...3...

But unless some more news comes out of this storyline, I think she'll weather this one.

You used the 'hypocrisy' word.

Now you are on the list of haters.

It really is the hypocrisy that bothers me. If it was good for a Bush, it's good for a Clinton--or an Obama, for that matter.

Being consistent with standards is pretty important. Wanting to run one person out of town on a rail, while excusing another is plain wrong. I see no problem at all with criticism of Clinton for doing this. She kind of played right into their hands, and we look foolish for excessively defending this.

Hillary runs an email server.
Her emails to and from State are exchanged, and therefore State (presumably) has a copy.
Hillary's emails to and from Domino's Pizza or Vladimir Putin would not show up at State.

Only unified location for all her emails is her own personal mail server.

Why put yourself in that kind of position?

What is inexplicable is if this was malum in se why didn't somebody say, "gee why am i getting personal e-mail from Hillary Clinton" and make her or someone aware of it.

Her -best- argument in my mind is something like this...

1) The quality of IT at the state department was terrible. It impaired functioning.

2) To make my office more effective, with my own money I bought modern equipment, software and services. My donation greatly helped us do our jobs.

3) Go ahead, look at all that equipment and all the email produced by it, you'll find security that meets or exceeds that of the state department's government operated system and nothing to suggest any hidden communication.

IF she had located all of the servers she bought at State so they could be set up under a .gov domain and governmental security and be used by everyone at State.

Even if she'd used governmental money to do it, that would have been a far better response than 'fix it for me, but not for thee'.

I don't think Sec Clinton is actually capable of the type of argument I suggest.

If there was, we'd have it. The attempt from twitter has shown that her words aren't trusted.

As an approach, silence may not give an excuse but it provides no lines to read between.

that yield an overall perception that the thesis of the narrative is true

I made a similar comment elsewhere about how the current kerfuffle largely plays into a pre-existing narrative about Clinton, and will likely mostly have little electoral difference - people will simply harden in their pre-existing convictions about her, one way or another.

Would you care to elaborate before taking another victory lap?

at the State Department otherwise, should would not have asked for them to be released. You assumed that Hillary would email Putin which is unlikely because conversations with Putin would be via telephone and only at Obama's orders. You also assume that Clinton would order pizza online, also quite doubtful as she has staff to procure pizzas. Her private emails to Chelsea or Bill or friends are not anyone's business, except of course the Ben Gawzi crowd wants them because they think they might find something incriminating in them. Bush and company had emails deleted. Hillary's emails have obviously not been deleted or the State would not have them. I know a great deal about private servers.

Neither of us knows what she did or didn't send, but it's highly unlikely that she only sent to State and everything else was personal business.

according to her aides.

I saw an article that claimed State had everything she had sent/received to/from State Dept employees. If State DOES have all of her emails, it's because she provided those emails from her own server.

But the Government already had all her emails with other government employees backed up on their servers.

But here's my question: Obama and anyone else who got emails from her knew FULL WELL what address they were coming from. If anyone thought it was wrong for her to use her personal server, why didn't they tell her?

or her emails to intelligence personnel?

if it doesn't go through a government server, it isn't preserved by the government.

In 2007, it was also largely a matter of first-impression, so it was unclear what if any legal action might be possible. Hillary learned from that episode and took it a step further by not using her official email at all, and not securely storing or transmitting the records to the Archives, as the law demands.

Most folks are tribal and will go to their respective camps in times of turmoil.

No, it's neither remarkable nor surprising, but it is hypocritical.

You hold different morals than I do.

As long as two sides are of roughly equal strength I am not going to allow the other side to use tactics unavailable to me to defeat me.

It would keep things more even if Democrats lied with the same fervor. Right?

If my opponent lied about me to gain an unfair or undeserved advantage I would have no problem lying about him or her if that is what it took to restore the status quo.

I think you're missing something really basic here. If you're exposed as a liar, you should never be trusted again. If you'll do anything the Republican Party is willing to do to get ahead, in your world there truly is no difference between parties. I'll let you go now--we've probably both spent enough time on this. I appreciate your (ironic) forthrightness about lying.

I have a problem with a lot of what W did in office. Lying the country into war and tanking the economy and cutting taxes for the wealthy, for starters. Also trying to privatize social security. Etc.

If either W or Hillary obstructed justice, that's a crime. So far there's no indication that Hillary did that. Although, to be honest, I still care a lot less about that than I do things like poverty and climate change and choice and so on.

We were hyperventilating when we learned that David Vitter paid an escort to diaper him and thought it would sink him and his Bible Belt constituents sent him back to the Senate.

Others actually have principles and try to apply them consistently.

e-mails, which made me very angry.

Clinton has opened herself to the same accusation,
whether she did that or not. This makes me angry
as well.

The difference is that W did it as president, when very little could hurt him.
HRC is now in all probability running for the presidency, and is therefore
much more vulnerable.

Other then B-E-N-G-H-A-Z-E-E-E-E!!!!!! which we all know is a crock of fecal matter, after 8-9-10 how many separate investigations where the witnesses were interviewed and reinterviewed?, but other than that, what wrongdoing are you looking for?

That's the whole point. This issue is a non-issue in the absence of separate wrongdoing for which this could be imagined to be a cover-up. We know its not illegal, we know she has appeared to comply with the requirement to turn over emails a year or two ago.

There is no wrongdoing to cover-up therefore no issue.

in that case, go ahead and tell us all, with specificity, what wrongdoing Bush was suspected of with regard to his private email?

And when you're done with that, please do give me the formula for proving a negative. I would think that a journalist such as yourself would be familiar with the phrase "appearance of impropriety" and its implications. You're not playing to some dumbfuck Fox crowd, you know.

I'm not being snarky but for a person who holds himself out to be a moral exemplar you certainly slung an ad hominem at Steve.

Again, I'm nor calling you out, just bringing to your attention how all of us are morally imperfect creatures.

To be against hypocrisy is not exemplary, it's a minimum requirement. You've told me in no uncertain terms that you have no minimum requirement where hypocrisy is concerned. You spent 3 posts defending hypocrisy. I'm not calling you out, but I will repeat that you and I have a different moral code.

I just can't be bothered. But you most certainly are pretending to be morally pure OR you are preaching a moral code you unwittingly can't live up to.

From time to time on DU I've definitely been aware of my own use of moral relativity. The best one can do is at least TRY and be aware it happens.

I'm giving you full permission to document my claimed moral purity, along with the instances where I failed to live up to it. Get busy with those links.

So a hypocrite is of inferior moral character to a person who slings ad hominems. Dante would agree with you but God wouldn't, ergo:

Our tete a tete started on the observation that most Democrats don't operate any different when protecting their own than Republicans .


I find that unremarkable.

It's not simple black and white. Some things one should not stoop to. But there's a point where you can't just let Republicans use their dirty tricks, especially where the voters are dumb enough to fall for it and not reject the Republicans for it.

By all means, worry about fairness to Republicans. They aren't too worried about fairness to us.

I have a different view, not one that holds me up as a moral exemplar, but one in which I meet bare minimum requirements.

NT

So of repukes lie to get ahead, then our candidates should lie as a way to even the playing field?

But what if our candidate starts lying to us, given that we have already accepted our candidates lying as a way to even the playing field, how would we be able to tell if our candidates start lying to us?

Once someone gets a reputation for being a liar, then every thing they say is suspect.

That's why hypocrisy is such a dangerous thing, because if you are against something but then accept it because it helps your cause, then you have just shown yourself to be as bad as the people that you are fighting against, and that wil not endear anyone to your message or cause.

And of course there are situations where lying is not only moral but telling the truth is immoral. It reminds me of the Tea Bagger who was running for the Delaware senate seat who told Bill Maher she would tell the SS where the Von Trapps were hiding "because she didn't tell a lie."

If we accept our candidate to start lying to be able to counter the GOP lies, then how on earth will we ever be 100% sure that our candidate hasn't started lying to us?

Because you know, once a liar, always a liar and you can never be sure that what they are saying is the truth, especially since we have shown that we will accept their lies if we think they serve our cause.

A candidate in future may think that lying to us is the best course of action, this we end up with a candidate that we allowed to lie to originally counter the GOP lies, but ended up actually lying to us to serve their personal cause.

In that case, go ahead and tell us all, with specificity, what wrongdoing Bush was suspected of with regard to his private email?
And when you're done with that, please do give me the formula for proving a negative.

See all emails between Bush and his staff between Jan 21 2001 and The end of March 2003 that pertain to Iraq.

to go on a fishing expedition to find some in her email?

Answer: Not a damn thing.

So why should Hillary be any different?

but the rule was initiated after she left State.

Is it that she still had the emails, at home, on a privater server after the rule changed and even though she was no longer at State she should have moved them?

They are archived at the State Dept. Those returned to her private server were also archived at the State. Personal emails were not archived. Say, if she ordered a pizza online which is doubtful.

Grandholm jumped in and embarrassingly defended what Hillary did, which is when Lawrence criticized her, etc.

I think the average voter wont have a clue what the issue is, let alone allow it to interfere with their decision to vote.

Rightly or wrongly.

He is jumping on a band wagon which has already been discredited.

Like myself, I assume Lawrence is a Hillary supporter, even if he or I would want someone else, both will support Hillary for the reason someone here said earlier:

is nowhere near as secure as a State Department server behind stout White House firewalls.

However, the responsibility for this security mistake lies with the Obama Administration, which should have recognized the problem and corrected it. This is the Administration that is obsessed with leaks to the extent that they have invoked the Espionage Act more times than all other Administrations combined, and have aggressively targeted journalists for prosecution. Hillary's personal server represented a significant leak risk.

In addition, Chinese hackers infiltrated the networks of defense contractors and stole the plans for the F-35 stealth fighter on this Administration's watch - they should be hyper-aware of cyber threats.

Probably affects his outlook.

Whether they be members of her staff, people in the media, business interests, foreign dignitaries, etc.

This looked terrible when the Bush Administration did it, and it looks awful now. I don't have any reason to believe she's hiding anything-- but this is the sort of thing that gives an appearance of impropriety. You may think it's ludicrous and I understand that-- but Republicans likely thought exactly the same thing about the Bush Administration's email scandal.

Get up. It's unseemly to roll around on the ground.

This thread isn't so much about Hillary Clinton as it is about DU. That was my original intent--to show that this site more or less lambasted GWB back in 2007 when it turned out he had been using private RNC email since 2001, and that some of us have changed our tunes with Hillary Clinton in a similar situation.

But the bottom third or so of this thread (as currently constituted) mostly deals with hypocrisy and lying. There are several (meaning 4) posters who have, one way or another, endorsed hypocrisy. Two of these posters have also endorsed flat-out lying, using the rationale that this keeps us even with Republicans.

Again, I think Hillary Clinton will weather this storm, and she'll almost certainly be the Democratic candidate for the Presidency (to my chagrin). But whomever becomes President, most of us will still be here at DU, and I think it's really sad to note that some of my fellow DUers don't have a problem with telling lies to keep even or get ahead of Republicans. That's not an accusation on my part--just see the posts somewhere above this one and you'll know what I mean. I'm not a moral exemplar, but if we can't all agree that both hypocrisy and lying are bad things, I'm not sure what we can agree on. That's base-level stuff.

So is lying morally inferior or superior to character assassination which you did in the instance of Mr. Lesser:

" You're not playing to some dumbfuck Fox crowd, you know."

That was an attempt to tell him to tighten it up if he wanted to be taken seriously. He does play to a Fox crowd on occasion, and my point was that we're not Fox dumbfucks, so he's going to need to bring a better game than what he brought with that post. He posted nothing defensible.

It's not the first time a DU member denigrated Mr. Lesser's appearances on FOX.

As an aside I admit to saying an unkind word here or there to a fellow member of this board and in some but not all cases regretted it.

Everybody has their "hills to die for", their moral lines, and sacred cows...

But Steve is having his say--I owe him a couple of responses, which I'll get to in due time.

Your attack didn't rise or fall to that level.

I will repeat what I said upthread as it is the only thing that matters. The email situation is a non-issue in the absence of other wrongdoing for which we are asserting that an alleged lack of emails is part of a cover-up.

The emails themselves are not an issue. At this point, the only issue that anyone has suggested might be linked to the emails is Benghazi. Which, as I said up thread, and on my appearance yesterday, is not a serious issue and has been investigated to death. I think the witnesses have each been interviewed at least four times and can recite the answers to all the pertinent questions in their sleep.

Hillary was using her private e-mail account during her entire tenure at State. If this was verboten why didn't someone notify her of it?


Surely some of those receiving some of the e-mails were other government officials.

of course their knowing for four years and not forcing a change is endorsing what she was doing.

Again though, it's moot if it isn't the basis for a cover-up.

Is that who you want to be?

of humor.

Back to the topic du jour...

My political antenna tells me this is going nowhere.

the partisan nature of the site makes partisan hypocrisy par for the political course.

It's been in evidence here since a D was elected to the WH in '08, imo.

sometimes can be good teachers.

Disconcerting to see the rationales for hypocrisy and lying. I also assumed as much, but seeing them in black and white is disheartening, anyway.

How unfortunate for you, because I don't intend to change my posting style.

and also she somehow gets a pass for her war in Libya which was every bit as outrageously reckless as Bush's war on Iraq, don't forget that either

If, in the midst of controversy (all the Benghazi subpoenas, for instance) it was found that all her communications were on private servers, and then when they were acquired the hard drives were all found to be wiped, that would ring a bell for sure.

But nothing of the kind happened, and there's no evidence of any kind of tampering or evasion. Its a whole different story, and I don't see anything but open cooperation in how the emails have been handled, archived, and provided when needed.

How do we know if emails were deleted or are being with held when she and staff alone have control over all her emails as SOS because she hosted them all on a private server at home?

Just for one second, imagine if she sent some emails to foreign governments where she set up a good deal for them in exchange for her foundation or her campaign to receive a donation from these foreign governments, would we be able to tell when she and her staff are the ones that have complete control over all emails she sent as head of state?

JFI, we know of one or two instances where foreign governments contributed to her foundation, so the above scenario is not a conspiracy theory, but could have actually occurred for all we know.

Having lived in the epicenter of scandals for decades, do you think she's naively doing illegal things via email? Keep in mind, email requires a recipient. Who do you think she trusts enough to send the other end of the noose too? What do you think she wants enough to do that? Keep in mind also that the internet is inherently insecure, and everything on it is hacked all the time. Can you imagine that she, after 30 years or so in politics, is involved in some kind of careless internet stupidity, with her name all over it? None of the conspiracy theories make any sense to me.

You refer to them as conspiracy theories, I and many others refer to them as legitimate questions.

It was Hillary that chose to open an email account on the day of her confirmation, and then host it on a private server at her home and then to use exclusively only her private email for head of state duties, and then to withhold all her emails and only release what she and her staff deemed appropriate when the email story broke instead of releasing them all straight after her tenure finished as an innocent party would do.

It was Hillary that decided this course of action for herself, so I honestly am left with questions of why she would do all the above if she wasn't trying to control access to all her emails as SOS.


Seriously, one thing I can dismiss, but the chain of events leaves no doubt that she wanted full control of her emails, why is that?

Opening a private email on the day of her confirmation, using only that private email for all her duties as SOS, hosting all these emails on a private server at her home, and then most importantly not releasing every single email to state until the story broke, where in she and her staff get to decide which emails are to be released and which are not.

And just for added affect, her and her foundation becoming rich and raking in the money during the tenure of her being SOS.

These are not legitimate questions?

HRC used her system to communicate with people WITHIN the State Department system . She wasn't trying to get around archiving, or to operate outside the system. She was on the road and wanted a system that WORKED, which the .gov system couldn't claim. Also, unlike BushCo, her system wasn't built and paid for by a political party.

I don't see ANY parallels--I see someone trying to do their job with an antiquated system. Colin Powell did the same damn thing, for the same damn reason.

I do see a coordinated media attempt to smear HRC for doing nothing wrong, though.

that there was a huge flap over Sarah Palin's private emails.