Clinton.com Superbowl Celebration

Let's pile on a little. . .

The New York Times flails desperately as it tried to justify the Clinton's decision to allow top secret emails on the super secret private server, located first in the basement of their Chappaqua house, and then in the bathroom of a supporter's internet company: Agencies Battle Over What Is ‘Top Secret’ in Hillary Clinton’s Emails, and spends most of their effort trying to play the post-facto classification card, and sluff the card with top secrets from other agencies.  Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's head fact checker spinner tries a similar exercise in How did ‘top secret’ emails end up on Hillary Clinton’s server?, but ultimately comes around to . . .

Clinton is in a pickle here, largely of her own making.

The emails in question were sent on an unclassified system — as they would have been if she had followed standard protocol and used a state.gov account. Under State Department practice, a request for public release of her emails would have been subject to the same classification discussion currently underway. Any “top secret” communications would have been withheld.

However, if she did not have a private server, intelligence officials now would not be scrutinizing every single Clinton email for possible public release. That has heightened the scrutiny of what should not be disclosed — and what was discussed in the unclassified system in the first place.

The State Department’s unclassified system is not perfect — the Russians have hacked it — but Clinton’s home server was outside official control or supervision. Moreover, unlike state.gov, it did not have dedicated government security personnel responsible for it.

before generously awarding her two out of four possible Pinocchios. After correction for the usual negative two Pinocchio bias toward Democrats, that's about right. Clinton accused of invoking 'everybody did it' defense on email scandal.

Clinton pointed at the debate to emerging reports that former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the immediate staff of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also received classified security information on their personal email accounts.

But the dozen emails reportedly connected to those cases represent a fraction of the more than 1,600 now-classified emails found on Clinton’s server. Further, no other secretary of state set up a private, “homebrew” server as she did.

“We’re talking apples and oranges here,” the National Journal’s Ron Fournier told Fox News.

“Official investigations have confirmed that Secretary Clinton’s unsecure server stored more than 1,000 emails containing classified information, including some classified at the very highest levels,” Issa said in his statement, put out earlier Thursday. “Her guarantee to the nation that the number was zero now seems more like desperation than news cycle spin.”

 On the Speaking Fees front: Dead broke candidate thinks $150K donation is “not very much money”

Now she’s been asked about how tough she’ll be on the big energy companies when some of them gave her $150K in donations. Her answer in this instance really wasn’t much more brilliant than her last few attempts. (Daily Caller)

Video has emerged of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton telling an anti-fossil fuels activist on the campaign trail in Dover, N.H. on Wednesday that the $150,000 she has received in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry “is not very much” money.
Clinton, who once came under fire for claiming that she was “dead broke” after leaving the White House in 2001, first claimed ignorance about the donations when an activist with the environmental group 350 Action asked her whether she would be willing to “take a stand against any more campaign contributions” from Big Oil. Clinton’s Democratic challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has pledged not to accept money from the industry.
“Yeah, I don’t even know what you’re referring to, but big oil knows I’m not their friends, so they must have put it in the wrong envelope,” Clinton responded.

They must have put it in the wrong envelope? And you kept the money anyway even though you suspected that it was intended for somebody else? I’m no lawyer, but that sounds like mail fraud to me. Of course, the FBI might not get around to that case until they finish up with your secret bathroom server.

From Patterico, as I thought, she had a price list for her speaking fees: Let’s Be Clear About Hillary Clinton And Those Goldman Sach Speaking Fees

Considering that Clinton maintained a price list for those wanting to book her for a speaking engagement, it seems highly unlikely that when it came to Wall Street, she would simply take “what they offered”. After all, this is Wall Street we’re talking about and she is Hillary Clinton, exclusive speaker. Anyway, the speech fees for Clinton were set by her representatives, not by Goldman Sach:

During the period of the Goldman Sach and many other top dollar speeches, she was represented by the Harry Walker Agency, which calls itself “the world’s leading speaker’s bureau.”
When groups pick from their list of speakers, which also include Bill Clinton, the price is discreetly provided. For Hillary Clinton, the price appeared to regularly be shy of $300,000 each.

For kicks, let’s just say it was what Goldman Sach *offered*, wouldn’t a presidential candidate whose platform includes railing against Wall Street greed, corporate recklessness, and disregard for the little people, actually jump at the opportunity to demonstrate that their actions back up their words by turning down such a speaking engagement? That way, the candidate would be seen as an *honest broker rather than a shady grifter with a penchant for big money and big lies.

Kathleen Parker tries to white wash it away in Hillary's golden tongue:

More likely than the cover-up conspiracy Clintons always seem to inspire, she probably prefers to protect the intimacy that any good speaker tries to develop with an audience -- a particular group of people rather than the entire country. Personally, I don't allow my speeches to be recorded so that I can relax and not worry over every word.

But Kathleen Parker isn't running for President, and if she did, I wouldn't vote for her.

Meanwhile, the "dump Hillary for Biden" movement continues to gather wind in it's sails. Democratic donor contacts Biden allies about possible run and Time to panic: “Draft Biden” drumbeats getting louder.

Fox News has learned that a prominent backer of the “Draft Biden 2016″ movement, Tulsa businessman Bill Bartmann, fired off an email Friday afternoon to several dozen Democratic allies musing about the possibility of reviving the push for Biden.

“I would urge all of you to join me in ‘keeping our powder dry’ until we see if for the good of the party and the country, we should resurrect (sic) the Draft Biden movement,” Bartmann wrote to fellow Democrats who had been involved in trying to draft Biden last year.

He does exude a certain simple minded honesty.

From the almost always sensible Megan McArdle Sanders and Clinton Get Substantive. That's Where They Go Wrong. Just an excerpt to whet your appetite:

There’s a funny thing, though, about substantive debates: They are in some ways less informing than the fluffy sort Washington wonks hate. After all, a group of people sticking to vague generalities about American greatness, opportunity, and so forth can’t actually be all that wrong. Wrongness emerges only when people start talking actual policy and making claims about the real world.

Relying on old friends from the last Clinton regime: Albright: 'There's a special place in hell' for women who don't back Clinton.

Albright's scolding of young women came less than a week after voters under the age of 30 backed Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton by a staggering 70-point margin—84 percent to 14 percent. The Iowa caucus entrance poll didn't break down results by both age and gender, but the topline number indicates Sanders must have carried young female voters in Iowa by a hefty margin.

Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and numerous other victims of Hillary's attacks on Bill's Bimbos were not consulted. Ed Dricoll at Instapundit quipped

"I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN DEMOCRATS ONCE BELIEVED IN THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

I've always found that their dedication to the separation of church and state was contingent upon it's convenience to their politics.