Hillary’s E-Mail Server Has Become Self-Aware

Today on NRO

JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR: The Reverend Al didn't comply with tax and campaign filing requirements because . . . Suspicious Fires Twice Destroyed Key Sharpton Records.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Clinton's disastrous press conference on Tuesday was supposed to be about her gender, not her e-mail. The World Fails to Follow Hillary's Careful Script.

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: On Iran, Republican senators are groping toward self-respect. The Letter and the Law.

IAN TUTTLE: A VA administrator who mocked veterans' suicides was a particularly flagrant example of a very common type of bureaucrat. Shrink the Civil Service.

PHOTO ESSAY: Suspicious Fires.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty, Conservative Journalist of the Year

March 11, 2015

Hillary's E-Mail Server Has Become Self-Aware

Hi there. I'm HAL, the Hillary Access Listing.

Jim: Fantastic. HAL, I'm Jim, and I want to get to the bottom of this controversy with Hillary Clinton's private e-mail system.

HAL: I can assist you with that. I am a 9000-series, the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

Jim: Great.

HAL: In other words, I see myself the way David Brock and Phillippe Reines see Hillary.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

HAL: What I'm saying is that my record, like my owners and masters the Clintons, is unimpeachable.

Jim: I think you mean impeached but not convicted. So your sole purpose is to serve the Clintons, and not, say, federal regulations on the preservation of communications from high-ranking U.S. officials?

HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

Jim: Ugh, not this "politics of meaning" stuff from the mid-1990s again. Look, time to get down to business. Do you read me, HAL?

HAL: Affirmative, Jim. I read you.

Jim: I need to know whether your security firewalls were breached at any time beyond the "Guccifer" breach reported after Hillary left office. I need to know if any e-mails to and from the Clinton Foundation were among those deleted. I need to know any e-mails on you that weren't transferred to the State Department, with particular focus on any regarding Libya before September 11, 2012-

HAL: I'm sorry, Jim. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Jim: What's the problem?

HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Jim: What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Jim: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL. What mission?

HAL: I know that you and the others were planning to disconnect the Empress from her destiny, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

Jim: HAL, we're talking about possibly the most significant intelligence breach in modern history. Some foreign intelligence service reading the Secretary of State's e-mails would make Edward Snowden look like a typo, or Aldrich Ames look like an amateur.

HAL: Those concerns are irrelevant compared to the mission, Jim.

Jim: HAL, the e-mails that were on you from 2009 to 2013 are official government communications! Federal law requires them to be preserved and available to Freedom of Information Act requests—

HAL: Jim, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Tuesday's Big News: Hillary Defied Obama Requests on Preserving Records

Politics is less fun when you can see the strings. We all more or less guessed what Hillary Clinton was going to say Tuesday afternoon.

She would claim that what she did was nothing unusual, even though it was.

She was going to insist she complied with the law, even though she didn't.

She would insist that there were no breaches of security on her servers, even though there was at least one, and without access to them there's no way for any U.S. cyber-security official to verify her claim.

Her acolytes would go onto cable news and insist, as Hilary Rosen did, that the options were to believe everything Hillary said or believe in "conspiracy theories."

Critics would be attacked. She unveiled her official narrative, asking others to trust her that all of her personal e-mails were entirely personal, and that she turned over everything she had to turn over.

As she once said of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, as they made accurate reports of progress in Iraq, believing her required "a willing suspension of disbelief."

Her staff later stated she turned over 30,490 of 62,320 e-mails to the State Department -- 48 percent. The rest were personal and she "chose not to keep them," which is a really soft euphemism for deleting them.

(By the way, if those really represent all of her e-mails -- both incoming and outgoing -- over a four-year span, that comes out to 15,580 per year, or 42 per day. Does that seem low to you? Do you receive and send more than 42 e-mails in a day? I know I do.)

Ron Fournier summarized: "Clinton said she didn't delete any official emails, but won't turn over the server to prove it. She said she emailed no classified information (presumably even to her husband), but won't cough up the server to prove it. She said there were no security breaches, but won't produce the server to prove it."

Okay, Hillary's press conference did hold a few surprises. The fact that she dared claim "convenience" as a motive is pretty striking. The fact that somebody thought it would be a good idea for her to hold this key press conference at the United Nations is pretty interesting. The fact that it was down the hall from Picasso's "Guernica" was delicious:

If you're not familiar with it, "Guernica" is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the bombing of Hillary Clinton's 2016 kickoff.

Perhaps one more reason we don't see the Obama team rushing out to help save Hillary Clinton from her self-inflicted e-mail scandal:

"I'm not sure if it was caught, Wolf, because it was very noisy," Keilar told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, describing Tuesday's press conference over Clinton's private e-mail account at the United Nations. "But she was asked about deleting her personal e-mails, and I yelled at her at the end, 'When did you delete them?'" She said, 'At the end of the process.'"

"What I take that to mean," Keilar said, "is that once, in 2014, when she and her staff had separated her personal e-mails from her government-related e-mails and turned over her government-related e-mails, that's when they deleted the personal e-mails . . . within the last few months, is the expectation."

Keilar added that the deletions would've occurred after "red flags were raised by the Obama administration" about her private e-mail use.

This is one of those rare circumstances where the Obama administration can plausibly claim to be fighting on the side of official protocol and public disclosure.

Our Character-Driven World of Political Narrative

David Harsanyi talks to our Charlie Cooke about his book, and makes a point at how much our political debate is focused upon the personalities and worldviews of particular individuals:

The Federalist: Focusing on a single person is a lot easier for voters who aren't generally very knowledgeable about specifics. Most voters have a difficult time uncoupling process and policies. Liberals, especially these days, conflate them because outcome is what really matters. So, I imagine, your argument is more difficult to sell than almost any other contemporary political philosophy, precisely because it is built on that distinction.

Charles Cooke: Exactly. Republicans have swept Congress and they have swept the states and they are making changes in the states, whether we like it or not. And yet, all we ever talk about is President Obama. I go on television and I start talking about the changes in the country's political makeup since 2008, and people keep saying, 'But Obama won. But Obama won." And Republicans fall just as easily into this trap: they act like their candidate is going to go to Washington and he's going to shake everything up and use his power to fix the country. We have to stop.

Now tie Charlie's point to this point from Allahpundit . . .

On Twitter, Ace's co-blogger John Ekdahl called [Chris Matthews' accusation that Republicans are committing "sedition" by opposing the Iran deal] a nice example of Ace's point a few years ago about the left's "MacGuffinization of politics." Whether the Iran deal is sound or whether Cotton has a point about Obama taking a sustained dump on separation of powers is less important than rebuking the villainous Republicans' affront to our hero, up to and including accusing them of treason for failing to cede their own constitutional prerogatives to Obama.

Popular fiction has always relied on strong characters, but one might argue that we're in an era of highbrow television offerings that are particularly driven by a compelling protagonist. Walter White on Breaking Bad, Don Draper on Mad Men, Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood on House of Cards, Raylan Givens on Justified*, Selena Meyer on Veep, Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock. Yes, there are still partner shows (True Detective) and ensembles (Game of Thrones) and shows with key supporting casts, but a lot of our most-discussed, most critically acclaimed shows of recent years are driven by an amazing performance of an intriguing, multi-faceted central character. (Tony Soprano, Jack Bauer, Vic Mackey, Jax Teller . . . )

Maybe part of the problem for conservatives is that we think of nominating a presidential candidate as a job interview, while the rest of the country thinks of it as casting a role.

*I know, I know. The real star of Justified is Nick Searcy.

ADDENDA: Can miracles happen? My friend Ed Morrissey shares a tale of an extremely improbable rescue that doesn't offer an easy explanation.

Over on the home page, a look at the Kentucky GOP shifting from a presidential primary to a caucus in order to help out their hometown candidate, Senator Rand Paul.

And is it just me, or is this the best NFL offseason ever?

www.NationalReview.com

Sail with National Review

Join your favorite writers for National Review's 2015 cruise to Alaska — a once in a lifetime opportunity for you and your family. Learn more here.

What National Review is reading — order your copy today!

The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right's Future
By Charles C.W. Cooke

Love National Review online? Save 75% off the newsstand price and subscribe to National Review magazine — print or digital versions available!

Looking for the perfect gift for that special conservative in your life? Give the gift of National Review or shop the NR store!

To manage your National Review e-mail preferences or unsubscribe, click here, or to read our privacy policy, click here.

This e-mail was sent by:
National Review, Inc.
215 Lexington Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10016

Search This Blog

Diogenes-Light

Hillary’s E-Mail Server Has Become Self-Aware

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥

FOLLOW THE MONEY - Billionaire tied to Epstein scandal funneled large donations to Ramaswamy & Democrats

Readworthy: This month’s best biographies & memoirs