Picking Through the Trash at Clinton.com

Whew that stinks!

Barack Obama claims not to have known about Hillary's Secret Server, thinks it was a mistake, but denies national security was at stake: Hillary’s secret e-mail server was a mistake, and it’s legit to question it

So it’s politicized but legitimate. Hillary made a mistake and acknowledged it, but mishandled the acknowledgment. She still has to answer for her actions to the “American public,” but apparently not to the man who employed her. The only thing missing from this pas de deux is a declaration that Obama’s favorite color is plaid.

Still, there are a couple of points worth drawing from this. Hillary and her apologists insist that she did nothing wrong in setting up her own secret e-mail system and that State and the White House knew about it. Clearly, Obama wants to make sure people know that the latter isn’t true, and strongly hints that the former isn’t true either. Obama tries playing off part of this as politics as usual, but that’s only a half-hearted jab that Obama can’t even land when Kroft asks him to say that it’s no big deal.

The next time the Department of Justice charges someone with unauthorized retention of classified material (a favorite way to prosecute leakers) in this administration, the defense team should play this back during the arraignment.

Such a deal:  While at State, Clinton chief of staff held job negotiating with Abu Dhabi

For the four years that Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary of state, her longtime friend and adviser Cheryl D. Mills served next to her as chief of staff. Clinton has said Mills helped her run the State Department’s sprawling bureaucracy; oversaw key priorities such as food safety, global health policy and LGBT rights; and acted as “my principal liaison to the White House on sensitive matters.”

During her first four months at the State Department, Mills also held another high-profile job: She worked part time at New York University, negotiating with officials in Abu Dhabi to build a campus in that Persian Gulf city.

At the State Department, she was unpaid in those first months, officially designated as a temporary expert-consultant — a status that allowed her to continue to collect outside income while serving as chief of staff. She reported that NYU paid her $198,000 in 2009, when her university work overlapped with her time at the State Department, and that she collected an additional $330,000 in vacation and severance payments when she left the school’s payroll in May 2009.

The arrangement, which Mills discussed publicly for the first time in an interview with The Washington Post, is another example of how Clinton as secretary allowed close aides to conduct their public work even as they performed jobs benefiting private interests. Another key Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, spent her last six months as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff in 2012 simultaneously employed by the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global charity, and a consulting company with close Clinton connections. Similarly, Mills remained on the Clinton Foundation’s unpaid board for a short time after joining the State Department.
...
“At this level, that you would make someone a GS-15 and yet have them continue to be a lawyer for a large academic institution or a large law firm — that I’ve never seen,” said Painter, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.

And from Hot Air:

Funny thing about that GS-15 rank assigned to Mills: Normally, per WaPo, a chief of staff would be listed as part of the “senior executive service,” which would limit the amount of outside income she could receive to roughly $26,000. Instead, by listing her as GS-15 for a few months, Mills avoided a cap on her NYU compensation, which ended up being $198,000 in salary in 2009 and another $330,000 in severance when she quit to work for Hillary full time. Being a de facto Clinton, with access to the extensive “It’s not technically illegal, but…” Clinton playbook, has its advantages.

With the Clintons, it's always about shaving the coins.

Speaking of Clinton.com's semi-secret organization: 'Frog march' for Sid Blumenthal?

During the Bush Derangement Syndrome era, a common fantasy on the left was that Karl Rove would be “frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs” for his alleged crime of revealing the name of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame. Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson IV (author of the frog march fantasy) became glamorous icons of progs across America for their role in emphasizing the severity of punishment for violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Ten years later, what goes around has come around. Alana Goodman reports in the Free Beacon:

An email forwarded by Hillary Clinton to a colleague that identified a top CIA informant in Libya could trigger an intelligence investigation and add to concerns that she mishandled classified information, according to intelligence sources.
. . .
An intelligence source said that the email could trigger an investigation into whether any of the parties violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, calling the apparent disclosure “a couple steps above Valerie Plame.”
“Once you compromise the cover, there’s a whole section of law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act,” said the source. “It’s against federal law to disclose the identities or the real names of anybody who works for the CIA or any other part of the intelligence community.”
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act prohibits individuals who have access to the identities of covert agents—including CIA intelligence sources—from intentionally disclosing this information to individuals who are not cleared to receive it.

In Trey Gowdy’s remarkable letter to Elijah Cummings, the former prosecutor called Blumenthal’s naming of the CIA source “some of the most protected information in our intelligence community.”

Why frog march Sid when you could frog march Hillary instead?

Hillary Clinton: “I’m Really Not Even a Human Being”

After some banter over the thermostat and the traditional One Weird Fact about Clinton (“The weirdest thing about me is that I don’t sweat”), BuzzFeed foolishly suggested that Clinton was a robot.

BuzzFeed, you fools! You don’t go around provoking dangerous artificial intelligence!

HILLARY CLINTON: You guys are the first to realize that I’m really not even a human being. I was constructed in a garage in Palo Alto a very long time ago. People think that, you know, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, they created it. Oh no. I mean, a man whose name shall remain nameless created me in his garage.
ANOTHER ROUND: Are there more of you?
HILLARY CLINTON: I thought he threw away the plans, at least that’s what he told me when he programmed me — that there would be no more. I’ve seen more people that kind of don’t sweat, and other things, that make me think maybe they are part of the new race that he created: the robot race.
ANOTHER ROUND: So there’s a cyborg army is what you’re saying.
HILLARY CLINTON: But you have to cut this, you can’t tell anybody this. I don’t want anybody to know this. This has been a secret until here we are in Davenport, Iowa, and I’m just spillin’ my electronic guts to you.
ANOTHER ROUND: And without bourbon.
HILLARY CLINTON: Without any bourbon. Yeah. That’s why I have to wait ’til the end of the day.

Upon hearing this news, members of the Benghazi special committee likely wondered whether Hillary had a second personal e-mail server hidden in her spleen, as well as whether she had lied about anything else.

In retrospect, as long as you could send someonething back in time, it seems logical for Skynet not to send a robot warrior to fight us, but to send a politician to control us.

I don't care who she is, this is a dick move. It's not like she determined who her parents were: Chelsea asked if Bill preys on young girls



Shoot landscape, asshole!

How Could Hillary Lose? The smartest political thinkers around imagine how Hillary Clinton could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

‘She loses if enough Democrats conclude she can’t win.’ - By Jeff Greenfield, five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

‘Bernie Sanders has to be taken seriously, but not so seriously that he pushes [Clinton] to the left.’ -  By Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.

‘Clinton appears to have wrapped up … the nomination months ago.’ - By Jonathan Bernstein, political scientist and Bloomberg View columnist covering U.S. politics.

By next fall, we’ll probably have gone through three or more cycles of Hillary Clinton scandals that Republicans and some in the media will be sure to finish her off, but in reality, voters will be affected a lot more by whether their paychecks are steady and steadily larger—or not. As of now, the general election is probably either a toss-up or perhaps slightly favors Republicans.

‘The failure modes are almost too numerous.’ - By Rick Wilson, Republican message and media strategist.

‘Joe Biden entering the race almost exclusively damages Hillary Clinton.’ - By Carrie Sheffield, Forbes contributor and senior writer at Opportunity Lives.

‘The idea that Clinton has ever been a significant general election favorite was and is off-base.’- By Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

‘My bet: The Obamas right now want Biden to run.’ - By Paul Goldman, former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia.

‘Her fate is in the hands of investigators and the resident of Number One Observatory Circle.’ - By Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics.

‘What could knock her off would be were Biden to pledge serving only one term and announcing a ticket with Elizabeth Warren.’ - By Mary Matalin, Republican political strategist.

‘Two scenarios could take her down.’ - By Douglas Schoen, founding partner and principal strategist for Penn, Schoen and Berland, and a former pollster for Bill Clinton.

‘She won’t lose.’ - Paul Begala, political analyst for CNN and counselor to former President Bill Clinton.

Well, I'm glad we all agree. . .

And the official instructions for the DNC Debate Drinking Game:

I hope you can hold your liquor.