Plan B Forum

5 Conservative Newspapers That Just Went 'Never Trump'

The papers – from states ranging from New England to the Great Lakes to the desert West – reject Trump as lacking the temperament, judgment and conservative values necessary to be president.

Three of the papers strongly endorsed Hillary Clinton, praising her as "hands-down the most qualified choice," "doing the hard work needed to prepare herself to lead our nation," and alone qualified to "move us beyond rancor and incivility." Two back Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

In their own words, read what made these reflexively Republican newspapers recoil from the 2016 Republican nominee for president.

Paper: New Hampshire Union Leader
History: Backed Every Republican presidential candidate since 1916
Headline: "A better choice for President (No need to hold your nose)"

Choice quote: "[Trump] is a liar, a bully, a buffoon. He denigrates any individual or group that displeases him. He has dishonored military veterans and their families, made fun of the physically frail, and changed political views almost as often as he has changed wives."


Paper: Arizona Republic
History: Backed every Republican presidential candidate since its founding in 1890
Headline: "Hillary Clinton is the only choice to move America ahead"

Choice quote: "The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and he is not qualified .... Trump responds to criticism with the petulance of verbal spit wads .... Trump's inability to control himself ... represents a real threat to our national security .... Trump's long history of objectifying women and his demeaning comments about women during the campaign are not just good-old-boy gaffes. They are evidence of deep character flaws. They are part of a pattern .... Taken together they reveal a candidate who doesn’t grasp our national ideals .... Instead of offering solutions, he hangs scapegoats like piñatas and invites people to take a swing."


Paper: The Dallas Morning News
History: Backed every Republican presidential candidate since 1940
Headline: "We recommend Hillary Clinton for president"

Choice quote: "Trump's values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control."


Paper: Cincinnati Enquirer
History: Backed every Republican presidential candidate since 1916
Headline: "It has to be Hillary Clinton"

Choice quote: "Trump is a clear and present danger to our country .... His wild threats to blow Iranian ships out of the water if they make rude gestures at U.S. ships is just the type of reckless, cowboy diplomacy Americans should fear from a Trump presidency .... Do we really want someone in charge of our military and nuclear codes who has an impulse control problem? .... Trump brands himself as an outsider untainted by special interests, but we see a man utterly corrupted by self-interest. His narcissistic bid for the presidency is more about making himself great than America .... Why should anyone believe that a Trump presidency would look markedly different from his offensive, erratic, stance-shifting presidential campaign?"


Paper: Detroit News
History: Has only endorsed Republican presidential candidates since its founding in 1873
Headline: "Gary Johnson for president"

Choice quote: "Donald Trump is unprincipled, unstable and quite possibly dangerous. He can not be president .... Trump is not a conservative .... Trump has attracted support from too many of those who represent the worst of human nature .... But the most worrisome thing about Trump is that he is willing to stir the populace by stoking their fears of sinister forces at work from within and without to tear down their traditions, values and families ....

"His sort of populism has led to some of history's great tragedies."

USA TODAY's Editorial Board: Trump is 'unfit for the presidency'

In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.

This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.

We’ve been highly critical of the GOP nominee in a number of previous editorials. With early voting already underway in several states and polls showing a close race, now is the time to spell out, in one place, the reasons Trump should not be president:

He is erratic. Trump has been on so many sides of so many issues that attempting to assess his policy positions is like shooting at a moving target. A list prepared by NBC details 124 shifts by Trump on 20 major issues since shortly before he entered the race. He simply spouts slogans and outcomes (he’d replace Obamacare with “something terrific”) without any credible explanations of how he’d achieve them.

He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief. Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements typically range from uninformed to incoherent. It’s not just Democrats who say this. Scores of Republican national security leaders have signed an extraordinary open letter calling Trump’s foreign policy vision “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” In a Wall Street Journal column this month, Robert Gates, the highly respected former Defense secretary who served presidents of both parties over a half-century, described Trump as “beyond repair.”

He traffics in prejudice. From the very beginning, Trump has built his campaign on appeals to bigotry and xenophobia, whipping up resentment against Mexicans, Muslims and migrants. His proposals for mass deportations and religious tests are unworkable and contrary to America’s ideals.

Trump has stirred racist sentiments in ways that can’t be erased by his belated and clumsy outreach to African Americans. His attacks on an Indiana-born federal judge of Mexican heritage fit “the textbook definition of a racist comment,” according to House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking elected official in the Republican Party. And for five years, Trump fanned the absurd “birther” movement that falsely questioned the legitimacy of the nation’s first black president.

His business career is checkered. Trump has built his candidacy on his achievements as a real estate developer and entrepreneur. It’s a shaky scaffold, starting with a 1973 Justice Department suit against Trump and his father for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals. (The Trumps fought the suit but later settled on terms that were viewed as a government victory.) Trump’s companies have had some spectacular financial successes, but this track record is marred by six bankruptcy filings, apparent misuse of the family’s charitable foundation, and allegations by Trump University customers of fraud. A series of investigative articles published by the USA TODAY Network found that Trump has been involved in thousands of lawsuits over the past three decades, including at least 60 that involved small businesses and contract employees who said they were stiffed. So much for being a champion of the little guy.

He isn’t leveling with the American people. Is Trump as rich as he says? No one knows, in part because, alone among major party presidential candidates for the past four decades, he refuses to release his tax returns. Nor do we know whether he has paid his fair share of taxes, or the extent of his foreign financial entanglements.

He speaks recklessly. In the days after the Republican convention, Trump invited Russian hackers to interfere with an American election by releasing Hillary Clinton’s emails, and he raised the prospect of “Second Amendment people” preventing the Democratic nominee from appointing liberal justices. It’s hard to imagine two more irresponsible statements from one presidential candidate.

He has coarsened the national dialogue. Did you ever imagine that a presidential candidate would discuss the size of his genitalia during a nationally televised Republican debate? Neither did we. Did you ever imagine a presidential candidate, one who avoided service in the military, would criticize Gold Star parents who lost a son in Iraq? Neither did we. Did you ever imagine you’d see a presidential candidate mock a disabled reporter? Neither did we. Trump’s inability or unwillingness to ignore criticism raises the specter of a president who, like Richard Nixon, would create enemies’ lists and be consumed with getting even with his critics.

He’s a serial liar. Although polls show that Clinton is considered less honest and trustworthy than Trump, it’s not even a close contest. Trump is in a league of his own when it comes to the quality and quantity of his misstatements. When confronted with a falsehood, such as his assertion that he was always against the Iraq War, Trump’s reaction is to use the Big Lie technique of repeating it so often that people begin to believe it.

We are not unmindful of the issues that Trump’s campaign has exploited: the disappearance of working-class jobs; excessive political correctness; the direction of the Supreme Court; urban unrest and street violence; the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group; gridlock in Washington and the influence of moneyed interests. All are legitimate sources of concern.

Nor does this editorial represent unqualified support for Hillary Clinton, who has her own flaws (though hers are far less likely to threaten national security or lead to a constitutional crisis). The Editorial Board does not have a consensus for a Clinton endorsement.

Some of us look at her command of the issues, resilience and long record of public service — as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State — and believe she’d serve the nation ably as its president.

Other board members have serious reservations about Clinton’s sense of entitlement, her lack of candor and her extreme carelessness in handling classified information.

Where does that leave us? Our bottom-line advice for voters is this: Stay true to your convictions. That might mean a vote for Clinton, the most plausible alternative to keep Trump out of the White House. Or it might mean a third-party candidate. Or a write-in. Or a focus on down-ballot candidates who will serve the nation honestly, try to heal its divisions, and work to solve its problems.

Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump.

‘What Is Aleppo?’ Guy Has 6 More Newspaper Endorsements Than Donald Trump

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson may be better known for his head-scratching gaffes than his policies but he’s still scoring more major newspaper endorsements than Donald Trump.

Yep, you read that right. The guy who can’t name a single world leader — dead or alive — has endorsements from six daily newspapers as of Friday. Ironically, that’s still six more than Trump, who has so far racked up zero endorsements. By the way, that’s a record for a major-party presidential candidate… though not the kind politicians usually aim for.

On Friday, Johnson scored the endorsement of the Chicago Tribune, whose editorial board called the former New Mexico governor “agile, practical and, unlike the major-party candidates, experienced at managing governments.”

The paper called Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton “undeniably capable,” but wasn’t feeling her “intent to greatly increase federal spending and taxation, and serious questions about honesty and trust.”

Trump, was “not fit to be president,” a recurring theme from big papers these days.

Johnson so far clinched the support of The Detroit News, the New Hampshire Union Leader, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Winston-Salem Journal, and The Caledonian-Record from northern Vermont and New Hampshire.

Trump, on the other hand, has yet to land a single general election newspaper endorsement. On Thursday, USA Today broke from its 34-year tradition of not endorsing candidates just so they could not endorse Trump.

Meanwhile, Clinton has been endorsed by dozens of papers, including The New York Times, and even conservative papers like The Dallas Morning News, the Arizona Republic and the Cincinnati Enquirer that broke decades-long streaks of supporting Republicans.

But hey, Trump still has 39 days… oodles of time.

Former Va. Sen. John Warner slams Trump during Clinton endorsement

By Burgess Everett and Cristiano Lima

09/27/16 10:22 PM EDT

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former Republican Sen. John Warner endorsed Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, calling her “prepared to be a world leader and the United States president.”

The longtime Virginia senator cast the choice between Clinton and Donald Trump as a dire one for world security, saying he felt “distressed by some of the comments” made by Trump, though he did not speak Trump’s name until the end of his speech, when he said: “Loose lips sink ships. You got that Trump?”

“There comes a time when I have to stand up and assert my own views,” Warner said here. “If there’s one thing about candidate Clinton that you’ve got to understand, she throughout her whole life has been prepared, done her homework and studied.”

In particular, Warner was alarmed by Trump’s criticism of the military, declaring it is not the “rubble” that Trump has portrayed it as and calling that criticism “ridiculous.” Trump has said the state of the military is a “disaster.”

“We have today the strongest military in the world. No one can compare with us,” Warner said. “No one should have the audacity to stand up and degrade the purple heart … or talk about the military being in a state of disaster. That’s wrong.”

Warner also reminisced on serving on the Armed Services Committee with a “well-prepared” Clinton whose attendance was exemplary. His assessment of Trump was far less glowing.

“You don’t pull up a quick text, like ‘National Security for Dummies,’” Warner said. “That book hasn’t been published.”

The retired five-term senator is opting to back Clinton over his own party’s nominee as a signal to voters in the swing state of Virginia of who he believes would be best suited to be commander in chief. It’s the second straight cycle Warner has bucked his party: In 2014, he endorsed Democratic Sen. Mark Warner over Republican challenger Ed Gillespie.

Spokespeople for Trump did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Clinton reveled in the endorsement.

“For 30 years, Virginians trusted John Warner in the Senate, and for good reason: He has dedicated his life to defending our country, from serving in the Navy in World War II to chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee, where I had the honor of working with him to support our men and women in uniform and their families. I am proud to have John’s support, and to know that someone with his decades of experience would trust me with the weighty responsibility of being Commander in Chief,” Clinton said.

The endorsement was rolled out here on Wednesday morning alongside Clinton running mate and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Warner was a 30-year member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and his endorsement marks another high-profile national security voice to back Clinton. It’s the first Democratic presidential candidate Warner has endorsed.

In introducing Warner, Kaine called him a “proud” Republican that was willing to cross party lines in order to put “country first, especially on matters of national security.”

“That he could be my friend as a Democratic senator willing to offer me advice is just remarkable,” Kaine said. “John Warner is the example of how [politics] can be done and how it should be done.”

Virginia, a key battleground state in the general election, has seen the race tighten in recent months, with Clinton’s 9-point advantage over Trump last month shrinking to 6 points in a recent Quinnipiac poll, 45 percent to 39 percent. But Kaine’s position on the ticket has helped keep the state from drifting further away from Clinton, and Warner’s support should help it further.

“He is someone who has always put country above politics,” said Mark Warner, who lost a Senate race to John Warner in 1996.

Warner framed Kaine as a similar aisle-crossing politician, citing his push against the advice of Democratic leadership to try and force a debate over a congressional war declaration: “He has been the one who said if he are going to send our men and women into combat, we need need to do our job.”

Warner, 89, was the second-longest serving senator in Virginia history; he was succeeded in 2009 by Mark Warner. He was also secretary of the Navy during the Nixon administration.

he knows that the Benghazi, Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster and e-mail "scandals" were all made up bullshit.

Against Donald Trump

In October of 1860, James Russell Lowell, the founding editor of The Atlantic, warned in these pages about the perishability of the great American democratic experiment if citizens (at the time, white, male citizens) were to cease taking seriously their franchise:

In a society like ours, where every man may transmute his private thought into history and destiny by dropping it into the ballot-box, a peculiar responsibility rests upon the individual … For, though during its term of office the government be practically as independent of the popular will as that of Russia, yet every fourth year the people are called upon to pronounce upon the conduct of their affairs. Theoretically, at least, to give democracy any standing-ground for an argument with despotism or oligarchy, a majority of the men composing it should be statesmen and thinkers.

One of the animating causes of this magazine at its founding, in 1857, was the abolition of slavery, and Lowell argued that the Republican Party, and the man who was its standard-bearer in 1860, represented the only reasonable pathway out of the existential crisis then facing the country. In his endorsement of Abraham Lincoln for president, Lowell wrote, on behalf of the magazine, “It is in a moral aversion to slavery as a great wrong that the chief strength of the Republican party lies.” He went on to declare that Abraham Lincoln “had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician.”

Perhaps because no subsequent candidate for the presidency was seen as Lincoln’s match, or perhaps because the stakes in ensuing elections were judged to be not quite so high as they were in 1860, it would be 104 years before The Atlantic would again make a presidential endorsement. In October of 1964, Edward Weeks, writing on behalf of the magazine, cited Lowell’s words before making an argument for the election of Lyndon B. Johnson. “We admire the President for the continuity with which he has maintained our foreign policy, a policy which became a worldwide responsibility at the time of the Marshall Plan,” the endorsement read. Johnson, The Atlantic believed, would bring “to the vexed problem of civil rights a power of conciliation which will prevent us from stumbling down the road taken by South Africa.”

But The Atlantic’s endorsement of Johnson was focused less on his positive attributes than on the flaws of his opponent, Barry Goldwater, the junior senator from Arizona. Of Goldwater, Weeks wrote, “His proposal to let field commanders have their choice of the smaller nuclear weapons would rupture a fundamental belief that has existed from Abraham Lincoln to today: the belief that in times of crisis the civilian authority must have control over the military.” And the magazine noted that Goldwater’s “preference to let states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia enforce civil rights within their own borders has attracted the allegiance of Governor George Wallace, the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birchers.” Goldwater’s limited capacity for prudence and reasonableness was what particularly worried The Atlantic.

We think it unfortunate that Barry Goldwater takes criticism as a personal affront; we think it poisonous when his anger betrays him into denouncing what he calls the “radical” press by bracketing the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Izvestia. There speaks not the reason of the Southwest but the voice of Joseph McCarthy. We do not impugn Senator Goldwater’s honesty. We sincerely distrust his factionalism and his capacity for judgment.

Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic’s editors found themselves in 1964. We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.[they really didn't need the words "might be"..."is unquestionably" would have been more accurate]

These concerns compel us, for the third time since the magazine’s founding, to endorse a candidate for president. Hillary Rodham Clinton has more than earned, through her service to the country as first lady, as a senator from New York, and as secretary of state, the right to be taken seriously as a White House contender. She has flaws (some legitimately troubling, some exaggerated by her opponents), but she is among the most prepared candidates ever to seek the presidency. We are confident that she understands the role of the United States in the world; we have no doubt that she will apply herself assiduously to the problems confronting this country; and she has demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and hard work.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.

This judgment is not limited to the editors of The Atlantic. A large number—in fact, a number unparalleled since Goldwater’s 1964 campaign—of prominent policy makers and officeholders from the candidate’s own party have publicly renounced him. Trump disqualified himself from public service long before he declared his presidential candidacy. In one of the more sordid episodes in modern American politics, Trump made himself the face of the so-called birther movement, which had as its immediate goal the demonization of the country’s first African American president. Trump’s larger goal, it seemed, was to stoke fear among white Americans of dark-skinned foreigners. He succeeded wildly in this; the fear he has aroused has brought him one step away from the presidency.

Our endorsement of Clinton, and rejection of Trump, is not a blanket dismissal of the many Trump supporters who are motivated by legitimate anxieties about their future and their place in the American economy. But Trump has seized on these anxieties and inflamed and racialized them, without proposing realistic policies to address them.

In its founding statement, The Atlantic promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and our interest here is not to advance the prospects of the Democratic Party, nor to damage those of the Republican Party.

If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement.

We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.

I would seriously argue that the way Sec of State Hillary handled classified material WAS NOT outside Department or Administration policy.

Lord Jim wrote:Now the State Department IG joins the Intelligence Community IG, a federal judge, and the FBI in the Republican obsession over nothing:

State Department report slams Clinton email use

(CNN)A State Department Inspector General report said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to follow the rules or inform key department staff regarding her use of a private email server, according to a copy of the report obtained by CNN on Wednesday.

The report, which was provided to lawmakers, states, "At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act."

The report examined record keeping laws, policies and practices at the State Department from 1997 to present.

In producing the report, the Inspector General's office interviewed former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice.

Clinton and several of her staff members during her tenure declined to be interviewed, the report said.
The report draws attention to two staff members in the Office of Information Resources Management, who back in 2010 "discussed their concerns about Secretary Clinton's use of a personal email account in separate meetings with the then-Director" of their office.

The report says, "According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary's personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further." The same director reportedly "instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary's personal email system again."

But the report notes that interviews with officials from the Under Secretary for Management and the Office of the Legal Adviser found "no knowledge of approval or review by other Department staff" of the server.

Clinton has long maintained that she had permission to use personal email.

She told CNN's Brianna Keilar in July that "the truth is everything I did was permitted and I went above and beyond what anybody could have expected in making sure that if the State Department didn't capture something, I made a real effort to get it to them."

But the report says that the Inspector General's office "found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server."

In a statement following the report's release, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, wrote that "While political opponents of Hillary Clinton are sure to misrepresent this report for their own partisan purposes, in reality, the Inspector General documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other Secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email."

But while the report acknowledges personal email use by previous secretaries, it also notes that the rules for preserving work emails sent from a personal email account were updated in 2009, the year Clinton took office.

More here:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/25/politics/ ... email-use/

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did break her department’s rules by setting up her own secret email server, the inspector general concluded in a report sent to Congress on Wednesday that says she failed to report hacking attempts and waved off warnings that she should switch to a more official email account.

Inspector General Steve Linick, appointed by President Obama, said he couldn’t find any evidence that Mrs. Clinton received approval for her odd email arrangement, and when lower-level staffers pressed the issue, saying she was skirting open-records laws, they were ordered “never to speak of the secretary’s personal email system again.”

In one instance in 2011, Mrs. Clinton’s tech guru thought the server was being hacked and shut it down for a few minutes. Months later, Mrs. Clinton feared yet another hack attack was underway — yet never reported the incident to the department, in another breach of department rules.

Mrs. Clinton refused to cooperate with the probe, as did a number of her top aides from her time at the department, leaving investigators with a number of questions they weren’t able to nail down.

Her predecessors as secretary of state — Madeleine K. Albright, Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice — did speak with investigators.

Mr. Powell, in particular, did use personal email for government business, and his records were not properly stored by the State Department, the investigation found. Democrats seized on that information to say it proved Mrs. Clinton was not blazing a trail of illegal behavior, but rather following the lead of her predecessors.

The inspector general, however, rejected that explanation, noting that at the time email was new, policies were “very fluid” and the department wasn’t aware of cybersecurity risks in the early part of the Bush administration. By the time Mrs. Clinton took office in 2009, those policies had been firmed up — and they preached exactly against Mrs. Clinton’s practice.

“Beginning in late 2005 and continuing through 2011, the Department revised the [manual] and issued various memoranda specifically discussing the obligation to use Department systems in most circumstances and identifying the risks of not doing so. Secretary Clinton’s cybersecurity practices accordingly must be evaluated in light of these more comprehensive directives,” the inspector general wrote.

In the two years since the breach, Mrs. Clinton has turned over some 30,000 messages from her server that she said constituted government business. She withheld another 30,000 that she said were purely personal.

The inspector general said returning some of the messages in December 2014 — nearly two years after she left office — “mitigated” her behavior. But investigators said there are still troubling gaps in what she produced.

One email exchange mentioned in the report, which Mrs. Clinton did not turn over in her 30,000 messages, seemed to indicate that she intended for her system to hide communications from the public.

In the 2010 exchange, top personal aide Huma Abedin suggested that it was time to look into getting an official state.gov email address because Mrs. Clinton’s messages from her clintonemail.com account were landing in staffers’ spam folders.

Alternatively, Ms. Abedin said, Mrs. Clinton could release her secret address to the department so she could be designated as a verified account, keeping her messages out of spam folders.

Mrs. Clinton refused, saying she didn’t “want any risk of the personal being accessible.” [I think this is particularly damaging. It shows her primary concern being herself rather than her official responsibilities] being The inspector general at that point in the report notes that Mrs. Clinton refused to cooperate, and Ms. Abedin did not respond to a request to be interviewed.

More here:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... te/?page=2

How many times did Hillary repeat the now proven false claim that her email set up was allowed by the State Department? I've lost count...

ETA:

And this should be the final nail in the coffin for the bogus argument that what Hillary did was no different from previous Secretaries of State, (though the spuriousness of the comparison was already obvious based on the vast difference in volume, and the use of a private server) because the report makes clear that the rules at the time Clinton became SOS were more stringent than the rules the others had operated under. (Precisely because of growing security concerns.)

Trump is spectacularly unfit for office as dogcatcher

The idea that maybe God will kill the Republican presidential candidate is one of the most tortured rationalizations one will ever hear for casting a vote for Trump.

• AEA – Actors' Equity Association, representing 44k
  AFA - Association of Flight Attendants,* representing 42k
  AFGE – American Federation of Government Employees, representing 302k
  AFL-CIO – American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, representing 12.7m
  AFSCME – American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, representing 1.3m
  AFT – American Federation of Teachers, representing 1.6m
  AWIU – International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers, representing 30k
  BAC – International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, representing 76k
  BCTGM – Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union, representing 74k
  CWA – Communications Workers of America, representing 475k
  GMPIU – Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers International Union,* representing 28k
  IAM – International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, representing 570k
  IATSE – International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, representing 125k
  IBEW – International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, representing 725k
  IBT – International Brotherhood of Teamsters,* representing 1.3m
  IFPTE – International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, representing 80k
  ILA – International Longshoremen's Association, representing 65k
  IUOE – International Union of Operating Engineers, representing 375k
  IUPAT – International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, representing 104k
  IW – International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers, representing 124k
  LIUNA – Laborers' International Union of North America, representing 558k
  NABTU – North America's Building Trades
  NALC – National Association of Letter Carriers,* representing 277k
  NEA – National Education Association, representing 3m
  NTEU – National Treasury Employees Union, representing 83k
  OPCMIA – Operative Plasterers' and Cement Masons' International Association, representing 39k
  OPEIU – Office and Professional Employees International Union, representing 102k
  PASNAP – Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, representing 5k
  SEIU – Service Employees International Union, representing 1.9m
  SIU – Seafarers International Union of North America, representing 35k
  SMART – International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, representing 150k
  TWU – Transport Workers Union of America, representing 116k
  UA – United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing, Pipefitting and Sprinkler Fitting Industry of the U.S. and Canada, representing 330k
  UAW – United Automobile Workers, representing 990k
  UBC – The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, representing 520k
  UFCW – United Food and Commercial Workers Union, representing 1.3m
  UFW – United Farm Workers, representing 10k
  UNITE HERE, representing 264k
  USW – United Steelworkers,* representing 860k
  UURWAW – United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers, representing 22k
  UWUA – Utility Workers Union of America,* representing 50k

• MajGenl.Meade wrote:Well, the pinko unions always vote Democrat - it's a reflex. Big deal. No surprise. As soon as the mob got the vote, they realized they could vote themselves money. And hey presto!

Lord Jim wrote:Frankly it makes sense that those unions would support him, not because of his policies, but because he's promising to throw so much more money their way by adding a lot more personnel, and thus expand their membership and increasing their dues income....