Tag Archives: State Department

national news, political news

‘Damn e-mails’ return to center stage

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mails

Back in the old days, when Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton actually were treating each other nicely, Sanders offered this often-quoted quip: “I am tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.”

I’ve got bad news for you, Sen. Sanders. We’re going to hear about those “damn e-mails” for a while longer.

The State Department’s inspector general has issued a report that says then-Secretary of State Clinton flouted department policy in her use of a personal e-mail server when communicating about State Department issues.

Does this doom Clinton’s assured nomination as the next Democratic Party presidential nominee? No. It’s going to damage her. Why? Republicans will make sure of it.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/281192-watchdog-agency-hits-clinton-top-aides-on-records-policy

I am not giving this report the short shrift. I get the concern about policy violations. What’s unclear to me, though, is whether any of the information Clinton passed on her personal server ever was captured by our nation’s enemies? Did any of them ever use that information to harm our national security?

What’s more, as Clinton has said in pushing back, other secretaries of state have used personal e-mail accounts. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright? They did, too.

Did they ever compromise national security? I haven’t heard evidence of it regarding those officials, either.

http://thehill.com/regulation/national-security/281220-clinton-campaign-insists-email-setup-not-unique

I was troubled when word came out about the use of personal e-mail servers to convey public information. My major concern then was whether information actually compromised our national security. All the congressional inquiries and probes haven’t yet made that determination.

However, that won’t stop the chatter and the intense criticism. It goes with the political territory.

Bernie Sanders’ wish won’t come true any time soon.

 

national news, political news

Timing of e-mail classification now becomes key

hillary-emails

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s decision to use her personal e-mail account was problematical, to say the least.

Now we might be finding out why it has caused the secretary of state so many problems.

She’s running for the presidency. The U.S. State Department issued a statement this past week that several e-mails that went out on that account were “top secret” in nature.

Yes, I am concerned about the use of that personal account, just like a lot of folks are concerned. My major concern is whether any of that top secret information ended up in the hands of hackers who might have broken into that account. Those things do happen, you know.

The question of the moment, though, is this: When did State decide to classify the messages as top secret?

Clinton has said all along that she didn’t send classified material on her personal account. She stands by that contention to this day. Moreover, she has said she did what previous secretaries of state have done. It didn’t come up when, say, Colin Powell was running the State Department.

To be sure, this matter has worsened the trust issue that is dogging her campaign in the very late stages of the campaign leading up to Monday night’s Iowa caucuses.

Let us not get ahead of ourselves.

I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt over whether she sent the material out on her personal account knowing they were top secret.

Clinton said she didn’t jeopardize our national security.

Let’s ask the question: Were these e-mails re-classified just in recent days?

 

national news, political news

It’s just about the ‘worst case’ regarding those e-mails

hillary-emails

The worst case hasn’t yet arrived with regard to the Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy.

However, it’s a lot closer than the presumed Democratic Party presidential frontrunner would like.

I won’t yet call this matter a “scandal.” It would elevate to that level if we found out that the classified e-mails that went out on the former secretary of state’s personal server got into the wrong hands.

The Obama administration today revealed that 22 e-mail messages that went through Clinton’s server have been labeled “top secret.” Clinton had said she didn’t knowingly send out sensitive material on the server.

The administration now says it won’t release the e-mails to the public because — that’s right — they are top secret!

We won’t be allowed to see what’s in them, which is just fine by me.

Most troubling, though, is that the e-mail messages very well could have gotten into the hands of those seeking to do serious harm to this nation.

We’ll need to know the truth about how those messages traveled through cyberspace containing the highly sensitive national security information.

Of course, the political ramifications of this revelation ramp up the stakes for Monday’s Iowa caucuses, where Clinton is locked in a tight battle with Sen. Bernie Sanders; former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is running a distant third, but suddenly he emerges as a potential spoiler.

Clinton is beginning to suffer from some trust issues with voters. The administration’s acknowledgment that the e-mails carried top secret information into potentially unsecured locations out there into the Internet universe could do serious harm to a candidacy once seen as unstoppable.

 

national news, political news

Gowdy to GOP colleagues: ‘Shut up’ about Benghazi

Trey_Gowdy-1

I love the comment from House Select Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy to his Republican colleagues.

“Shut up” about things about which you know nothing, says the South Carolina Republican.

They know nothing? Or do they know, um, too much?

Hillary Clinton is going to testify this week before the House panel about the fire fight in September 2012 at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Four brave Americans died in the melee, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Republicans have been trying like the dickens for more than three years to find enough dirt on Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, to pin something on her. They’ve accused her of covering something up.

They’ve come up empty … so far.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy then popped off about the reason the committee was formed, noting that Clinton’s poll numbers have plunged since the panel began its work; his comments seemed to most observers to suggest the motive for the committee being formed in the first place was to torpedo Clinton’s presidential campaign.

And then came Rep. Richard Hanna, another GOP colleague, to say the same thing that McCarthy said. D’oh! There’s another one: Bradley Podliska, a former GOP staffer — who worked for the Benghazi committee — also said the same thing. He doesn’t know, Mr. Chairman?

Clinton’s testimony could sink her campaign. It could lift it to new heights. As some folks have noted, the Benghazi hearings have gone on longer than the House Watergate hearings and the Warren Commission hearings looking into JFK’s assassination.

One of these days, hopefully before the presidential nominating conventions next year, the Benghazi panel will wrap this up, publish its findings and then we can move on.

 

 

national news, political news

Clinton needs to steel herself over server

Hillary Rodham Clinton is getting the third, fourth and maybe the fifth degrees over this server business.

The Democrats’ presidential frontrunner is under fire over the way she handled e-mail communications while she was serving as secretary of state and her use of a personal e-mail server to conduct State Department business.

She cut off a press conference when the question kept coming about the server issue and whether she destroyed information that belongs to the public.

At one level, this continuing investigation has partisan politics written all over it. Republicans do not want her to become the 45th president of the United States; thus, it’s understandable that they would do whatever they can to deny her the office.

The e-mail controversy — and I refuse to call it a “scandal” — has given them a quiver full of ammo to fire at former secretary of state.

She said today she did everything that is prescribed by law and insisted she broke no laws.

On a human level, I understand her continuing frustration over the continuing coverage of this matter.

On another level, though, I want this matter settled. She has turned her server over to the Department of Justice. My hope is that Clinton will answer all the questions posed to her.

At some point it will have to become as obvious to the rest of the country — as it is to Clinton — that the investigations into the e-mail matter will produce zero criminal culpability.

Therefore, all the politicians involved in seeking to undermine her candidacy will realize they are doing more damage to themselves than they are to her.

First things first, though. Hillary Clinton needs to deliver all the goods about this e-mail business for thorough public inspection.

national news, political news

What has become of Hillary the Invincible?

hillary

There once was a time — not that long ago — when Hillary Rodham Clinton was considered a shoo-in not just for her party’s presidential nomination, but for the office itself.

She was Hillary the Invincible. The 2016 Democratic presidential nomination was, to borrow that cliché, “hers to lose” — although I’ve never quite understood what phrase actually means.

Then came some nasty stuff.

The Benghazi matter doesn’t count. I do not consider the Benghazi tragedy to be a “scandal,” as some media blowhards on the right have called it.

Here’s what is more troubling in my view: the e-mail matter.

The former secretary of state revealed some months ago that she used her personal e-mail server to communicate with others about, um, State Department business. That disclosure troubled me when I heard and I troubles me even more now. Why? Because of reports that — as some have feared — messages sent out into the public domain contained classified information.

The Justice Department has now ordered Clinton to turn over her personal e-mail server to the spooks at DOJ, who’ll look over all the material that went out on it. But as the Washington Post’s Chis Cillizza notes:  “It’s impossible to see this as anything but a bad thing for her presidential prospects.”

The trustworthiness issue is beginning now to dog the former first lady/U.S. senator/secretary of state. Is she for real? Is she authentic? Can she be trusted to tell us the truth all the time?

Yes, I am having doubts about all of that, right along with a lot of other Americans.

The Democratic field already has three other candidates seeking the party’s presidential nomination. I’m waiting to hear whether a fourth non-Clinton will jump in … that would be Vice President Joe Biden, about whom much has been written during his lengthy career in government.

He’s become the target of late-night comedians’ jokes because of his occasional gaffes. No one, though, doubts his authenticity or his motives for seeking a career in public service.

Whether he runs, though, likely might depend on how much damage gets done to Hillary Clinton’s once-seemingly invincible image.

 

International news

Hoping that Mullah Omar is burning in hell

Can it be true?

Mullah Omar, the Taliban terrorist leader who harbored Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda thugs, is dead? Afghanistan officials say he’s a goner. U.S. officials aren’t confirming it — yet.

https://gma.yahoo.com/taliban-leader-mullah-omar-died-afghan-officials-105317136–abc-news-topstories.html#

There’s no word yet on the possible cause of death.

As good as the news might turn out to be, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

As we’ve known for some time since bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA commandos, one man’s death doesn’t mean the end of the fight against the organization he once led.

Make no mistake, though. Mullah Omar is — or was — a seriously bad actor.

The State Department had put a $10 million bounty on Mullah Omar’s head for information leading his capture.

Let’s all hope we can confirm this animal’s death so we can move on to getting rid of the individual who likely will emerge to take his place.

And, yes, even though the State Department declines to refer to the Taliban as a “terrorist organization,” the rest of the world knows better.

International news

Diplomacy ought to trump war every time

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Barack Obama could have invoked the late, great Winston Churchill at his press conference today.

Churchill once said it is better to “jaw, jaw, jaw than to war, war, war.”

So it is with President Obama’s defense of the deal struck with Iran that seeks to end Iran’s quest to acquire nuclear weapons.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/obama-iran-deal-defends-press-conference-120154.html?hp=lc1_4

I remain more or less undecided on the merits of the deal, but the president has posed a fascinating challenge to his critics.

Is it better to take military action to remove Iran’s nuclear capability, or is it better to use diplomacy to rid them of their nuclear ambitions?

Critics, Obama said, haven’t offered a credible alternative to the deal that struck by Secretary of State John Kerry and his team of international partners. They blast the 159-page deal with words like “appeasement,” “disaster,” and “historic mistake.”

So, what do they suggest? Do we send in squadrons of fighter-bombers to blast the nuclear plants into oblivion? Let the Israelis do it? Do we risk all-out war?

The great Winston Churchill had it right: It’s better to talk than to drop bombs.

Always.

International news, Uncategorized

SCOTUS hands White House an unexpected victory

The Supreme Court has decided that the United States needs to remain neutral in an ancient debate over who controls one of the world’s holiest cities.

The issue is a passport and whether the parents of a child born in Jerusalem could put the word “Israel” on the document’s listing of one’s place of birth.

It’s kind of convoluted. The court — in a 6-3 decision — sided with the executive branch of government, which contended that “Jerusalem” should stand alone on passports, given the contentious nature of the debate over who actually controls the city.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/scotus-strikes-down-jerusalem-passport-law?cid=sm_fb_lastword

Longstanding policy had stated that passports marking the place of birth of those who hold them shouldn’t put Jerusalem in Israel, as it remains a key sticking point in the on-going dispute between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority.

The American citizens of a boy born in Jerusalem in 2002 wanted his passport to contain the word “Israel.” Congress enacted a bill declaring that birth certificates could identify the birthplace as Jerusalem, Israel if parents requested. President Bush signed the bill into law, but complained that it interfered with the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

The court sided with the executive branch.

I’ve been to Jerusalem. Much of it clearly is in Israel. The Israeli government has its capital there. However, the city also is divided by a large, forbidding wall, on the other side of which is the West Bank, governed by the Palestinian Authority.

The Supreme Court has decided correctly in not interfering in this most sensitive dispute.

As NBC News’s Pete Williams reported: “The administration, under presidents of both parities, has insisted that because sovereignty over Jerusalem is one of the major sticking points in any Middle East peace agreement, the U.S. would remain neutral. Being forced to say that Jerusalem was under the control of Israel, the idea went, would be taking sides.”

 

International news

Kim Jong Un: Craziest man alive

I hereby nominate North Korean dictator/lunatic Kim Jong Un as the world’s craziest man.

Will I get in trouble for calling him such names?

One of his formerly trusted aides had the bad taste to fall asleep during an event in which Kim was present.

Hyon Yong Chol’s punishment? He was executed — using an anti-aircraft gun to shoot him to death.

http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-executes-defense-chief-treason-charges-south-005116364.html

South Korean intelligence officials reported the execution that reportedly was witnessed by hundreds of spectators. The official charges leveled against the defense chief were treason and disobeying Kim.

The world is full of loons. Some of them actually sit in places of power. Can there be anyone loonier than the young North Korean dictator who took over upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il — who himself was no slouch when it came to dictatorial madness.

State Department flack Jeff Rathke said this about reports of the execution: “If they are true, (they) describe another extremely brutal act by the North Korean regime. These reports, sadly, are not the first in this regard.”

Allow me to offer this bit of advice to the State Department: While you are seeking rapprochement with many of our adversaries around the world — and that’s generally a good thing if it’s pursued with care and with hyper-vigilance — do not under any circumstances deal at all with Kim Jong Un. This young man is insane.