depends to perform the most solemn of presidential duties, the protection of American lives, have indicated that the disclosure of Clinton's emails would endanger American lives and damage American interests. They've concluded that publicizing these secrets could imperil foreign nations by exposing their confidential - and, for them, risky - cooperation with the United States, potentially inducing those nations to end intelligence-sharing arrangements.
Presented with such a dire analysis, any president who takes seriously the duties of the office says, "Of course, we must maintain our national defense secrets."
Hillary Clinton, to the contrary, says, "To hell with national security. Do what's best for my political campaign."
You can almost forget about the substance of the email scandal. Clinton's reaction to the scandal, her willingness to jeopardize the nation for the sake of her ambition, is itself disqualifying.
Yep! And besides, who couldn't believe this face. I mean, just look at. It just screams honesty and sincerity.
She is flat out lying.
YES, the information in her emails was classified when it was written,
was classified when it was sent from government computers to her private server,
was classified when it was read,
was classified when it was printed,
was classified when it was copied to her attorney’s unsecured PC,
is now classified,
and needs to remain classified in the future. So, therefore,
it CANNOT be freely released.
OK, let us claim nothing she read, nothing she wrote in 4 years as Sec of State was classified.
Then she was a worthless figurehead who knew nothing and communicated nothing of any value in 4 years as Secretary of State.
It appears her primary function was soliciting and securing huge amounts of funding for the Clinton Global SlushFund.
Well, if she has been lying this whole time about everything you listed there, that means she has committed countless serious felonies that may have placed many lives in danger, including perhaps the life of our own ambassador and her close personal friend, Chris.
Now, if she is lying and committed all those felonies and endangered all those lives, one has to ask one’s self why on earth would she do that and leave herself open to such legal jeopardy?
Was she providing classified data by way of placing it on an unsecured server to potential enemies of our country in exchange for donations to the Fund the Clintons?
Has this grinning moonbat committed treason for profit?
Well, it just screams, for sure...
Yes. She has been for sale every minute of every day sicne she sold those Chicago futures for $100,000.00
Her price has only gone up since she became a Senator and then Sec of State. While in the White House, the going rate for ANY audience with the president was $100,000.00. Even charging an Indian tribe for references before a meeting with the Dept of the Interior.
The 30,000 deleted emails nobody was talking about were sales quotes for her Clinton foundation. And 3 yoga classes.
And 2 wedding cakes.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
The intelligence agencies feel this heat and would like nothing better than to green-light the release of the emails and pretend there is no problem. But they know they cannot do that: Not only would they be revealing vital secrets, exposing critical intelligence-collection programs, and endangering covert intelligence agents. They would also be rupturing intelligence partnerships with foreign governments, whose agreement to share information with the United States is based on the assurance that the information, and its source, will remain confidential.. . . not that any self-respecting intelligence service will have the slightest thought of trusting the US to keep a secret ever again.Hey, fundamental transformation! Mission accomplished!
Yes, she almost certainly has.
Hillary Clinton is the one the GOP wants to run against
We are desperate to have control of the WH not descend to another Democrat on Inauguration Day 2017. But is partisanship worth seeing that creep Rodham-Clinton honored even with a nomination for POTUS? Remember what some of us thought about how easy it would be to defeat Obama???
Like other sensitive government agencies the State Department was frequently target and increasingly sophisticated phishing attempts. When we first arrived at State, these attempts were similar to the fraudulent emails many Americans experience at home on their personal computers. The often sloppy early attempts to penetrate our secure systems were easy to spot. But by 2012, the sophistication and fluency had advanced considerably, with the attackers impersonating State Department officials in an attempt to dupe their colleagues into opening legitimate looking attachments.When we traveled to sensitive places like Russia, we often received warnings from the Department security officials to leave our BlackBerries, laptops—anything that communicated with the outside world—on the plane, with their batteries removed to prevent foreign intelligence services from compromising them. Even in friendly settings we conducted business under strict security precautions, taking care where and how we read secret material and used our technology. One means of protecting material was to read it inside an opaque tent in a hotel room. In less well equipped settings we were told to improvise by reading sensitive material with a blanket over our head. I felt like I was 10 years old again, reading covertly by flashlight under the covers after bedtime. On more than one occasion I was cautioned not to speak freely in my own hotel room.
And it wasn't just US government agencies and officials who were targets. American companies were also in the crosshairs. I fielded calls from frustrated CEOs complaining about aggressive theft of an intellectual property and trade secrets, even breaches of their home computers. To better focus our efforts against this increasingly serious threat, I appointed the Department’s first Coordinator for Cyber Issues in February 2011.
What a lying phony hag!
After it has been decided and announced that almost 100 emails can NEVER be released because they are extremely damaging to US security, and many people's lives, she says, sure release them!
Neener neener neener!
Sorry FRiend, you missed it by a factor of three. It's $675,000.00!!
BTW, she was asked why someone would pay her that much for a speech and she answered, “I don’t know. It’s what they offered.”
I think Barky was the bigger payback. Barky is motivated by ideology. Hillary is motivated by money.
Hillary has them over a barrel. She claims to want the emails to be released to the public.
She doesn’t want them released, she only wants to appear to want them released.
She knows they can’t release them because they would PROVE that EVERYONE in government was INVOLVED IN and KNEW ABOUT all of the unconstitutional and criminal acts she committed.
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