From time to time, we offer guest editorials, especially when they are well written and on current events. Both Leo and Cole have done a fantastic job of gathering their thoughts and putting pen to paper. Here is Cole’s rebuttal to Leo’s article published last Wed. We’ve linked Leo’s article in the first paragraph.
Guest editorial by Cole R.
The author asks “Isn’t justice supposed to be blind?” Actually, most of the time justice is blind. But only when dealing with facts and evidence.
In his essay, the author claims that an unnamed political figure violated an unspecified law, thereby committing an unspecified crime for which he cites no evidence. Justice, blind or otherwise, cannot be based on such a paper-thin premise.
He further claims that his suspect has avoided punishment for the unspecified crime due to the failure of a judicial system swayed by improper political influence. The fact that no charges against his suspect have been filed or prosecuted does not seem to be relevant to his calculus.
He cites the case of an unnamed military man who committed the supposed identical crime and was duly punished because he had no political influence, offering this up as his evidence of a misguided and biased judicial system.
What happens when all of these claims are fleshed out with fact?
For reasons known only to himself, the author has refrained from naming either the political figure or the military man he is referring to. Let us be specific: he is referring to Hillary Clinton and General David Petraeus (Ret.), respectively.
His accusations refer to supposedly classified emails which were reputed to be illegally maintained on a private email server, illegally disseminated, and illegally erased by Mrs. Clinton. Let us adorn these allegations with a few facts.
In March of 2015, in an attempt to upgrade its records management, the State Department reached out to all living ex-Secretaries of State for copies of “any records they had”. Mrs. Clinton was the only one to respond, providing 55,000 pages of documents (30,000 of which were emails) within days of the request. These documents spanned the entirety of her tenure at the State Department. Interestingly, Colin Powell, who also had a private email account during his term with George Bush, provided none. When pressed, Powell stated that he had deleted them all. 
The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) and his staff scrutinized a sampling of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and informed certain congressional committees that two emails contained top secret intelligence, however none of the emails “were marked classified when they were sent.” Nor were any emails stripped of their classification markings. [Washington Post 7/24/15]
In his referral to the Justice Department, the Inspector General stated that the referral was not criminal and Mrs. Clinton was not being targeted. [Reuters 7/24/15] [Washington Post 8/11/15]
Mrs. Clinton had legal authority to delete any emails which she deemed were not government records without supervision. Indeed, the National Archive Administration and State Department officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise their judgment in determining what constitutes a government record.
As to any equivalence between the cases of Clinton and Petraeus, there is none. The author claims that Petraeus was “found guilty” of breaking federal laws and was heavily fined. In fact, Petraeus pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of mishandling classified materials, thereby avoiding a trial and probable prison sentence. Mrs. Clinton has not been charged with any crime nor any conspiracy to commit a crime. However, in at least six places in his essay, the author claims she has violated laws and committed “wrongdoings”. Yet he later states that “maybe it will be determined that a law has been broken”, and thereby not only contradicts himself, but offers up his first actual fact: no crime has yet been committed.
Justice can be blind when judgment is not clouded by false accusation, misinformation, and innuendo.
Props for featuring an argument from the other side so prominently.
I admit I haven’t commented much about this particular scandal, nor have I bothered to research much into it, so I don’t know who is right here. I do think there have been a lot of fake scandals that have been made up to hurt Clinton. I also don’t find her particularly trustworthy, and if she’s the democratic nominee I’ll probably write in Leslie Knope for president.
Rhetorical question: Despite their resumes, who is the person who refuses to name names?
Off Topic :
Required reading : Black Rednecks and White Liberals http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1594031436/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443229644&sr=1-1&keywords=Black+Rednecks+and+White+Liberals
Well said. Sad the only response was name calling so far.
Reach deep into the darkest recesses of your memories — way back in the distant past of August 8. A film called Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was in the theaters, there was a war going on in Syria, and Donald Trump was making rude comments about reporters and Republicans.
Back in that sepia-toned era, Hillary Clinton issued a sworn declaration that she had turned over all her work-related emails to the State Department. Yes, she might have wiped her server free of Groupons from Chipotle and Bikram Yoga, but under threat of perjury she promised to have been completely forthcoming in her official communications.
Yeah, about that:
State Department officials have received new official emails sent to and from Hillary Clinton that the former secretary of state never released.
The email exchange involves a 2009 conversation with Gen. David Petraeus, who was then head of U.S. Central Command, according to a report Friday by the Associated Press.
The conversation began before Clinton became secretary of state, but continued into the beginning of her tenure. The State Department has already admitted, thanks to documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, that it does not have emails from the first weeks of her tenure…
A State official declined to comment on how the Pentagon obtained the document.
I bet the Obama administration is glad they don’t have a duplicitous executive like Hillary Clinton besmirching the fine name of the US State Department anymore. Now that she’s been gone for several years, the agency can get back to the ethical and transparent professionalism that is its trademark.
Oh, bother:
The State Department has said over and over again that it turned over all of Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails to the committee investigating the 2012 attack.
Turns out, that wasn’t quite the case. Foggy Bottom mistakenly failed to produce a “small number” of those emails, a senior State Department official told The Daily Beast.
“Following our second review of former Secretary Clinton’s emails… the Department is producing a small number of emails relating to Benghazi,” the official said. The official could not say precisely how many Benghazi-related Clinton emails the State Department missed in its original review, but characterized it as a “handful.”
The good news: it’s only a “handful” of emails.
The bad news: State defines a “handful” as 925 emails.
I know that she’s an ex-Senator, former First Lady, and the expected Democratic candidate. But isn’t it about time she was charged with perjury — at the very least?
Tina I’m sorry for any confusion, but Jon G. didn’t drop by, I grabbed his post from the net after Pie put up the link. I put it in because it fit so perfectly with this subject.
I didn’t mean to mislead, I was reprinting a very good blog post Jon Gabriel wrote…thats all. My appoligies and I hope this clears it up?
No worries Jack, I guess I missed Pie’s comment and link or I would have put it together myself.
I guess it’s safe to say Jon G would be welcomed if he dropped by 😉
I posted that link here? Is this this is evidence that Jack follows me on Twitter? If yes, you are in good company, Ann Coulter also follows me. So does Jon Gabriel 😀
At the very least a charge of perjury works for me, but will it ever happen?
Cole you’ve done a nice job of clearing up the language used to describe accusations of legal problems Hillary Clinton could potential face. We always seek clarity so, thank you.
There is a growing file of evidence to suggest a grand jury should look at the possibility that Secretary Clinton broke our laws in what’s commonly called “the email scandal.”
Mark Levin (video)
National Review:
(Side note: Classified information is never marked “classified;” it is marked with “secret” designations, i.e., Top Secret. Hillary has used this word to make the claim she did nothing wrong. She’s a lawyer; she knows she’s obfuscating.)
Legal expert and judge Andrew Napolitano, writing at TownHall expounds on Clinton’s legal situation:
Just because someone has not been charged with a crime doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence to suggest she might be. This period is about investigation and collecting evidence.
Napolitano also had questions for Obama:
Legal Insurection reports that the FBI probe was expanded to include Hillary’s aids who also used her private server:
Breitbart:
There’s plenty of “there” there to suggest the necessity of a grand jury investigation.
What I got from Leo’s article was that he was just laying out a formula which could (and should) apply to anyone. He strongly implied that it ought to apply to Mrs. Clinton. I got it. I knew he was talking about Mrs. C., but without stating so, he was placing his emphasis solely on the methodology that should apply to all persons with a top secret clearance. That’s fair.
Leo is right when he said its been “past practice” to immediately take punitive action against anyone who violates the terms and conditions of their TS clearance. But, not with Mrs. C.
How Mrs. C thought she could have a private email server for government emails is beyond me, because that part was idiotic for anyone in her position. But, fortunately for her being an idiot is not illegal, otherwise she would be doing life without parole.
Let me make this clear: When national security is at risk, any violation of a TS clearance is dealt with in the most expeditious manner and in her case it wasn’t. So, we wonder whats up?
This may be very hard for the average person to comprehend, especially one without military experience in this area or one who has never held a TS.
However, for those of us that have this experience, we know the rules and have witnessed how TS violations have been treated in the past.
In our eyes, she has lied under oath before Congress, she has made false statements to investigators and this is in addition to the TS violations and so far not one charge has been filed? Not one??? Un-be-lievable!
Please don’t tell me that she has not been found guilty of anything. That is a red herring argument. I can cite many cases where an arrest or an indictment followed immediately for less serious cases than hers.
We do not need a guilty verdict to know wrong when we see it or said in legal terms, to have “probably cause” to believe she committed a crime. We can see what she did – its sooooooo obvious! We watched her make blatantly false statements about her server and lost emails and what she knew when she knew it. The evidence is in FBI hands.
This is why Leo and people like myself wonder why it’s taking so long to charge Mrs. C? We wonder if she is ABOVE the law or if there is a hidden agenda here (like politics)? That’s all I’m saying and if I read Leo right, that’s all he is saying too.
Anyone who is a true believer in Mrs. Clinton’s credibility is likely to dismiss everything I just said, but for the rest of you, I rest my case!
Well said, Jack!
This is interesting…
“The State Department has upgraded information in nearly 200 Clinton emails to “confidential,” the lowest classification category.
However, some analysis has indicated that the information was classified by definition when it was created. Many of the now-classified emails discuss events that were specific to a particular point in time, making it hard to believe that the discussion would be classified now, years later, rather than when generated.
Clinton has revised her defense of her email practices by claiming that the “top secret” emails she received did not have information that was “marked” as such at the time. But many former intelligence community have criticized that defense, saying that a person of Clinton’s high diplomatic position should recognize highly sensitive information with or without markings.
Clinton’s campaign and that State Department dismissed the second panel’s conclusion.
“Our hope remains that these releases continue without being hampered by bureaucratic infighting among the intelligence community, and that the releases continue to be as inclusive and transparent as possible,” Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill told The Times.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/08/special-review-confirms-hillary-clintons-email-had-top-secret-information/#ixzz3molZXa8g
Cole R. ends his silly rhetoric by saying, no crime has yet been committed. He is either a very foolish person or a defense attorney. A crime has been committed from the moment of the act, regardless of whether there is later an indictment or a court conviction. This kind of legalese nonsense is an outgrowth of the “innocent until proven guilty” pc crap that has been foisted upon our nation by crusading defense attorneys and foolish teachers. In fact, a person is either guilty or innocent from the time when he either does or does not commit the act. I worked with lawyers for 24 years, and I often heard that legal axiom, which I sometimes challenged, and this was coming from prosecutors, not defense attorneys. When I said it was not true, they often said it’s in the Constitution, so I challenged that too. Unlike most lawyers, I had actually read the Constitution, and that phrase does not appear anywhere. It is also not in federal or state law. Where it actually comes from is the judge’s instructions to the jury in a criminal trial. In other words, it only applies to those 12 jurors who must suspend their disbelief and only for the duration of the case. It does not apply to the audience, reporters, or hundreds of millions of regular people in the world, who are allowed to have and state any opinion they want. After one challenge with the wager of lunch, the attorney did her research then later admitted I was right. Too bad I do not eat lunch. Another time, I asked an attorney if he was willing to go on tv and tell the world that Harris and Kleebold, the two guys who murdered (not just allegedly but really killed) all those kids at the school in Colorado, were actually innocent, were innocent, are innocent, and forever would be innocent, since they were never convicted in a court of law. He did not take that challenge.
Fantastic points Soaps.
I’ve never noticed that anyone outside the left wing power structure is considered “innocent until proven guilty.” In fact they are accused, tried, and convicted in the public eye without an investigation or formal trial quite often.
Soaps knocks it out of the park again. Hehehehehe…
Soaps is is one of the reasons I so love Post Scripts.
Pie, Soaps is absolutely brilliant isn’t he? He cuts right to it every time! Soaps does not tolerate fools and liberals very well, but then I repeat myself.
A bit off-topic, but certainly interesting and related to the above article:
http://nypost.com/2015/09/26/hillary-enlisted-steven-spielberg-to-make-her-more-likeable/
$hilLIARy’s declining poll numbers are all of her own making . . . .