By the standards implied in Comey's "extremely careless" characterization, few if any actual human beings -- and certainly not anyone in a position as fast-paced and complex as Secretary of State -- would pass muster. Twenty-two problemmatic emails out of more than 60,000? That comes to something like 99.9% pure. And some of those -- we don't know how many yet -- touched on things that everybody already knew about (like the drone program). Even in Caesar's wife terms, this is a nothingburger.
Bottom line: The uttering of the words "extremely careless" does some political damage, but given her opponent, not much. And there was no crime. Nothing close.
Update: Predictable bile from a long-time CDSer.
Update 2: So the "very small number" of emails actually marked classified was two, and those were erroneously marked. The others -- the famous 110 out of 30,000 -- contained things that the FBI believes "any reasonable person" should have known were classified, but were not marked as such. And how would one know in advance that that was the case -- without opening the email? And is it really the case that "any reasonable person" would regard them as top secret? We can't know until/unless we know what they were, and perhaps we never will.
Meanwhile, the key point is one that has been completely glossed over. Hillary was sharing information with people who were cleared to receive it, and vice-versa.
Update 3: Precisely. Can't wait to hear his testimony today, not in response to the GOP hacks, but to the Dems. One hopes some will grill him on "extremely careless," his egomanical abuse of power.
Update 4: Well, the Dems didn't hold Comey's feet to the fire. Too bad. But the story continues to move in the right direction.
Update 5: The always sensible Kevin Drum weighs in, sensibly.
Update 6: And, of course, the obsessive Dowd creature weighs in, obsessively. I knew Comey's use of "careless" would lead to her citing Tom and Daisy. Only she's no Nick. More like Underground Man.
Update 7: Media Matters and Norm Ornstein on the Dowd creature.
2 comments:
The oddest things can have legs -- fish, luggage, sailing competitions -- but I don't see how this can have, not after both Trey Gowdy and James Comey explain how much effort they put into finding a there there, but couldn't. And especially on the same day that Donald Trump was praising Saddam Hussein's approach to terrorism. Probably his management of train schedules, too.
I'm pretty confident this won't have much "news" value past the conventions, and certainly won't change anyone's mind one way or the other. If SuperPACs, or whoever, take up Patrick Healy's campaign consulting advice, it will just be heard as another partisan attack. And given that there were really only 3 possible outcomes to this -- a recommendation to indict, a complete exoneration of the email set-up as well as intent, or the tongue-lashing that occurred -- this is the best. Anything less would have only been more oxygen to flame conspiracy fires and anything more would have been a much bigger headache to manage. At least, that's how I'm hoping it turns out.
From your fingers to God's ears.
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