The Bush adminstration not only used private emails

[malaise]

They destroyed them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy

That is all

[Turbineguy]

1. Yes, but they are republican

so it's OK.

[hughee99]

5. Funny, because I'm getting the exact opposite feeling here over the last two days.

A decent number of people seem to be giving Clinton a complete pass on this one.

IMHO, it was a very stupid thing to do. I'm not sure if any laws were broken or not in Clinton's case, but I have to believe she knew better. I don't believe this happened by accident or because it didn't seem like a big deal at the time to her, and if you run your own email service (and it's secure) then you can't feign ignorance about cyber security.

[BlueCaliDem]

2. Yes, that's true. But IOKIYAR, dontcha know?

At least, that's the message U.S. M$M is propagating. It's a felony when a Democrat does it but when a Republican does it, it's a-ok.

Not in my book.

[leveymg]

4. We went over this years ago here. The problem is that the Records Act doesn't have teeth

and it's enforcement and interpretation with the Bushies were largely a matter of first-impression. By the time Hillary came in, the legalities were much better understood by her lawyers. They assumed that there would be no direct criminal penalties, so she didn't even bother to appear to be in compliance, and set up her own server(s). I believe she also assumed that nobody would notice, and she would never be called to account for her intentional violation of the law.

So, she did it her way. The problem for her is the intent part here. If intent to evade that law can be proven, and there is ever an actual federal investigation of emails that may have been erased to avoid reporting requirements, she's toast. That brings in another statute - the one that governs Obstruction of Justice. If the original servers are no longer in existence or a lot of data has been lost, she may have fried herself, at least politically. We will see.

[malaise]

7. Thanks for this leveymg n/t

[cascadiance]

6. And arguably the same firm, SmartTech, was also used to rig the 2004 election in Ohio...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/04/24/327069/-UPDATED-RNC-s-Smartech-took-over-Ohio-Election-Servers-on-Nov-3-2004#

Note how SmartTech was used by the Republicans in 2004 to reroute vote counting in Ohio to help give Bush the 2004 election over Kerry there, and was also used by the Bush administration as a separate domain to manage Bush administration's "outsourced" email service.

We shouldn't be justifying their usage of this sort of privatization of what should be government infrastructure to help us preserve security and accountability of our government's activities.

Snowden was also highlighting that with the privatization of much of our government security operations too where he worked.

There's no guarantee that private industry will do a better job in providing security for email, and there is definitely an inherent bigger problem in terms of accountability of what goes on there over government run operations.

It has been argued that Karl Rove got trapped in to believing that something was "wrong" with a similar effort to do that in this election with his behavior on Fox News, when Anonymous claimed responsibility to stopping a similar vote rigging attempt in more recent elections.

[malaise]

8. I'm not justifying it - just wondered why the people who are going ater her didn't go after Bush

In theory I'm against all privatization of government business but the double standards also anger me. leveymg has clarified some issues for me.

[cascadiance]

9. Oh, I fully agree we don't want double standards...

And I want the government to take charge and provide effective internal IT management of information and infrastructure, and if they aren't, then something should be done to make it so. That is far better than looking the other way while so many pols in both parties go outside the system, and do who knows what outside the system, that not only keeps our systems from not running as they should be, but destroys accountability of both parties, so that in this time so beset by corruption of lobbyist money, we find ourselves trusting these politicians less and less, even if they have no intention to do anything unethical by using private infrastructure for things like email (or counting votes, as in the case of SmartTech)...

It also allows for more partisan character assassinations to happen of those that the PTB doesn't like as much as others that do more of their bidding and are engaged in the same practices of using private email, etc. The way to stop that is to have NONE of these government officials use private industry IT infrastructure, period!

[sabrina 1]

12. And that brings us back to our apparent policies of not holding the Bush gang liable for anything.

Once Dems let them off the hook for ALL their violations of the law, it was obvious that they would become even more empowered and would NEVER grant the same 'immunity' to Democrats.

Imagine if the law had been upheld, regarding the 2000 election eg.

Regarding the War Crimes and lies told to get us into Iraq, eg.

Regarding the Wall St corruption that led to the Global Crash?

I guess Dems naively thought that if we didn't make a big deal over MAJOR crimes, the bullies would return the favor.

Instead, THEY are free and clear, and now anything a Dem does, no matter how minor, will be magnified.

And that's what happens when the rule of law is abandoned.

[malaise]

14. +1,000

and now Betraeus walks free - with silence from the entire establishment.

[99Forever]

10. Did someone say it was ok?

Link please.

[NightWatcher]

11. And the Vice President got drunk and shot a man in the face

But enough with that, I hear that Hillary has sent mail to people and has affixed the stamps somewhat crooked on the envelop.

I'm no fan of Hillary, but sheesh.

[DesMoinesDem]

13. Can you imagine if Hillary becomes President. "Bush started an illegal war too!"