The Hillary E-Mail Bomb, By The Numbers (Updated)

Until a few days ago, Hillary seemed a virtual shoe-in to be chosen the next Democrat nominee for President. She had skated around her mistakes as Secretary of State, she had survived the Benghazi scandal without any real damage, and by God, it was time for a woman in the oval office.

But then the e-mail "scandal" broke, and I don't think that people yet realize just how serious a problem this is for Hillary. This may be one that she cannot shamelessly bluster her way out of.

Here are the facts. In the week before her confirmation hearing for Secretary of State in 2009, Hillary established a private e-mail account within "clintonemail.com," a private domain on a server physically set up inside of her private residence. Eschewing the use of official government e-mail, she exclusively used her personal email accounts to conduct government business as Secretary of State.

Problem one for Hillary are the optics of this. There is no question that the only reason she did this was to try and keep her communications a permanent secret, or at least to limit all access to those e-mail communications she never wanted to see made public. This looks so bad that the rabidly far left crowd at MSNBC was stunned speechless, and Politico has compared Hillary and her secret e-mails to Nixon and his tapes. In a world of bad optics, you can't get much worse than this.

Two, as the NYT has stated, Hillary "may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record." This still is not clear, though it is likely the least of Clinton's problems in regards to her e-mails. That said, it does look bad, given that State Dept. policy is that all employees use the government system for e-mails, and at least one ambassador serving under Hillary was fired in part for using private e-mails to conduct official business.

Three, it is simply inconceivable to me that Hillary, in her capacity as Secretary of State, and despite claims to the contrary, did not daily discuss matters and materials over e-mail that were classified to the highest level or security. Having had experience with handling classified government information, I can assure you that the laws governing the handling and transmission of classified information are strict. And while I do not remember the specific laws, I do recall that storing such information on a private medium is a violation of the laws. And I am relatively certain that transmitting that same information outside of secured government means is also a violation of the law. And note that we are not talking about a single incident, we are talking about four years worth of material. This is potentially far more serious than the discrete breaches of security for which former General Petraeus was recently prosecuted.

Four, Hillary used private means to secure her e-mail communications -- and it appears they were less than adequate. This from Gawker:

When Hillary Clinton ditched government email in favor of a secret, personal address, it wasn't just an affront to Obama's vaunted transparency agenda—security experts consulted by Gawker have laid out a litany of potential threats that may have exposed her email conversations to potential interception by hackers and foreign intelligence agencies.

"It is almost certain that at least some of the emails hosted at clintonemails.com were intercepted," independent security expert and developer Nic Cubrilovic told Gawker.

Do read the article. It lays out in detail all the weaknesses in Hillary's private e-mail set up. It may be that we will never know the degree to which her decision to use private e-mail has compromised our nation's security, but it should be the subject of an investigation.

And lastly, despite numerous legal requests for discovery of information over the past years that would have included her e-mails as Secretary of State, Hillary provided only very limited responses, and indeed, seems to have, at least in some cases, not allowed any search of her private e-mail account at all. For example, in regards to House Committee requests for information from the State Dept. on Benghazi, her aids produced only approximately 300 e-mails from Hillary herself. It's beyond question that there is much more information that has yet to be produced, and that does not bode well for Hillary:

Hillary's decision to use a private e-mail account on a private server to conduct her official business as Secretary of State may be the biggest mistake of her political life. So far, all we hear from Camp Hillary is silence. Any one of five aspects to this scandal could be the bomb that ends Hillary Clinton's run for the President.

Update: Hillary has maintained radio silence, but her minions are out in force to claim that Hillary's actions are a complete non-story. According to James Carville, MSNBC and the New York Times, the most left wing outlets in America, are "in the tank for the right" for addressing this story. While over at Fox News, Clinton hatchet-man Lanny Davis went fully rabid in trying to defend the indefensible.

Here's the analysis from Charles Krauthammer:

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

Steyn On Our Orwellian Nation

This from Mark Steyn today:

When the state has the power to know everything about everyone, the integrity of the civil service is the only bulwark against men like Holder. Instead, the ruling party and the non-partisan bureaucracy seem to be converging. In August 2010, President Obama began railing publicly against “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity” (August 9th, a speech in Texas) and “shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” (August 21st, radio address). And whaddayaknow, that self-same month the IRS obligingly issued its first BOLO (Be On the Look-Out) for groups with harmless-sounding names, like “tea party,” “patriot,” and “constitution.”

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won’t end well.

And to put this in historical context:

So we know the IRS is corrupt. What happens then when an ambitious government understands it can yoke that corruption to its political needs? What’s striking as the revelations multiply and metastasize is that at no point does any IRS official appear to have raised objections. If any of them understood that what they were doing was wrong, they kept it to themselves. When Nixon tried to sic the IRS on a few powerful political enemies, the IRS told him to take a hike. When Obama’s courtiers tried to sic the IRS on thousands of ordinary American citizens, the agency went along, and very enthusiastically. This is a scale of depravity hitherto unknown to the tax authorities of the United States, and for that reason alone they should be disarmed and disbanded — and rebuilt from scratch with far more circumscribed powers.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama's Claim: "I Didn't Raise Taxes, I Lowered Them"

Adolf Hitler once said "The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one." Who knew Obama studied the wit and wisdom of der Furher. But that apparently is the case. Exhibit one, his claim in an interview on Sunday with O'Reilly - "I didn't raise taxes; I lowered them over the past two years." Lolllll. This joker must think we live in an alternative universe where the Lincoln hypothesis - that you can't fool all of the people all of the time - doesn't apply.

Obama's problem is that what may have been true in 1935 is not true in 2011, when there are a huge pool of people sitting at their keyboards with access to the internt. This from the WSJ:

. . . Perhaps Mr. Obama has forgotten some of his tax achievements. Allow us to refresh his memory. In his historic health-care bill, for example, there is the new $27 billion "fee" on drug companies that is already in effect. Next year, device manufacturers will get hit to the tune of $20 billion, and heath insurers will pay $60 billion starting in 2014—all of which are de facto tax increases because these collections will be passed on to consumers as higher costs. Of course, these are merely tax increases on business.

As for tax increases on individuals, perhaps he forgot the health-care bill's new 0.9 percentage point increase in the Medicare payroll tax for families making over $250,000 and singles over $200,000. That tax increase takes effect in 2013, as will the application of what will be a 3.8% Medicare surtax (up from 2.9% today) to "unearned income" for the first time. This is a tax hike on investment and interest income, which will reduce the incentive to save and invest.

Mr. Obama also told Mr. O'Reilly that he hasn't moved to the "center" since November's Democratic election defeat, saying "I'm the same guy." Save for a couple of tactical retreats that he couldn't avoid, we agree with him. As the President said recently in the State of the Union, he's going to insist on raising taxes again on people making over $200,000 when his deal with Republicans in Congress expires in 2012. Definitely the same guy.

And then there is this from the Americans For Tax Relief:

ATR says the $1 trillion health care overhaul alone added numerous taxes, including the individual mandate that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance or else pay a fine.

During the legislative debate, Obama and Democrats in Congress argued that a penalty for not carrying insurance is not a tax. But in recent attempts to defend Obamacare as constitutional, the Obama Justice Department has called the penalty a tax.

The health care law’s employer mandate provision also should be considered a tax, ATR said. That provision requires companies to report all business-to-business sales of goods and services exceeding $600 to the Internal Revenue Service. In a bipartisan vote, the Senate recently voted to repeal the so-called 1099 provision, and Obama says he supports the repeal.

The health care law also includes a tax on medical device manufacturers, as well as a higher tax on withdrawals from health savings accounts and a cap on flexible spending accounts.

Other taxes in the health care law cited by ATR include a surtax on investment income, an excise tax on comprehensive health insurance plans, a hike the in the Medicare payroll tax and a tax on indoor tanning services. (See complete list)

On Feb. 4, 2009, Obama signed a federal tobacco tax hike, raising the excise tax 62 cents per pack. Critics, including ATR, said that tax alone violated Obama’s campaign pledge not to raise taxes on couples earning less than $250,000 and on individuals earning less than $200,000.

During Sunday’s interview, Bill O’Reilly asked Obama if he is “a man who wants to redistribute wealth,” as The Wall Street Journal has described him.

The president denied it, again saying, “I didn't raise taxes once; I lowered taxes over the last two years.”

Responding on Monday, ATR said Obama’s claim of being a net-tax-cutter “rests on the temporary tax relief he has signed into law. “That tax increases Obama has signed into law have invariably been permanent. In fact, Obama signed into law $7 in permanent tax hikes for every $1 in permanent tax cuts,” ATR said.

“Over 90 percent of the dollar value of the tax cuts Obama signed into law are only temporary,” said ATR. “100 percent of the tax increases Obama signed into law are, however, permanent … Permanent changes to tax law signed by Obama amount to a net tax hike of $618.7 billion.

Obama is shameless. As Harry Truman once said of Richard Nixon

[He] is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.

I think that could equally be said about Obama today.

Read More...

Summary only...