pool for hillary s withdrawal date....

[Big RR]

Jim--to be fair, classified information is marked for a reason, that reason being that it needs to be given special care in handling and disclosure. Often classified and unclassified documents look pretty much alike, and the classified ones could not easily be distinguished from the nonclassified ones without the legend. This seems to me to be more Hillary relying in her spin doctors in deciding what to say, and she comes across like a jerk (Gore did a lot of the same things).

If it's against policy to receive any official communications whatsoever in your personal email, then I agree she committed a major breach of that procedure; if it is not, I do not think it inappropriate for her to rely on the marking for the status.

Now as for the erasing, I often go the extra mile to make sure my files are purged just because I don't want them accessible to anyone (not that I think anyone would want to read/look at them); if I were a publicly recognizable person, I might well seek to make sure my files were cleansed. One need only look at the number of actresses who had nude photos leaked to the media to show that the files are not private if they can be retrieved. I don't relish the thought of someone pawing through my trash to see what they could embarrass me with, and if I were in the public eye I'd like it even less. So the cleansing does not surprise me, although it raises some questions since this was apparently done when the questioned were raised and it was possible/likely that they were material to an official investigation. even if nothing is incriminating, as an attorney she should know that is something you don't do.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Please calm us all - there's no nude photos of Hilary are there?

[Econoline]

I don't relish the thought of someone pawing through my trash to see what they could embarrass me with, and if I were in the public eye I'd like it even less.

Exactly. Does anyone doubt that no matter how personal and unofficial the email, there would have been someone (probably a whole lot of Republican someones)digging for something, anything that could somehow be spun as "embarrassing" to Hillary?

Please calm us all - there's no nude photos of Hilary are there?

Possibly even worse: nude photos of Bill.

[Lord Jim]

nude photos of Bill.

Nah, he probably tweets those...

[rubato]

The email 'scandal' and the benghazi scandal are the same; The republicans have nothing and they're working it as hard as they can.




yrs,
rubato

[wesw]

[Lord Jim]

The email 'scandal' and the benghazi scandal are the same; The republicans have nothing and they're working it as hard as they can.




yrs,
rubato

And how fiendishly cunning of us to manage to enlist the Intelligence Community Inspector General and the FBI in our cause...

[Gob]

And how fiendishly cunning of us to manage to enlist the Intelligence Community Inspector General the FBI and Hillary Clinton in our cause...

FTFY

[wesw]

[Lord Jim]

And the bad news just keeps on comin':

Poll: Clinton losing ground to Sanders

Hillary Clinton’s advantage against Bernie Sanders among Democratic voters continues to evaporate, according to the latest CNN/ORC national poll released Wednesday morning. And in a general election matchup with Donald Trump, who has led GOP polling for the last month, Clinton leads by just six points.

Among 358 registered voters who identified as Democrats or leaning Democratic, 47 percent said they would vote for Clinton in a primary, while Sanders picked up 29 percent. Vice President Joe Biden, who has not made his intentions known about a run, grabbed 14 percent. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley received 2 percent, and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb earned 1 percent.

In the same poll last month, Clinton picked up 56 percent to Sanders’ 19 percent, another indication that the “drip, drip, drip” of the email scandal is taking a toll on her presidential campaign.


Regardless of whom they are voting for, Democrats and leaners think Clinton would best handle issues related to the economy (45 percent to Sanders’ 26 percent), race (50 percent to 26 percent), foreign policy (61 percent to 22 percent), and the income gap (41 percent to 34 percent).

Among registered voters, 53 percent think Biden should get in, while 45 percent said he should stay out of the race.

In a hypothetical general-election matchup with Trump, Clinton holds a 51 percent to 45 percent advantage, down from last month when voters picked her 56 percent to 40 percent. She maintained her lead over potential GOP challengers Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Carly Fiorina, according to the results.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/p ... z3jGGLhqbP

So now Sanders' strong showings in the early primary state polls are starting to be reflected in the national numbers....

Four months ago, I would have rated the chance that Biden would get into the race at next to zero...

Now I'll be very surprised if he doesn't...

Hillary's being squeezed by a double whammy...

The self inflicted credibility wounds, coupled with a virulently anti-political establishment mood among a large section of the electorate, (Republican, Democrat, and Independent) that Trump and Sanders have tapped in to...

[Big RR]

Jim--don't you think it will be hard for Joe to say he's not part of the "Political establishment" when he has been part of it for years? Granted, he has been pretty invisible as VP, but his entire pedigree is part of the establishment.

[TPFKA@W]

[MajGenl.Meade]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek

[TPFKA@W]

NBC news just reported that a poll indicates that 53% of Dems want Biden to run against HRC. Very interesting.

[RayThom]

... Joe!

Once again, I want to hear Hillary repeat her famous 2007 refrain, "where the fuck did he come from?"

With ACA no longer a Damocles sword hanging over Obama's head, Hillary's decreasing trustworthiness factor, and Beau Biden's "death bed wish" that his dad would take a shot at the office, I feel Joe is right on the verge of going for it. He will have no trouble building a campaign war chest worthy of the run and I feel confident he'd snag the nomination in July.

Any Democrat but Hillary in 2016!

[Lord Jim]

Exclusive: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest

For months, the U.S. State Department has stood behind its former boss Hillary Clinton as she has repeatedly said she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.

While the department is now stamping a few dozen of the publicly released emails as "Classified," it stresses this is not evidence of rule-breaking. Those stamps are new, it says, and do not mean the information was classified when Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, first sent or received it.

But the details included in those "Classified" stamps — which include a string of dates, letters and numbers describing the nature of the classification — appear to undermine this account, a Reuters examination of the emails and the relevant regulations has found.

The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton's emails from her time as the nation's most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department's own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not.

In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own "Classified" stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.

This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be "presumed" classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters.

"It's born classified," said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House's National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

"If a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it's in U.S. channels and U.S. possession," he said in a telephone interview, adding that for the State Department to say otherwise was "blowing smoke."

Clinton and her senior staff routinely sent foreign government information among themselves on unsecured networks several times a month, if the State Department's markings are correct. Within the 30 email threads reviewed by Reuters, Clinton herself sent at least 17 emails that contained this sort of information. In at least one case it was to a friend, Sidney Blumenthal, not in government.

The information appears to include privately shared comments by a prime minister, several foreign ministers and a foreign spy chief, unredacted bits of the emails show. Typically, Clinton and her staff first learned the information in private meetings, telephone calls or, less often, in email exchanges with the foreign officials.

In an email from November 2009, the principal private secretary to David Miliband, then the British foreign secretary, indicates that he is passing on information about Afghanistan from his boss in confidence. He writes to Huma Abedin, Clinton's most senior aide, that Miliband "very much wants the Secretary (only) to see this note."

Nearly five pages of entirely redacted information follow. Abedin forwarded it on to Clinton's private email account.

more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/ ... BW20150821

[Lord Jim]

Biden meets with Warren in Washington

Washington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden met privately with Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Saturday in his residence at the Naval Observatory, CNN has learned, another sign he is seriously deciding whether to jump into the Democratic presidential race.

Warren and Biden discussed economic policy during a meeting that lasted about two hours, a person familiar with the discussion told CNN, adding that the presidential campaign or Biden's future was not a particular focus of the discussion.

The meeting, confirmed by two people familiar with the session, is the biggest indication yet that Biden is feeling out influential Democrats before announcing his intentions.

Beloved by liberal Democrats, Warren decided to sit out a campaign of her own, but she has yet to formally endorse a candidate. In an interview on Friday, she told WBZ in Boston: "I don't think anyone has been anointed."

The vice president arrived in Washington shortly before lunchtime, even though his official schedule said he was planning to spend the weekend at his home in Delaware.

Kendra Barkoff, a Biden spokeswoman, declined to comment on the meeting. But an aide to Biden confirmed a meeting, telling CNN: "The vice president traveled last minute to Washington, D.C. for a private meeting and will be returning to Delaware."

Another source familiar with the meeting told CNN that Warren went to the meeting at Biden's request.

Biden is increasingly weighing whether to challenge Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates for the party's presidential nomination. A small team of advisers has spent weeks quietly putting together a campaign strategy and fundraising plan in case Biden decides to run. He had at least one meeting with them this week in Wilmington, one person familiar with the session told CNN.

He has told his associates he intends to make his decision in the next month, an announcement that could upend the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination.

With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary six months away, Biden is the leading figure Democrats believe they could turn to if they needed to find an alternative to Clinton, whose favorability ratings have taken a deep hit as her email use while secretary of state is drawing deeper controversy.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/22/politics/ ... index.html

[wesw]

well campers, Nixon, er Clinton, is in big trouble, and I see no further need to attack her.

there will be no chortling, by me, when she withdraws, or is disqualified. it a very sad and somber thing, in my view.

unpleasant but necessary

laughter is the best medicine tho, so.....

god bless America!!!!

[Lord Jim]

If I had to choose between Hillary and Biden (God forbid) personally I would prefer Hillary...

If for no other reason than the fact that Biden is an even weaker naval gazer on foreign affairs and national security and defense than the current incumbent, (if it had been up to Biden, bin Ladin would still be a free man in Pakistan) and given the mess the world is in and the threats we face, that is the very last thing we need in the next President...

But that having been said, from a purely political standpoint I can certainly see why some Democrats might be getting nervous about just how badly damaged Hillary is going to wind being, and would want another potential alternative in the race.

The very thing I find most dislikable about Biden is no doubt appealing to many in the pacifist liberal base of the party. In addition, while he really can't run as the "anti-establishment" candidate, he certainly comes across as less calculating and controlled then Hillary...

He speaks much better to the apparent hunger for unfiltered, rough-around-the-edges bluntness that currently exists with much of the electorate than she does...

He's more left than Hillary, he comes across as more "genuine" than Hillary, and he doesn't have a slew of ethical questions engulfing him...

At the same time, he's also far more electable than Sanders...

Given all of Hillary's problems, (and the fact that there is no end in sight to those problems) if I were a Democratic establishment type, I'd be looking to hedge my bets as well....

[wesw]

is it wrong to hope that lanny davis goes down with the ship?