Perfect pseudo-scandal for the conspiracy minded.
What was in those emails she deleted? The Benghazi stand-down order? Apologies for American actions? Details of how she killed Vince Foster? WE'LL NEVER KNOW FOR SURE, BECAUSE SHE DELEEEEETED THEM!!!!1!
Fearless prediction: Some of the allegedly deleted personal emails will turn up soon. The easy source will be the people who received the emails. Other possibilities include automatic backups on the computers of the people who reviewed them to decide whether they should be deleted.
Second prediction: Some of those emails will be arguably be more professional than personal, giving the scandal a new life for a while, until someone notices that the contents of the emails are professional but are not scandalous.
Third prediction: many of the "personal" emails concern planning for the presidential campaign, not Chelsea's wedding. This will be a scandal at first, until Hillary points out that it would have been a federal crime to use a government server for campaign-related emails.
Final prediction: She's smart enough not to have anything genuinely scandalous in her emails, either the ones the state deparement already has, or the others. Nothing about her husband's sex life or her own, nothing about whatever crimes she may actually be involved in.
I don't think the email story will go away until Clinton turns over the server to a third party to vet it. Even then, the crazies will howl "Benghazi!" but most people will let it go after such full-blown transparency.
Otherwise, Al Gore might run for president, and nobody wants that to happen.
I want to see President Biden, but not for the right reasons.
It's odd to me. It seems like it would be expensive to set up a server and presumably she did it with her own money. It does concern me slightly.
On the optics and general awareness
(1.) Why didn't she just get separate phones? That seems dumb.
AND
On the substance:
(1.) How can she know that her official communication was secure? I'm more concerned about that than I am about her violating the records act.
(2.) It would not be okay for her to use government-funded e-mail to engage in her own political campaigning, i.e. discussions related to her own election. Presumably, she paid for the server herself.
I want to see President Bernie Sanders, for all the right reasons, but there's no way in hell it's going to happen.
6.last: Unfortunately, "I paid for this server!" doesn't quite have the same zing! as "I paid for this microphone!"
I want to see a business that allows you to be put in a medically-induced coma until the election is over.
it would be expensive to set up a server
Nah.
Second prediction: Some of those emails will be arguably be more professional than personal, giving the scandal a new life for a while, until someone notices that the contents of the emails are professional but are not scandalous.
Wouldn't the fact that they are professional be the scandal ?
Including professional labor (the idea of Hillary teaching herself through O'Reilly books is charming but unlikely), it's probably low four figures to set up your own personal email server.
11: Wouldn't the fact that they are professional be the scandal ?
(1.) If they are "professional" in the sense of being about her professional career as a politician, then there's no legitimate scandal.
(2.) If they are professional by virtue of their being about official state department business, that might be a legitimate scandal.
(1) What she did doesn't seem to have been against any regulations at the time, so long as she turned over the emails containing State Department business after the fact; (2) her motivation was clearly a paranoid fear that anything she put in her emails would be mined through and used against her; (3) this paranoia is perfectly justified, her emails would be mined through and used against her; (4) some professional emails that weren't turned over will probably turn up, my guess is that they will look like de minimis, accidental omissions. I sincerely doubt that this is an effort to keep anything related to State Department business secret; (5) I don't see any particular reason to think that her email security is worse than the State Department's.
I don't know if the NYT and the VRWC will be able to turn this into a big thing -- they might, and it might hurt her politically -- but I don't think doing this was either real wrongdoing or importantly bad judgment. It might end up hurting her politically, but doing something different might also have hurt her politically. (I'm still not crazy about her globally, but I've got no problem with this.)
re: 11
Gove did something similar:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gove#Freedom_of_Information_and_email
She killed Kurt, man!
Wait, sorry, wrong wicked witch of the '90s.
If it eventually comes out that the deleted emails on her personal server contain her stand-down orders for Benghazi, I will hang myself.
The radio keeps throwing it at me and I practically dissociate, so passionately not interested in the subject am I.
A sufficiently secure email server? Genuine question, I have no idea if there's expense involved in setting up an email server more secure than a basic off-the-shelf setup, or if such a thing is even possible.
I'm open to the idea that there's a real scandal here, but I have yet to hear anything stronger than "It's scandalous because it reveals blah blah blah about HRC." After the 1990s, I am not interested in arguments along those lines.
I'm vaguely open to arguments along the lines of, "This reveals that HRC chooses bad aides and advisors," but that's not exactly news, either (and obviously not a scandal). I don't see that revelation affecting the primaries or general. I mean, I guess a truly flawless campaign would be worth some number of votes in a general*, but once she's shy of perfection, I think everyone reverts to their natural voting positions.
*because some people who are pro-Dem but ambivalent enough about HRC, and especially the way she cocked up 2008, not to turn out in 2016 could be convinced that she's learned her lessons and really tightened up her act. Not many people, but some substantial few.
14 gets it exactly right. I don't buy the "She should have known this would cause trouble" argument because, due to the Clinton Rules, literally any course of action* will cause trouble. The media can't help themselves.
*including, as we see at this very moment, courses of action taken by her predecessors. At this point, it would be a scandal if she were sworn in using the same Bible and exact words used by Obama. Because Hillary.
it's probably low four figures to set up your own personal email server.
For a regular person sure, for a Secretary of State, who really does need shitload of layers of enterprise network security to prevent spying, its got to be six or seven figures. Keeping out hackers employed by the Chinese government is not the kind of thing that should be managed on a home network.
The stupid thing about this is that if there were anything genuinely scandalous in any of the deleted emails, then somebody else somewhere would already have a copy of the emails in question, because that's the whole fucking raison d'être of email.
It's not the kind of thing that has been managed with any success by the State Department so I'm not at all clear how hers could have been worse.
15: Yes, but I don't think there's a statutory requirement in quite the same way in the UK. Gove's private email account was deemed to be subject to FoI searches*, but there's no law (I think) requiring official emails to be kept or to be done on official accounts, even if it's discouraged.
*Though even then only metadata, I believe
Not to make any banned comparisons, but this from JMM seems like victim-blaming in the extreme. To summarize- The Clintons have never actually been caught doing anything illegal, and in fact have probably never actually done anything illegal, but they're always attacked by the press and political opponents and therefore are hyperlegal, so can't we just dispense with Hillary and all the associated drama? It really sounds like, she keeps getting attacked so she must be doing something to ask for it.
"She should have known this would cause trouble" argument because, due to the Clinton Rules, literally any course of action* will cause trouble
Also, because various Bush administration officials had been very recently getting into trouble for this very thing. That's the part that makes me wonder WTF she was thinking.
14 gets it exactly right. I don't buy the "She should have known this would cause trouble" argument because, due to the Clinton Rules, literally any course of action* will cause trouble. The media can't help themselves.
This isn't wrong, exactly, but she should have known given that there was a pretty big Presidential Records/Hatch Act scandal in the Bush White House shortly before she became Secretary of State.
Not to keep picking on the "layers of enterprise network security are required" but, to keep picking on that, as far as avenues of attack go a single, correctly configured, hardened server using strong encryption and openbsd or whatever is really not easier to attack than a big enterprise awash in network security products and technicians monitoring walls of screens and so on. Arguably it's quite a bit harder. Not saying she did that, but the reason the state department or whoever neeeds layers of network security and active monitoring is that the surface they need to defend is just definitionally far, far bigger and more porous.
26: Well, there's an argument that JMM doesn't quite make that life isn't fair. Clinton is the center of these scandals largely because there are a whole lot of well-funded crazy people who hate her. This isn't her fault, but possibly it means that she's not a great candidate for president, because whether or not it is her fault, the crazy people who hate her exist and are troublesome (crazy people who hate Obama obviously exist too, but are less successful getting the same kind of traction. Birthers were always a sideshow.) I wouldn't think that it's a good enough reason not to vote for her if she were wonderful, but I don't think it's illegitimate to consider it.
Records management is so boring, and records management policy even more boring, that I've been assuming most of the reporting is probably not accurate, so I haven't been following.
crazy people who hate Obama obviously exist too, but are less successful getting the same kind of traction
I'm not sure I agree with this.
seven figures
Come on.
What do you think it would cost to contract for four years of full-time enterprise network security management? Of course, it would be ridiculous to do that for a single email server, which is why the cost is more often absorbed as part of running a larger data center - and why Hillary's server should be running on that network, rather than on an old Gateway 2000 PC sitting under her desk.
I've been assuming most of the reporting is probably not accurate
On Diane Rehm the other day, it was painful to hear the panel discussing how email servers work. At one point, one of the guests seemed to be implying that it was like a briefcase-sized black box she would have to carry with her everywhere in the world that she travelled.
hardened server using strong encryption and openbsd or whatever is really not easier to attack than a big enterprise awash in network security products and technicians monitoring walls of screens and so on.
Its email, so strong encryption doesn't happen. It could be encrypted on the server, but traffic that comes in and out will not be. If I was the Chinese, I would tap the cable going into her home.
And really, is Hillary equipped to judge weather the person she hires has adequate knowledge of openbsd to keep the thing locked down? Or does she hire that kid who was the roommate of Mark Penn's nephew?
9 gets it so very right. To tie in the other thread, this will make it much easier for me to break my bad habit of leaving NPR on in the background.
is Hillary equipped to judge weather
She didn't see this shitstorm coming.
Its email, so strong encryption doesn't happen.
uh
Anyhow, per 36.last your argument seems to boil down to "if we assume Hillary was an idiot, then we can say with some confidence that she acted like an idiot". If that's where you're going with this then an argument based on how network security actually works and fails in practice isn't going to get me anywhere.
35: Also some of the guests were under the impression that one could not delete emails. Really lousy guest selection that day.
Here's my question: the media keeps reporting this by saying "This just reinforces the old idea that the Clintons are secretive and lack transparency." I have no memory of this being a key problem during Bill's presidency. I thought the old idea that you wouldn't want to reinforce was that he jizzed on a blue dress in the oval office.
Granted, I wasn't paying much attention back then, and never really filled in the gaps.
Of course, this is assuming she was running it from her house, which the press has implied but which I'd be surprised is actually true.
More likely, I would speculate that its being run through the network used by the Clinton Foundation, which probably does spend quite a bit more on IT and has some professionals working there. Still, that network is also a juicy target, and I would be surprised if had never been compromised.
some of the guests were under the impression that one could not delete emails
Oh, god, yes. One of them said something very close to "It's like when you're working on a Word document, and the program crashes. Sometimes you can call IT and they recover your work. It's like that with emails."
The learning (or re-learning) from this scandal is that the mainstream political media needs top die in a fire. And that despite Margaret Sullivan (up until now) being better than her predecessors, when the Times is out first with an over-hyped and over-headlined relative nothingburger involving the Clintons Sullivan is willing to go to the mat to defend their crappy reporting. See this Kurt Eichenwald piece that describes it pretty thoroughly.
And what the Times can do badly, the WaPo can do worse. Chris Cilliza is probably the guy there with peak Clinton Derangement Syndrome but it is bad throughout. Three scathing editorials on this so far, and as Media Matters points out back towards the end of the Bush era when it came out that millions of relevant emails on private servers had been lost, very little was said despite them being sought for very specific allegations of known wrongdoing.
This is but one small piece of the idiocratization of national politics FAjssrer[fdkj fuckk fyuckk fkucking fuxk caunt asshole finba,kd[=msmfmf&&&)@)_$($(UY!!!!!!
Clinton Rules means we have to slog through it of course, but it is one of the perfect moments that crystallizes the climate of craziness.
Powell admitted all of his similar emails were gone and hardly anyone said boo.
I would be surprised if had never been compromised
Unlike the State Department, where we know for sure that the network has been -- actually, still is -- compromised, probably by Russians.
Its email, so strong encryption doesn't happen.
uh
Are you not familiar with the plaintext nature of SMTP?
he jizzed on a blue dress in the oval office.
He was trying to set a baseline color to demonstrate that the dress wasn't white.
After the Ken Starr insanity, I'm willing to cut the Clintons all manner of slack about keeping their communications under their own control. As everybody knows, I'm no fan of HRC generally, but all of the non-scandal scandals this one is even dumber and more pointless than usual. Once again, she's blessed with such assholish enemies such that even those of us who actively dislike her politics end up defending her against the winged monkey brigade.
41: "This just reinforces the old idea that the Clintons are secretive and lack transparency." I have no memory of this being a key problem during Bill's presidency. I thought the old idea that you wouldn't want to reinforce was that he jizzed on a blue dress in the oval office.
The blue dress came up as part of a mind-boggling series of events which were part of the playing out of that narrative (and per a comment or two above, the Clintons are a bit "secretive", in good part in a futile attempt to forestall the craziness).
It's fucked.
Unlike the State Department, where we know for sure that the network has been -- actually, still is -- compromised, probably by Russians.
Well, sure, but at least we know (or can assume, at least) that security is regularly audited, there are standard maintenance procedures in place, and presumably they've been attacked enough at this point so that systems are reasonably hardened so that when a compromise does occur, damage is minimized. That's the kind of thing that large IT shops can manage, but which often falls by the wayside in smaller organizations.
I am reduced to repeating in its entirety a post from my extremely infrequently updated blog:
Savage Boohoos Impersonate Elites of World's Only Remaining Superpower
Too numerous to cite individually.
46 - I would presume that Clinton, you know, hired someone rather than sending Bill out to Best Buy to get a Linksys router and a Dell, and that that someone knows about SMTP/TLS.
51: literally they have been owned for at least several months and haven't been able to figure out how to stop it.
Anyhow, per 36.last your argument seems to boil down to "if we assume Hillary was an idiot, then we can say with some confidence that she acted like an idiot".
My argument is that Hillary doesn't know what she doesn't know about network security, and has also displayed a tendency to hire based on loyalty, rather than competence. Taken together, these two facts makes me skeptical of the quality of system administration she has procured.
I cannot us help but to repost this Chris Cilliza gem which I posted the other day.
Making the "Obama isn't really like you and me" argument in that setting plays into a corrosive racial narrative that Republicans have worked very hard to steer away from -- and smartly so -- during the Obama presidency.Or Eric Wemple on why O'Reilyl's issues are not that serious:
Agreed. Williams appears to have laid down exaggerations and embellishments no matter the topic. O'Reilly, by contrast, appears to have an Argentina problem.Nice act, what do you call yourselves?
It's also worth keeping in mind that Hillary's tendency to hire based on loyalty rather than competence does not come alongside competence at determining how loyal people are, either.
I think you're overestimating the degree to which Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State and a woman worth tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, was personally involved with hiring a sysadmin to set up her email server. But heck, maybe I'll be surprised and it'll turn out that she tried to do Lynn Forester de Rothschild a solid.
56: yes. Yes, by all means concern your little heart out about that. There is several angles to this that are of legitimate concern acontextually speaking. In the actual event they are misplaced and of great aid to the Savage Boohoo Collective.
I actually do think official business should be done through official account/available to FOIA, but that's boring right? It's clear most people don't care. I also don't know exactly what Clinton did or what the regulations were so this isn't specifically a comment on the Clinton case.
Fortunately we have this (comment 58-related) so we know it will be OK in the end.
The reason why the email scandal facing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is such a problem is that it is really 20 potential scandals, which could end up destroying her candidacy for president in 2016, veteran political analyst Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
I think Bill Kristol may have weighed in to that effect as well.
So she's probably about to be elected God.
I also don't know exactly what Clinton did or what the regulations were...
You and Margaret Sullivan both.
53 is only a partial solution. There is still the problem of incoming mail that does not come via an encrypted link.
TLS is the encrypted link. TLS is the successor to SSL, and provides a protocol-agnostic encrypted channel (the "transport layer" of the initialism) for communications. It's the same thing that wraps HTTP for HTTPS in modern browsers.
Why oh why can't Hillary be more open like Mitt Romney?
Mitt Romney spent nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret, Reuters has learned.
All of the "she kept a server in her home!" angles of the story seem to be reporters who don't understand how to read WHOIS records; it's looked to my casual-network-nerd eye like it's just outsourced to a reasonable-looking commercial hosting service.
I'm actually mostly mad at her from an "eat your own dog food" perspective. I think the leader of the State Department should use the same email as the rest of the State Department, because, if that email service is shit (as it is in my own organization), she's the person there who can ensure that the situation will actually be fixed. The alternative is everyone at State having shitty email experiences, but it never gets fixed because its not a problem for the boss, because she uses something else.
And that fits well into my "Hillary is a shitty manager" narrative, which makes me just as bad as Dick Morris.
68: I bet Mark Penn told her she had to run her mail server on port 25 and be RFC compliant.
But there is of course the great contrast with Jeb Bush.
The former governor conducted all his communication on his private Jeb@jeb.org account and turned over the hand-selected batch to the state archives when he left office. Absent from the stash are emails the governor deemed not relevant to the public record: those relating to politics, fundraising and personal matters while he was governor.
Sometimes I wonder why Hillary had Vince Foster wacked, but Dick Morris still lives.
It's the grown-up version of the Marshmallow Test.
FWIW, I think it's pretty standard for politicians to use a separate web-based email for personal and political stuff. I know that this is the norm for CA state politics. The ethics and record-keeping rules drive this; if you have to do political stuff as part of your life but are forbidden from using your work email to do so, what are you gonna do? Likewise if you have to email your kid or your doctor or yoga teacher or whatever, but (a) aren't supposed to do that from work and (b) don't want that stuff as part of an official record that can be FOIAd or equivalent, what are you gonna do? There's an obvious risk of abuse I guess of moving important things out of official records but if public officials are going to have some semblance of a private life and also do political work there aren't a whole lot of options.
I have so much ambivalence about this. On one hand, sure, there's an element of "it's her problem she has crazy enemies." But I can't be the only one who yelled out expletives when I heard that she had deleted just the personal emails, the ones about yoga etc., and trust me none of those were state department related. HRC two weeks ago: I hoard gadgets! now: I wanted only one device! I'm the least tech savvy person here and I have two email accounts linked to my phone.
78: A pig like that, you don't eat him all at once.
68: Are you saying that it is currently standard operating procedure for POP/IMAP services to reject all connections from sources that do not support TLS encryption? My understanding was that TLS is supported, but that the fall-back is plain text - and that's a fall back that happens quite a bit (perhaps less now than ever, but not at all uncommon in 2008).
82: I am less tech savvy. I accidentally sent a personal e-mail using apple mail (gmail account) over my work e-mail (hosted by google). I deleted it ASAP, because it was about looking for another job.
At that point, I only used the web-based client for work stuff.
81 - It's hard for me to judge that movie on it's own merits, since I think the book (which I read before seeing the movie) is much better.
Likewise if you have to email your kid or your doctor or yoga teacher or whatever, but (a) aren't supposed to do that from work and (b) don't want that stuff as part of an official record that can be FOIAd or equivalent, what are you gonna do?
I don't see why "have a separate personal account" isn't the default answer here. I have separate work and personal email address. Why is this a case where politicians should be different from the rest of us?
This isn't going to keep me from voting for her in the general. But I thought Romney's behavior was horrible at the time, and I don't like Jeb's either, having just found out about it.
Why is this a case where politicians should be different from the rest of us?
They aren't. I have shitty email at work so I use my gmail for everything despite a policy against it.
Primary Colors is actually a good movie?!
They aren't. I have shitty email at work so I use my gmail for everything despite a policy against it.
Per 71, I am suspicious that this is Hillary's real reason. The email system at State has a shitty old interface, so she uses something else for "convenience". But if that's the case, its her job to make it so the email system at State is no longer shitty. Instead, she avoids the problem by just getting her own email
Having dealt with government IT people, I'm not sure making a non-shitty interface is possible until all the people who think "This is neat compared to Banyan" retire.
its her job to make it so the email system at State is no longer shitty
I don't think that's actually her job, no.
71/91 has a certain appeal, but "it's her job to make it so the email system at State is no longer shitty" isn't really right. Her job as Secretary of State was to be the US's highest ranking diplomat, not to dick around with the bureaucratic nonsense that would've been required to get a federal government agency to adopt a whole new email system. Maybe somebody on her staff should've had that job, but was it obviously unreasonable for her to decide not to eat the dog food while that got done?
I agree it may make her a lousy manager, but I'm not really ready to condemn this in broad strokes.
Assuming the laws and regs permitted what she did at the time she did it, of course. If she broke the law, that was shockingly dumb.
My guess is that if there were any solid argument that she broke a law/reg in existence at the time, we'd have heard it by now.
Al Gore might run for president, and nobody wants that to happen.
Wait, what? I would love for Al Gore to be president.
||
Consider this the kermit roosevelt signal - decent-looking new California bill mandating better disclosure of provider networks.
|>
two email accounts linked to my phone
The catch with this in larger and/or more imperious organizations (and I'm sure State Department IT counts) is that a precondition of having access to work mail or other resources is giving the work entity effectively unlimited access to your device, including the ability to disable and wipe it remotely, but also potentially including reading everything else on it. If you distrust work IT - either competence or malice, and in Clinton's case she'd be reasonable to distrust both - you don't want them to have access to your personal account.
Carrying two devices is the obvious thing to do there, but it sucks, too.
Women have purses. They can carry stuff more easily than men, who only have pockets or, if they have no self-respect, belts.
Self-respecting men wear suspenders.
Well, excepting Batman, they don't use belts as a way to hold items.
I don't have a purse! I refuse to carry things! My hands are free-range! Not having two devices absolutely resonates with me. Two accounts on one device (even two devices) is just asking for a mix-up.
Self-respecting men wear suspenders.
Sock garters went out a long time ago, yo.
I'm troubled by her claim she did it because it was "convenient." If she's exchanging State Department emails on that phone, and also using it for personal stuff, and she's browsing on it, and downloading apps, etc., then she's violating all sorts of security policies both for officials and for government employees and contractors. Remember how they wouldn't let Obama have his own phone?
Yes, it would be "convenient" not to have to do that security stuff (TLS, VPNs for "phoning home,"), but if I was caught at it I'd be disciplined and maybe fired. The same is true to a lesser extent of "non-official" use, which violates guidelines for how government property should be used.
My hands are free-range!
Doesn't that run afoul of your organization's sexual harassment policy?
Really they just graze in home pastures.
So apparently Jeb Bush did exactly the same thing...
99: And since she was on a Blackberry, for most of her term not possible to have two email accounts.
But it wasn't until 2013, Clinton's last year at State, that Canadian smartphone maker Research in Motion unveiled a feature called BlackBerry Balance meant to separate personal information, including personal e-mail accounts, from work data, which can be managed by corporate security administrators and protected by encryption.
96 - This was permitted by the relevant regulations until 2014, per the link in 44.1.
98: That looks like a positive step for the consumer. What I especially like is the requirement that the disclosure use a standard format, so that information aggregators can scrape up all the data from every issuer and load it into more user-friendly consumer comparison tools.
Where the insurance are going wince is the requirement for timeliness and accuracy. I suspect the cost of compliance to hit 97% accuracy with weekly updates is substantial. I would expect the issuers to push back hard on both of those measures. I don't even know how you would demonstrate compliance with the 97% accuracy target. The regulator could probably translate this into rules that give issuers a safe harbor unless they get a certain frequency of complaints about inaccurate listings. Which they will, because provider organizations often give inaccurate information to patients, mostly in good faith, but sometimes in bad faith.
82, 105: Wouldn't want anyone to be troubled or ambivalent. As I mentioned, this is certainly part of a troubling pattern of how these things are handled in general at various levels of government (and folks in sensitive high-ranking positions in particular). And this particular instance will certainly end up being a watershed in its being looked at and becoming part of a legitimate discussion.
But the discussion in this context is not even close to being legitimate. In conclusion, Spike, FL and DaveLMA are unwitting dupes of Satan*.
*Speaking of whom, best Archie ever, the one where Betty sells her soul to the devil to win over Archie, but it turns out Veronica has already done so. From 1962.
What is wrong with you people. Of course this looks shady as hell and at best she's a giant idiot. Every govt employee who hasn't been kicked in the head by a horse knows your govt email is public info. That's the entire reason to maintain two accounts, so you can do things on your personal email that you don't want people to have access to via govt records requests. Seriously, it's just now occurring to her that "oh, I deleted thousands of emails but trust me, it's only the personal ones" might look bad? After how many years as First Lady, a Senator, and now Sec. of State? Come on.
The link in 44 is good - thanks. Journalistic reporting and discussion on this has been truly appallingly ignorant (35, 40, 43 re: the Diane Rehm guest commentary the other day gets it right), to the point that I'm actively offended and angered by it.
And if Jeb Bush isn't going to be the nominee, Scott Walker has a bigger IT scandal (he was running a secret second network as governor to allow his staff to work on campaign stuff while at work).
113 is correct. She's an idiot for having done this. If there isn't something incriminating in the deleted emails she's doubly an idiot for having created the appearance that she has something to hide.
What is wrong with you people. Of course this looks shady as hell and at best she's a giant idiot. Every govt employee who hasn't been kicked in the head by a horse knows your govt email is public info. That's the entire reason to maintain two accounts, so you can do things on your personal email that you don't want people to have access to via govt records requests. Seriously, it's just now occurring to her that "oh, I deleted thousands of emails but trust me, it's only the personal ones" might look bad? After how many years as First Lady, a Senator, and now Sec. of State? Come on.
Agreed.
Use two separate emails. Make sure there are just enough emails on your official email so that people don't look at your personal email. She is still going to get grief (bc she is a Clinton) but it has less traction.
"The Bush files, though enormous, are not complete, however. The former governor conducted all his communication on his private Jeb@jeb.org account and turned over the hand-selected batch to the state archives when he left office. Absent from the stash are emails the governor deemed not relevant to the public record: those relating to politics, fundraising and personal matters while he was governor."
What Clinton did really is nothing and you're a bunch of suckers for thinking it is.
Admittedly, 113 was my first reaction. And on reflection, I'm coming back to it. There may be technical defenses or ways to squint at it where it doesn't look terrible, but the big picture view is, at best, terrible judgment. Thanks to gswift for knocking the sense (back) into me.
I'll stand by the part of 95 where I said fixing the email system wasn't her job as SoS. But taking the job entailed accepting the parts of it that would be frustrating, and this was one of them.
*Speaking of whom, best Archie ever, the one where Betty sells her soul to the devil to win over Archie, but it turns out Veronica has already done so. From 1962.
Better than the Punisher crossover?
111- Can the law limit how often providers are allowed to change prices or plans they accept to say, monthly? Quarterly? If we can get them to start disclosing prices at all it's still meaningless if those prices are invalid as soon as they're posted.
Of course that goes counter to the new and exciting world of demand-based pricing. Surge pricing now in effect for bone splinting-Xray bundles, but you can get a deal on a bypass if you come by in the next 30 minutes!
Oh please, if she'd used two separate emails the "scandal" would be that she had a double super secret address used for when she wanted to let ambassadors die, and why won't she show us everything from that other email address, what is she trying to hide? Saying "she should have done X" is meaningless in the context of her avoiding criticism- maybe it's better policy in terms of transparency/security/whatever but don't pretend it matters to those who are attacking over this.
I'll stand by the part of 95 where I said fixing the email system wasn't her job as SoS.
Its part of her job. I don't expect her to spend her time fucking around with mail servers, but she is in charge of the department and she should be perfectly capable of putting the fear of God into whatever civil service deputy does have managerial responsibility for that (as well as for ensuring there is room in the budget for same.) Its her job to set the strategic priorities for the organization, and if the directive from the top is "everyone muddles through with shitty IT support" that's on her.
Incidentally, maybe if stupid-ass Blackberry had come out with the thing mentioned in 109.last before 20-fucking-13, they would't be nearly moribund now. For an enterprise-focused smartphone maker, that's maybe not a killer app, but it's certainly a good differentiating feature, and one that BB would be trusted to implement (IMO). Indeed, pair it with 99.1, and you've got a solution that appeals to employees, employers, and non-asshole IT people (who presumably would rather have people in the org follow protocol, even at the cost of Absolute Control, rather than ignore protocol because they don't trust the IT people).
Women have purses. They can carry stuff more easily than men, who only have pockets or, if they have no self-respect, belts.
So women keep their onions in their purses, rather than in their belts? Is that why don't don't have room in there for multiple electronic devices?
Now I literally don't understand what she's supposed to have done. I thought the supposed problem was precisely that she kept two email accounts and has now deleted stuff from the personal account, which is pretty much what all politicians and state officials do to my knowledge. But you all seem to be arguing that the problem was that she didn't keep two separate accounts and deleted messages (which should be retrievable anyway from the official records per gov't policy, I thought, regardless). I admit I haven't been reading stories on this carefully.
OK, she shouldn't have used a personal email address. Fine. Lesson learned. Can I stop caring now?
Honestly, I'm much less concerned about the possibility that some not-purely-personal emails might have gotten deleted than I am about the fact 47 U.S. senators have publicly announced that foreign governments should never take the United States of America at its word because the "no takebacks" rule doesn't apply to us.
Now usually I don't think its valid to pull the "why are you concerned about that when you should really be outraged about THIS" move, but is it really too much to ask for just a tiny bit of perspective on all this?
126 was a kind of Parsimon-esque comment, and I suppose I could just look it up. But the NY Times story I just read seemed to be about her keeping a personal account.
126: She thought it was inconvenient to use more than one email so she used her personal non govt email for everything, including State Dept business.
126/128: she used *only* a personal email account, including for the conduct of government business. She never set up a .gov account at all.
But the NY Times story I just read seemed to be about her keeping a personal account.
The problem was that's all she kept, and had all her official mail go there.
Oh,I see. Who gives a fuck? Unless she was using it to devilishly keep secret things that should be preserved (which is possible with any private email account regardless of how she used it) unless she was storing classified information in a way that wasn't secure or deleting and not preserving emails that she was required to preserve, and regulations let her use a personal account, who cares. Note that a huge chunk of "official business" emails from the secretary of state are basically "nice to see you on Tuesday, please call my suboordinate to talk further about fishing quotas in Malta," etc etc. Unsecured storing of classified information is different I guess but is there any actual evidence of this happening?
And yeah, two devices is a bit of a pain but suck it up. I do it now. I have a dept email and a dept issued iPhone. I don't have my home wifi password in that iPhone and my personal email isn't on it. Likewise, my personal Galaxy doesn't have the work wifi or govt email on it. If I access something personal while at work, it's on the Galaxy over the cell signal.
I do this because I'm not a moron and know that dept phone and email can be looked at at anytime by anyone and I have no say in it. Have at it. All you'll see is boring ass dept business. But if someone wants to get into my personal password protected phone they get told to eat a dick and get a warrant which isn't going to happen because I don't let my personal and private use overlap on devices at all.
I don't think it's fair to compare a job which has well-defined hours to being Secretary of State. Obviously not putting her home wifi in her work device would be a non-starter for someone who is doing time sensitive work with people in all sorts of time zones.
132: As a govt employee your job related emails are (and should be) a matter of public record. There's all kinds of rules mandating they be preserved, be open to record requests, etc. It's not 1997, everybody in govt jobs knows this.
I did a summer internship at the State Department in the mid 90s and the technology there at the time was hilariously outdated, even for a technophobe like me. There was still a system of "official cables" that were sent over a telex like it was 1948 and a computer system that seemed to date from the 70s and had no graphical interface at all. If you wanted to use something with Windows 95 or whatever (which some people did, like they literally brought personal desktop computers to work because the in-house computers were so bad) you could only keep non-classified work on it and use it for personal stuff and then a secretary had to transfer your work by typing it into the 1970s-style workstations.
135 -- sure, but I thought she had preserved most of the records, and claims that she deleted personal ones. If she'd deleted everything, it would be different.
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128: a kind of Parsimon-esque comment, and I suppose I could just look it up.
I'm getting a little tired of being the designated representative of not looking things up, so you could knock it off, please. It's entirely untrue that I don't look things up, you see, and entirely untrue that all other persons do look all things up. I don't like seeing my name associated in this way, so let it fade it away.
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This is, by the way, how Angela Merkel's phone got tapped by my country's heroic chekists (sword and shield of the party) and also how the Russians did US Ambassador Victoria Nuland's. Merkel had a gadget certified up to SECRET or better, for government business, but used a private one for political party business (i.e. the dirty stuff) and that's the one we IMSI-caught. Nuland was probably trying to avoid using State Department comms so her own side didn't blab to the papers or bother her with oversight.
In other tales of the summer State Department internship, I was mildly reprimanded for leaving out a (lowest possible level, and completely needlessly) classified document from our embassy to Portugal on my desk over lunch. I may have compromised national security when PORTUGUESE SPIES saw it.
134: What, she doesn't have a device with 4G? Really?
137: But that's the problem. We're just supposed to take her at her word she's providing everything. That's not how it's supposed to work.
138: Parsimon, believe me, you earned that joke a thousand times over.
Yeah but the problem in 141.2 is inevitable whenever you have a pol with a personal email account, which is itself inevitable.
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142: As long as it's a joke understood to have no basis in reality any longer. Otherwise I'll have to mark every commenter's post here that asks something like "When do we spring forward? Tonight or tomorrow?" and "I'm not going to look it up, but what is blah blah blah?" So please knock if off. It's annoying.
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As a lawyer who has occasion to poke around in email accounts from time to time, I favor people who combine their personal and work emails. Document review is so much more fun if a few sexts are mixed in with the emails setting up meetings about why the new product is delayed. This was more common in the early days of email.
FWIW, Hillary has said that she never emailed about anything classified ever. I doubt this is true.
A former boss was in a situation that involved negotiating with Syrians, in relation to their ongoing war. She was impressed that the Syrians consistently knew what was going to be putting on table before she got to the meeting, because they'd read it in her email.
FWIW, Hillary has said that she never emailed about anything classified ever. I doubt this is true.
Never e-mailed may even be true. Never received email about anything classified is not at all believable.
145.2: Why would you doubt that? State uses cables and shit.
143: Why is it inevitable? The whole point of maintaining two accounts is to able to legitimately be able to say you conduct all the State Dept. business on the govt. email and govt. server and they can FOIA the shit out of it. That's totally different from "I do everything on personal email and no you can't have unfettered access and sure I deleted thousands of emails but trust me, I'm giving you everything."
You still have to trust that the private email is only used for private stuff.
Back on topic:
141: We're just supposed to take her at her word she's providing everything. That's not how it's supposed to work.
The now-current rules about this weren't adopted until November 2014, via HR 1233: The Law Overseeing Retention Of Private Emails Was Not Changed Until After Clinton Left The State Department. Clinton was told shortly thereafter that she was required to turn over her stuff, and she did, in December.
I agree that the regulations should have been changed sooner -- we totally shouldn't have to take people at their word -- but they weren't. My general sense is that people do what they're required to do when they're required to do them: that is, if she didn't forward her stuff sooner, I'd not see that as a sign of dishonesty, just a reflection of the fact that nobody said she needed to.
150: Well yeah the accusation is probably inevitable but the appearance is not. She's either shady or a moron for ending up in this position.
146 is pretty ambiguous. They'd read it in Hillary Clinton's email? Were they hacking a government email?
They'd read it in Hillary Clinton's email? Were they hacking a government email?
Different organization, not Hillary, not US government, but yeah, hacking an official email address.
because they'd read it in her email.
I believe everyone has a copy of the agenda?
hacking an official email address.
Or, more likely than just an address, hacking an entire goddamn email system. Which, if one had ever worked with the system in question, would not be surprising at all.
151 assumes that we can believe her when she says she deleted only her private emails from her personally controlled server. Let us for a moment pretend it is George W. Bush who is telling you that. What about if it's Richard Nixon? ("18 email gap..."). Any job-related emails weren't "private emails," they were public emails being stored inappropriately.
We are just seeing evidence of her sense of entitlement and privilege. ("Oh, it's inconvenient and after all I am going to be the next president and so you better let me do what I want.") I won't go so far as to say stupidity, but the advisors who let her do this are in fact stupid.
So basically 152.
111, 121: Let's set it up so payments flow back through the same lookup table that publishes provider affiliation. Not only can we be sure they'll be kept up-to-date, but it should reduce the total amount of data-entry the system requires.
OT: This guy keeps getting better and better.
get a warrant which isn't going to happen because I don't let my personal and private use overlap on devices at all.
To apply the Clinton standard, how do we know that? We can't unless we're allowed to look through your so-called "personal" device as well, and pinky swear we'll only release the stuff you're lying about, none of the sexts unless they're with other ambassadors.
I'm not sure how or why she or her advisers could have specifically predicted this that entirely normal behavior at the time could be used to attack her, as opposed to anything else she did. Saying that she should have foreseen this particular thing is pretty questionable at best, especially since we're talking about a political opposition (and political press) that has shown exactly no reluctance whatsoever to pretend that even normal standard boring things are massive scandals or indicative of corruption, and even if they didn't happen in the first place. You can't predict what someone will say is a scandal if they aren't acting in good faith, and there's basically no value in trying.
To apply the Clinton standard, how do we know that?
Presumably you would have to have probable cause to believe there are government emails in the personal system. In Clinton's case, the probable cause is there. In gswifts it is not.
What about if it's Richard Nixon? ("18 email gap...").
I'd be concerned if it were Richard Nixon because Richard Nixon was genuinely involved in criminal activity, which makes it reasonable to assume that the hypothetical deleted emails might have contained evidence pertaining to said malfeasance.
In Hillary's case, no non-deranged people have suggested that the are any underlying shenanigans that would be hidden in any emails she might hypothetically have improperly deleted.
I'm not sure how or why she or her advisers could have specifically predicted this that entirely normal behavior at the time could be used to attack her, as opposed to anything else she did.
Except it was quite clear at the time that the era of "this is entirely normal" was ending. Members of the Bush administration had just taken a lot of shit for that, in a very public manner. So there is no way they could have been unaware of the risks for potential shitstorm. They chose to take the risk anyway.
164: Yes, the 90's called, they want their excuses back.
And I'm skeptical of this "entirely normal" talk. I've not worked for the feds but I've got about 19 years of large corporation and govt jobs and always email is/was being done with the corporate or govt accounts. If one of my old managers or a sergeant was regularly sending me emails from their Yahoo account it would be weird as hell.
I think people are also way overestimating what the substance of these emails would be. If you're in a top spot position, 99-100% of your emails are "Thanks!" and "Nice to see you" and "OK"! Anything you do of remote substance is handled by staff. That's a lot of why it wouldn't surprise me at all that she didn't have anything classified on her personal email -- I suspect that even most of the "official business" on there is basically froth. Obviously if people were sending highly classified briefing memos on Iraq to her on the personal account things would be different.
165 - Yes, because now things have changed and the press and Washington political press are serious journalists with standards despite being almost all the exact same people and the Republican party wouldn't tarnish its integrity like they did back then by spreading open lies and bullshit.
So there is no way they could have been unaware of the risks for potential shitstorm. They chose to take the risk anyway.
So at this point, can we sum up the entirety of the scandal as "She should have known better!"?
Yeah, 152 & 157. I'm going to vote for the craziest candidate out there in the hope the roaches do better than the extinct bipeds after the radioactivity dies down.
This scandal is not the fault of the Washington political press/Republicans. This one is on Hillary. Just because those other two entities are acting entirely how one would expect them to act doesn't absolve her of doing something really stupid.
Primary Colors, the movie, was indeed very good, and knecht is exactly right to highlight the performances of Thompson and Travolta.
But the subplot regarding the disillusionment of the idealistic aides was ridiculous for much the same reason that Joe Klein's disillusionment with Democrats is almost invariably ridiculous.
So at this point, can we sum up the entirety of the scandal as "She should have known better!"?
Well, its certainly not the worst scandal in the world, but its a indicator that she is prone to doing stupid things. Can she really be trusted to do the right thing when White House phone rings at 3:00 AM?
Well, probably. But maybe not!
I'm going to vote for the craziest candidate out there in the hope the roaches do better than the extinct bipeds after the radioactivity dies down.
I thank you in advance for setting the bar low.
As far as any actual scandal goes, I still think my first comment nailed it.
Hillary didn't break the law, and she engaged in behavior that didn't lead to much comment when Jeb, for example, did it.
Yes, she's subject to a lot of bullshit scrutiny that Jeb won't be. But that's a bad thing. We don't want to base our judgments on the idea that it's not okay if you're a Democrat, especially given the fact that there's nothing intrinsically troubling about this beyond "appearances."
Figuring out why the NYT hates the Clintons so much is interesting, and also sort of mysterious. There was even an amazing "the press hates Hillary Clinton" story, clearly designed as ass-covering for the NYT's own bizarre hatred of her. But with that said if you're a candidate in 2016 you certainly want your "scandals" coming out in early 2015.
Romney, in addition to his own e-mail peccadillo, wouldn't participate in the ritual release of tax records during his campaign.
I really thought that was going to be a problem for him - in part because I really think it was a substantive problem. But in the end, I don't think anyone cared.
I can live with the "choosing the wrong email delivery method" variety of stupidity. This is the sort of stupidity that sends me into the fetal position:
"I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so that they don't walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you're working on," Rubio said to Secretary of State John F. Kerry. "Tell me why I'm wrong."
"Because the facts completely contradict that," Kerry replied.
So, to be clear here, we're upset that Clinton didn't go above and beyond the existing regulations at the time and provide a rich treasure trove of information that could be poured over by her political enemies to create fake scandals that could then be flogged for the next two years? And maybe also that she didn't fix the federal government's IT procurement processes?
167: That 90's dig was about email ignorance and "who could have seen this coming." Um, everyone? Like Spike said, there was a whole big thing about this in '07 with the US Attorney firings and millions of missing emails and it came out Rove was using is RNC email instead of the govt one.
So, what, best case scenario is six more years of these kinds of threads, over and over, worst case scenario is less than two?
I said this already above, but saying "she should have seen the problem coming" implies that there was something she could have done without problems of its own. Yes, she behaved weirdly out of paranoia, but the paranoia was perfectly justified, and the weird behavior was kosher under the then-current regulations.
(And comparing what she did to what any employee in a big organization does is kind of nonsensical, gswift. In a big organization, you comply with the policy set by your managers. If you're the head of the organization who sets the policies, you do what makes sense to you within the constraints of law and regulation. The answer to your implicit question "Who did she think she was to handle her email differently than I had to handle mine as a low-level corporate and then government employee" is "She thought she was the Secretary of State." Which she was right about.)
It would be pretty sweet if at the 2016 Democratic Convention they wheel a coffin onto the stage, and out bursts the corpse of zombie Vince Foster, doing the Thriller dance.
I'm still trying to understand how you guys (swift et al) have convinced yourselves that everyone would believe that HRC never, even once, used her personal email for State-related business.
"No, seriously, guys, I never used HRC@FirstWomanPresident.org for anything related to official business."
"Oh, well, that's alright, then. We won't inquire after those emails at all. We believe you completely, because we, the press and GOP, take you at your word."
181 - Even if Rand Paul wins, I don't think we'll descend into a Mad Max-style dystopia with no eclectic web magazines until at least 2018.
184: Heck, I wouldn't believe it -- she could be perfect on her end, but people would send her work related stuff to the wrong email (at least, the work people who have my personal email do that to me). She might keep most of her job on the work email, but her personal email would get contaminated.
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
But in the end, I don't think anyone cared.
I think it contributed to the whole image problem he had. I mean, it had less impact than the 47% video, but IMO it helped reinforce that narrative.
Did it move the needle on its own? Probably not, but in a death by 1000 cuts, it was at least 1, and maybe several.
What we really need are her text messages. "CU@Mena Aprt 4 tha coca drop!" "Al Shartpton r u up 4 sext?" "LuvMarx+Lenin"
I really thought Fake Accent would be killing it in this thread but he's right, records management is boring.
Fortunately, I have meetings and stuff today.
What if it were records management that included the order to have Chris Stevens rubbed out? #teachthecontroversy
176: It has to be the Sulzbergers, right? There must have been almost total turnover in top management between Whitewater and now.
194: His songs were so deeply annoying, he had to change his name.
I have updated my dupes of Satan list appropriately.
And will merely note that 157 is a very special comment indeed.
And comparing what she did to what any employee in a big organization does is kind of nonsensical, gswift.
It really isn't. It's just email, it's not functioning different for people as they move up the chain.
I'm still trying to understand how you guys (swift et al) have convinced yourselves that everyone would believe that HRC never, even once, used her personal email for State-related business.
I haven't said that at all. Who cares if they believe it? The point is to not make it look suspicious on its face.
I don't know why it only occurred to me now, way too late, that Pinch Sulzberger is basically the W of the Sulzberger clan. There's even enough of a facial resemblance, once you're thinking that way. Damn it!
Who cares if they believe it? The point is to not make it look suspicious on its face.
She's Hilary Clinton. Whatever she does looks suspicious on its face. (And while email works the same whatever your position in the organization, your capacity and entitlement to set policies for your own convenience and preferences are genuinely different when you're running the organization. There's nothing strange about Clinton doing what she likes with her email, within the constraints of law and regulation, even if worker bees in large organizations typically can't.)
189 might have missed a cliché or two, but I don't think so. Beautifully done.
Thank you. Needs a "win the day", though.
I haven't said that at all. Who cares if they believe it? The point is to not make it look suspicious on its face.
Yeah. Same mistake Hillary made with Benghazi and Vince Foster. And (per 180) it's just like Rove and the attorney general firings.
I think "win the morning" is the right term in the Politico era.
200: So when they asked Colin Powell for his and his reply was "I used private email and didn't keep any of it", that doesn't seem a bit off to you?
And again, she specifically on the heels of a private email/missing email issue in the previous admin. She's been the target of oppo attacks for decades. She's going into a position where she knows the communications are supposed to be accessible and there's a 100 percent chance people are going to be wanting to comb through those communications. And so she does it all on her private account? The fuck? How is this not an obviously stupid decision?
How is this not an obviously stupid decision?
Because it appears to have been perfectly legal, because it appears to have been the sort of thing that lots of other people in comparable positions were doing at the time, and because it appears to have been no more likely to lead to accusations of murder and treason than her taking out the morning trash. That said, it might have been really stupid. Several people I trust, including people who both like her and also aren't hysterical, say it was. Still, I think there are a number of ways in which it wasn't obviously a stupid decision like, say, lying about taking fire in Tuzla.
My flight is bumpy. Someone please hold me.
"I used private email and didn't keep any of it", that doesn't seem a bit off to you?
Not really. Did anyone make much of a fuss about it when it came out? (Him, much as I despise the lying bastard, I'd cut even a dab more slack than Hilary, as being old enough to plausibly think of email as a silly modern way of communicating that there was no reason to think of as a government 'record' he should have dealt with.)
The fuck? How is this not an obviously stupid decision?
Because she's within the law the way she did it, and the alternative is to have a private email address, which people would accidentally sometimes send work email to, which would mean that the whole contents of her private email would get subpoenaed. I'm not saying that what she did was the absolute best possible way of handling things, but I don't see an alternative that's clearly trouble-free. You might be able to keep your personal email and phone absolutely separate, but no way she would have been, at which point nothing's private.
I should add to 207 that I think, as I've said before, there's a decent chance she loses to Bush (less likely that she loses to Walker). And that even if she wins, she's going to be worse than Obama, who we'll all miss more than we imagine in this moment. Which is to say, I'm not a fan of hers -- or Bill's; I think the Clintons have been a malign influence in the Democratic Party -- but I don't think this is some obvious unforced error.
Also, yes, I'm commenting a lot because it's that or start to weep on the shoulder of the guy next to me.
Records management is a lot like campaign finance. People do a lot of things that are both legal and appear questionable and that's not going to change as long as it seems like it's all within normal practice. Only naive do-gooder goo go good government types care about this stuff enough to be serious about it, which makes them ripe for manipulation from whatever interest happens to see (alleged) "scandal!" benefiting whatever they happen to be working on at the time.
This is also why legislative procedural reforms that increase transparency but also slow things down are so beloved by whichever party is in opposition, then become important to the other side if the election swings things the other way. Make bills public and online for 72 hours (unless I want something to pass immediately)! I have a certain admiration for the people who genuinely care about all of these issues because they seem to be pretty much constantly in a state of being abandoned and courted by former, future allies.
Number of Maureen Dowd columns that have mentioned "Lewinsky"?
121
Does that include the one where she got stoned out of her gourd?
Von Wafer, I would be happy to offer you the same wager we had last time, even without knowing the candidates. The whole Republican bench right now is weirdo clowns; they don't have anyone charismatic enough to overcome the Tea Party schism and demographic trends. The Democratic candidate will win comfortably and you will have to fly all the way back to California to buy me another soft drink. (Which is why I don't mind that the Democratic candidate will be Clinton although she doesn't inspire me.)
Anyone fretting about the 2016 election is doing so because he or she likes fretting.
210: I had a sobering moment when I realized that in a ranking of US Presidents, assuming nothing goes disastrously in the next two years you'd probably have to include Obama in the top 10. And I have felt almost nothing except disappointment for the last 6 years.
Clinton is not going to lose, though. The economy will be booming in 2016.
I'm afraid I can't work with you on this one, Megan, because of your weird love of Al Gore.
216: your business cycles absolutism has been heartening for me, I have to say. And yes, as I've said here a million times before, almost all US presidents were awful. Being tragically flawed but occasionally effective vaults one into the top ten. Only two or three have been genuinely good, which probably means structural constraints are to blame.
218 -- so you're agreeing that democracy has failed. Good. The next step is obvious.
If you were going to make a grapefruit pie, would you make a custard pie that seems to be essentially sweetened condensed milk with grapefruit juice or would you make a jello-based pie that seems to be grapefruit pieces in strawberry jello?
The former. But I'd fret, even if the pie turned out admirably, that I'd made the wrong choice.
Sorry, one more comment as we fly next to this thunderstorm: Smugglers Notch was perfect, LB. It had a velveteen rabbit ambience, which I liked, and no crowds, perfect weather, and kid-friendly instructors, all of which I loved. Thanks again for the recommendation. My kids owe you one. (Or maybe I owe you one of my kids.)
The ambiance died of scarlet fever?
I would make a Shaker lemon pie with more sugar. also cardamom to tilt the bitterness.
If I were to make a grapefruit pie, I'd try to make it resemble a key lime or lemon merengue pie, which I think is sort of your option #1. But really, if I had a grapefruit, I'd make salty dogs.
224: frayed and a bit tatty. But yes, also lots of infectious disease. Fortunately, we brought some books with us.
If I were to make a grapefruit pie, I'd try to make it resemble a key lime or lemon merengue pie, which I think is sort of your option #1
This looks promising (option 1 would have been my choice even before searching, but that looks good -- though I'd cut back on the sugar).
Except that there's a lot more pith on a grapefruit than a lemon, enough that the amount of sugar or cardamom necessary might be overwhelming. So maybe just zest the grapefruit then cut the pith off.
The flight attendants are still wandering around the cabin. This means we're unlikely to crash, right?
225 does sound great, but I'm going to stick to my plan for eggnog custard pie for this weekend's party and contest.
VW, keep talking so we know you're alive!
It is easy to peel the grapefruits I get so completely that there is no pith.
I love cardamom, but my strongest association with cardamom is rice pudding. I don't know how to mix it with other flavors well.
Aaaaand the captain just told the flight attendants to sit down immediately. Since this will be my last comment here, I want everyone to know that I asked about the time change as a kind of PSA. I care too much, is the thing.
Damnit, Cookie, I'm halfway through your first book and it would be too creepy to finish it if you were dead. Stop being so selfish!
197. I am honored. Do I get a certificate?
210. A pox on all Bushes and Clintons of any stripe. Hear, hear!
229: Right, that's the type of recipe I found for the custard-y version. It looks good, but doesn't stuff with sweetened condensed milk basically taste like sweetened condensed milk? NTTAWWT.
We're having a make-up pie contest for the one we skipped last summer on Saturday (bonus Pi Day!). The town is flooded with meyer lemons, so I don't want to be predictable like that. I thought grapefruit might stand out.
231: No, they're trained to simulate calmness when faced with routine OR fatal circumstances. No one likes to die with screaming all around them.
Re Hilmail: The security people and the records people must have briefed her on what's safe and proper. Her decision is just plain dumb. "OMG, TWO phones? How will I ever cope?" She didn't have hot and cold running aides who could have carried one phone?
233: in a shaker lemon pie, the lemons are not peeled. 230 was a continuation of 228.
But you should still stop reading that book, Thorn. It's awful.
Thanks, nosfloW. I understood that after I looked up a shaker lemon pie, but I didn't know when I wrote 233. I'm not partial to marmalade, so I suspect I wouldn't like it (as much as either a sweetened condensed milk version or a jello version).
I thought you told me I should read and trash more history books! I have no regrets and it's either not awful or I haven't gotten to the awful parts. I'm sure you could have done things differently but you didn't and you seem to have survived.
Al Gore would certainly be a top 10er. If HRC decides for whatever reason she doesn't need to do it. The only people you can think of who'd be better presidents than him in 2017 are fantasy candidates who either don't actually exist (even if their mythology does) or are utterly unelectable.
I think he'd be better than she would, at the presidenting part, but don't think a bruising nomination battle between them would be at all good.
Wow, I really would not have thought this could be a contentious thread. I mean, I genuinely thought this one was such obvious common sense that no regular commenter here could possibly have a different opinion about it. I'm with the sane half of you.
243: There's a direct line between that book and the hurricane.
245: I'm always with the sane half.
Also also still kind of reading bits of this at random but
Are you not familiar with the plaintext nature of SMTP?
I can't even imagine what this means. You literally cannot send a coded message? It will spit it back at you? What if it's plaintext but really badly spelled?
269d9f76eab1c88002a3652ad1d911ec
248 - Down in its heart an email really is basically just a letter, and anyone who knows how can write "Sincerely yours, Lyndon Johnson President of the United States" at the bottom of it, or open it up and read it themselves if they can get ahold of it.
There are ways of writing letters that make them harder to read if someone can get ahold of them, or of ensuring that the delivery is confidential/people sign for it/etc. But mostly no one uses those because they're a pain and/or no one really cares that much. Also you need to convince everyone to use them and then people forget.
Only the Shas usr encrypted email.
223: I'm so glad everyone had a good time. There really isn't anything more fun than skiing, when the weather's good.
My concern is that the very rocky rollout of healthcare.gov will be something that the ACA can never recover from.
254 brought a smile to my face. The Patriots should have forfeited the Baltimore game, and the Obama administration should have folded the ACA tent after the rollout.
Hillary's aides carried her one-time pad. It had to be very large because of all the email she sent.
The WaPo can't help but keep fucking that chicken. "Some top Democrats are alarmed about Clinton's readiness for a campaign"
Robert Gibbs reveals his usual broad perspective. "Had this story been responded to in two or three days instead of in eight days, it would not be as big,"
Sheldon Whitehouse is more my kind of guy:
"She used the wrong e-mail account -- duh-dah! It's ridiculous," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). "I'm not indulging this bizarre fetish." Asked if he had doubts about Clinton's political standing, Whitehouse said: "No. This is totally artificial. You guys have lost your minds on this."
Sheldon Whitehouse is a Patriots fan, Stormcrow, and probably denies the seriousness of Ballghazi, too.
I'm glad people are so comfortable with policies allowing state actors sole discretion to determine what is or is not an official record.* Dick Cheney took his vice presidential records home, and did anyone really care? No, because nothing possibly could be wrong with that. You couldn't expect him to keep both a private man-safe and an official man-safe.
Again, this is not a comment on the specifics of the Clinton email case.
*Except maybe for the president, who's subject to stricter rules. Thanks, Obama Nixon.
I'm glad people are so comfortable with policies allowing state actors sole discretion to determine what is or is not an official record.*
I'm actually open to the idea that certain state actors should, as a requirement of the position, for the period they are in office, be required to forego any personal correspondence. Or, put differently: *all* their written correspondence during the relevant period would be deemed to be an official record, whether it's an email sent from their state email address or a personal yahoo account, a letter written on official govt. letterhead or some stationary they picked up at hallmark, a message sent on their FB messaging app, etc. It doesn't matter--it's a state record, subject to preservation requirements and open record requests. They would have to learn not to put embarrassing personal matters in writing but that's probably a good lesson for senior state actors anyway. That really seems to be a better solution that what we have now. But that's not the policy we have now, and it has nothing at all to do with the Clinton email scandal, and pretending it does it just fanning the flames of a fire that very bad people are trying to light.
I am deeply ambivalent about completely open record absolutism. I want the people I elect to have space to do the things necessary to govern. To me *everything* is open leads to increased "black market" politicking and via a long and circuitous route (which I explore in depth in my newsletter) to something like Pol Pot.
It is gratifying to see the massive firestorm over the fact that Jeb did petty much the exact same thing with his emails (and technically much more "in the wrong" given Florida's specific laws). Oh wait.
These email stories are a small part of a massive 20-year story the subject of which is our national political media.
261.3 Yes. The Village is just so pathetic. But vast numbers of people who fall into the reality based reasonably educated moderate to leftish categories just can't seem to face up to it.
Someone like Greg Sargent knows at some level what is going, but can't seem to bring himself to attack it head on (for "understandable reasons.). Here's his tweet on the latest Bush story. "I don't think latest Jeb email story is that big a deal: I just hope that the standards here will be applied evenly." Too late for that Greg, so maybe take a look at the BIG story this gives a glimpse of.
260: I'm actually open to the idea that certain state actors should, as a requirement of the position, for the period they are in office, be required to forego any personal correspondence
What? It's off-putting enough as it is to contemplate running for public office or, I assume, accepting a high-level cabinet position.
It's nuts to expect people to forego any personal correspondence. I don't want zombie robots running the country.
I'm sort of surprised the government hasn't just moved from email to text messaging entirely. You can text from a computer too and just treat it like email, but without the disclosure and archiving requirements.
I find the way we treat government email a bit weird. No one would say we should record all of the secretary of states phone conversations and release them.
No one would say we should record all of the secretary of states phone conversations and release them.
No one has yet said that. I regard it as only a matter of time.
265: I'm pretty sure text messages fall under the definition of records for disclosure and archiving purposes.
Also, there isn't a requirement, except maybe for the President, to save all government email. What makes email so difficult is there's so much of it and it's individually managed, and no one really has time or the policy knowledge to apply retention schedules to their email account on a message-by-message basis.
Whereas when most correspondence went through administrative staff and the volume was lower, you could have people apply records policy as a regular part of their job. You still do, but not for personal (but official) email, for the most part. Saving whole email accounts may end up being government policy as a simplification, not because it's the desirable way to do things.
The world of private email archives does seem to be tending towards saving whole accounts, but I think that's still exceptional and anyway, it's done on a case by case basis and the donor is involved in the decision.
Did I mention records policy is boring?
Recent story on text messages as records:
But what about text messages? Sending messages between phones is an increasingly important way for public employees and leaders to communicate official business and in most cases, those are considered public records that need to be preserved, too.
I'm in the midst of responding to discovery requests for 8 years of company email on a wide variety of topics, all of which is archived on tapes. I hate email. One of the few things I hate more is having clients who don't use email.
95% of the people who care about this story care only because it's an excuse to bash HRC. Maybe it's 99%. Sorry, 1%: you really should pick a different hill upon which to wage this battle.
The world of private email archives does seem to be tending towards saving whole accounts, but I think that's still exceptional and anyway, it's done on a case by case basis and the donor is involved in the decision.
As it should be. I just can't make out any case in which private emails -- between yourself and your sister or your mother or your son-in-law or your ex -- should be open public records. Of course there's room for malfeasance, but come on: people have a right to privacy, to conduct private lives, no matter who they are.
Same guy, 9 years ago: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-op-muravchik19nov19-story.html#page=1
People like to complain about magazines, and the complaints are valid, but the real culprits are the large dailies, which have actual influence.
269.2 is right. But! Requirements that the communications of high-ranking officials be archived in a(n eventually) publicly accessible form imposes a cost on those who wish to use political power for dishonorable ends.
The argument that Clinton could not avoid "scandal" cuts both ways.
No buts, man. This is utterly insignificant. Yes, if HRC told her limo driver to go 67 mph on the Sawmill, that would show contempt for the little people. Or that she was in a hurry. Or some damn thing. But in the actual scheme, a publication that cares more about that than efforts to fix the Voting Rights Act, or the neocon willingness to start another war, is an entity that is already using its power for dishonorable ends.
And that's a bigger story that any goddam email is ever going to be.
Well sure, I'm still going to vote for her over any conceivable Republican alternative, and many Democratic ones.
Sure. What I'm saying is we shouldn't be part of a downdraft either. Or even entertain what amounts to a bait and switch.
Eggplant! Whether or not you make valid points, this is not a thread in which it's acceptable to talk earnestly about records policies. Gullible voters might be reading and get the wrong message.
Actually, I quite like records management, and get involved at the margins of it at work. Mainly by being aggressively proactive in knocking back the evergreen delusion that computer folks should make decisions about it.
A lawyer I worked with would argue that the only intellectually defensible positions are to save everything automatically, or nothing. And as others have pointed out, the nature of email works against the latter position.
263: And the WaPo is out now with a really stupid article on Jeb's email (he emailed about nuclear secuirty and 9/11 response ZOMG!), so I'm sorry I asked.
And since the power of obsession compels her, Dowd now up to 122 Lewinsky mentions with an inevitable bit of loony tunes.
Ok, I'm sure by new nearly everyone has seen at least the FB "trending" notice that the NY Post is saying that the Clintons are saying that the White House is behind it. OK, boulders of salt, and no, I'm not linking.
Then I got to thinking, what if some geniuses in the Clinton camp think it would be a good idea to do some triangulating with the President. You know, to shore up their popularity what with his low approval ratings and all. (I know, not with actual voters: just with the Village and with people who would never vote for Clinton anyway). And fire up the PUMAs.
Two questions:
(1) Can you think of a better way to depress turnout of core Democratic voters? (Maybe the geniuses are looking at turnout in off year elections and think there's not much to lose). This is ex recto, but if insulting/attacking the President gets you 1 vote for every 2 you lose, I wouldn't be shocked.
(2) Can you honestly put it past the Clinton camp to have geniuses on staff who think this sort of thing might actually be a good idea?
I wouldn't put it past the Clinton camp to only have geniuses on staff who think this sort of thing might actually be a good idea.