Full court press from NYT on mailgate today

This is just a note that today's Times had a front page above-the-fold story about the implications of Sec. Clinton's handling of her email. And there was an editorial, and a guest oped piece on the subject, and Frank Bruni has a column titled "Hillary's Messy Habits" In case anyone was tempted to wonder what all this is about, the Times wants us to know it's important!!!

I have spent the week trying to figure out what the story of Sec. Clinton's private email account, private server, and perhaps tardy turning in of a bunch of emails is about. I am not much farther ahead. Apparently it wasn't deeply illegal to have used a private account, and there may have been good reasons for using one. She and her aides might have turned in emails sooner than they did, but they turned over a bunch. So, not illegal or in violation of guidelines, but this is still important, the Times insists, because more questions can be asked.

Frankly, the whole thing reminds me of Whitewater weekend, which occurred long ago in 1992. The Times broke the story, everybody picked it up, and for years, nobody knew what it was about. Eventually, I realized that the Times story was about questions that could be asked about a real estate development called Whitewater, and the Clintons' relationship with the developer James Macdougall. After repeated investigations, there were few improprieties to be found, and all of them had been committed by James Macdougall. But neither the Times nor the Special Prosecutor's Office could be satisfied with this rather simple answer, because questions could still be asked. For six years of Whitewater investigations, and numerous smaller "scandals", the Times could always find more questions to be asked. Frankly, I concluded that the Times was having a truly difficult time admitting that it had made a mistake, Whitewater was meaningless, and it had added its august voice to the endless fishing expedition that the Special Prosecutor's activities became. The Times had messed up, but it was never going to admit that.

So far, the email "scandal" sounds like exactly the origins of the Whitewater fiasco--we are to believe that there is so much smoke there must be a fire. Actually, most of the smoke is coming from the Times and other entities with agendas. The Times has told the country since 1992 that neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton can be trusted. But lest we forget, at the beginning of the Whitewater era, Bill and Hillary said that they had done nothing wrong. That the real estate development had failed, and they had lost money. This turns out to have been the truth.

So I shall sit quietly, perusing the news, and waiting for the next installment of this non-scandal. I advise you all to do the same.